Rearranging the Landscape of the Gods : The Politics of a Pilgrimage Site in Japan, 1573-1912
By Sarah Thal
University of Chicago Press, 2005, 344 pages
Thal’s book is a study of the Kotohira Shrine in Shikoku, which was also known as the Konpira Temple before the Meiji Restoration. She seeks to explain how it and the […]
The National Diet Library offers two interesting databases:
The Digital Library from the Meiji Era, available in Japanese only. This database offers images of books published in the Meiji era and held by the NDL. As of July 2004, 54,349 volumes, almost all whose copyrights are confirmed to have expired, excluding children’s books and […]
On May 12, 2005, Richard J. Samuels, noted Japan scholar from MIT, came to PSU for a lecture presented by PSU’s Center for Japanese Studies on Japan’s security policy.
Dr. Samuels was an excellent lecturer with a welcome sense of humor. Unfortunately for me, there was little new material presented. These general lectures don’t […]
In Dogs and Demons, Alex Kerr identifies tourism as one of the great failures of modern Japan. He mentions that it was by no accident either, but a “deliberate national policy†that Japan chose to follow. Instead of becoming a service-based economy, national policy was that Japan would shun all industries that didn’t […]
Many of the problems in Japan that Alex Kerr mentions in Dogs and Demons have come up in the news this week.
Kerr mentions how the Forest Agency engaged in a program to clear-cut natural Japanese forests and replace them with mostly cedar trees, which was thought to be much more profitable to industry. It […]