Forms of the Body in Contemporary Japanese Society, Literature, and Culture

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This collection brings together fifteen chapters written by scholars specializing in disciplines ranging from anthropology and sociology to literature, film, and performance studies. These scholars analyze complex questions about how the body is lived and imagined as a locus of meaning-making in contemporary Japan. Exploring such topics as mind-body dualism, aging and illness, spirit possession, beauty, performance, and gender, this collection addresses the wide array of socio-cultural and literary contexts in which the body is interpreted in Japanese culture and thought.

Reviews

The body functions not only as a ground for the unique particularities of individual subjectivity, but also as a model of universality that mirrors the community and the society at large. Through this connection between the individual and the whole, the body thereby gives physical shape to the universal order and its microcosmos, while likewise serving in modern society as the political "field" through which the conflicts and contradictions between the two become visible. It is the nature of this "field" of body politics that Irina Holca and Carmen Spunaru Tma illuminate in their exploration of the varying representations of the body across contemporary Japanese literature, performance, and popular culture.--Hideto Tsuboi, International Research Center for Japanese Studies
This edited volume is a fresh and very rich addition to our understanding of a crucial topic--the body--as thought, felt, and acted by contemporary Japanese. It will enrich the field beyond Japanese studies, since it brings together two important elements; in addition to familiar names in Japanese studies, the editors--both Romanians with Ph.D.s from Japanese universities--have included authors from highly diverse backgrounds, and their 'ethnographies' engage with literature, performing arts, and everyday behaviors, rather than only social science materials.--Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, University of Wisconsin
This is a refreshing collection of articles addressing the subject of the body from a variety of appealingly eclectic angles. Drawing on less well-known insights gathered by social and cultural anthropologists as well as literature scholars, the chapters offer surprise after surprise--approaches that bewilder the boundaries between human, animal, and spirit, and that amuse as well as inform. This is highly recommended for anyone interested in learning more about Japan's cultural creativity.--Joy Hendry, Oxford Brookes University
This meticulously edited volume gathers scholars from a range of disciplines and geographical backgrounds to provide powerfully written essays that expand scholarly thought on bodies. These cogent essays by young scholars respond to recent Japanese fiction and social and artistic phenomena--while paying attention to the centrality of the body--and do much to expand our understanding in the theoretical lineage of attention to the body. There is much to learn from these essays.--Douglas Slaymaker, University of Kentucky

Author Bio

Irina Holca is associate professor at the University of Tokyo.


Carmen Spunaru Tma is associate professor at the University of Hyogo.