Baseball has joined America and Japan, even in times of strife, for over 150 years. After the "opening" of Japan by Commodore Perry, Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu explains, baseball was introduced there by American employees of the Japanese government tasked with bringing Western knowledge and technology to the country, and Japanese students in the United States soon became avid players. In the early twentieth century, visiting Japanese warships fielded teams that played against American teams, and a Negro League team arranged tours to Japan. By the 1930s, professional baseball was organized in Japan where it continued to be played during and after World War II; it was even played in Japanese American internment camps in the United States during the war. From early on, Guthrie-Shimizu argues, baseball carried American values to Japan, and by the mid-twentieth century, the sport had become emblematic of Japan's modernization and of America's growing influence in the Pacific world. Guthrie-Shimizu contends that baseball provides unique insight into U.S.-Japanese relations during times of war and peace and, in fact, is central to understanding postwar reconciliation. In telling this often surprising history, Transpacific Field of Dreams shines a light on globalization's unlikely, and at times accidental, participants.

Shape-shifters, demons, and lovers populate a landscape blossoming with story in this collection of imaginative contributions by Steve Berman, Eugie Foster, Jay Lake, Yoon Ha Lee, Robert Jordan Levy, Lisa Mantchev, Richard Parks, Ekaterina Sedia, Erzebet YellowBoy, and others.

Sakai works for a construction company that builds high rise buildings in Tokyo, but gets introduced to parts of the city he's never seen after meeting a mysterious young woman.

Dreams, Myths and Fairy Tales in Japan addresses Japanese culture insightfully, exploring the depths of the psyche from both Eastern and Western perspectives, an endeavor the author is uniquely suited to undertake. The present volume is based upon five lectures originally delivered at the prestigious round-table Eranos Conferences in Ascona, Switzerland. Readers interested in Japanese myth and religion, comparative cultural studies, depth psychology or clinical psychology will all find Professor Kawai’s offerings to be remarkably insightful while at the same time practical for their own daily work. From the contents: –Interpenetration: Dreams in Medieval Japan –Bodies in the Dream Diary of Myôe –Japanese Mythology: Balancing the Gods –Japanese Fairy Tales: The Aesthetic Solution –Torikaebaya: A Tale of Changing Sexual Roles

The catalogue to an Exhibition of the same name taking place in San Francisco in February 2011

Since the end of the Second World War—and particularly over the last decade—Japanese science fiction has strongly influenced global popular culture. Unlike American and British science fiction, its most popular examples have been visual—from Gojira (Godzilla) and Astro Boy in the 1950s and 1960s to the anime masterpieces Akira and Ghost in the Shell of the 1980s and 1990s—while little attention has been paid to a vibrant tradition of prose science fiction in Japan. Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams remedies this neglect with a rich exploration of the genre that connects prose science fiction to contemporary anime. Bringing together Western scholars and leading Japanese critics, this groundbreaking work traces the beginnings, evolution, and future direction of science fiction in Japan, its major schools and authors, cultural origins and relationship to its Western counterparts, the role of the genre in the formation of Japan’s national and political identity, and its unique fan culture. Covering a remarkable range of texts—from the 1930s fantastic detective fiction of Yumeno Kyûsaku to the cross-culturally produced and marketed film and video game franchise Final Fantasy—this book firmly establishes Japanese science fiction as a vital and exciting genre. Contributors: Hiroki Azuma; Hiroko Chiba, DePauw U; Naoki Chiba; William O. Gardner, Swarthmore College; Mari Kotani; Livia Monnet, U of Montreal; Miri Nakamura, Stanford U; Susan Napier, Tufts U; Sharalyn Orbaugh, U of British Columbia; Tamaki Saitô; Thomas Schnellbächer, Berlin Free U. Christopher Bolton is assistant professor of Japanese at Williams College. Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr. is professor of English at DePauw University. Takayuki Tatsumi is professor of English at Keio University.

"The Mary Griggs Burke Collection, represented in this volume and in the exhibition it accompanies, is a testimony to the intensity and selectivity of Mrs. Burke's collecting, guided by a discerning eye, a deep affection for Japan, and an appreciation of the country's cultural heritage." "Long recognized as one of the finest collections of Japanese art in private hands, the Mary Griggs Burke Collection is the largest and most comprehensive outside Japan." "While it provides a historical overview of the development of Japanese art, the collection illustrates as well Japan's capacity to foster divergent artistic traditions both from other cultures and from those that reflect indigenous tastes. It also demonstrates the profound impact of Buddhism on Japanese culture, the tastes and values of the courtly and military elite, and the interests of patrons who range from Sinophile rulers and scholars to pleasure-seeking urbanites."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved