Authenticating Culture in Imperial Japan
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€70.99
1930s
A01=Leslie Pincus
Author_Leslie Pincus
Category=DSBH
Category=JBCC
Category=JHM
Category=NHF
cultural aesthetics
development of culture
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
european philosophy
exploring culture
foucault
france
frankfurt school
germany
history of culture
interwar years
japan
japanese culture
japanese intellectual culture
japanese philosophy
kuki shuzo
marxist culturalists
militaristic regime
national setting
philosopher
theory
turn of the century
unique culture
war
western ideas
world war
Product details
- ISBN 9780520201347
- Weight: 635g
- Dimensions: 159 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 25 Jun 1996
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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During the interwar years in Japan, discourse on culture turned sharply inward after generations of openness to Western ideas. The characterizations that arose - that Japanese culture is unique, essential, and enduring - came to be accepted both inside and outside Japan. Leslie Pincus focuses on the work of Kuki Shuzo, a philosopher and the author of the classic "'Iki' no Kozo", to explore culture and theory in Japan during the interwar years. She shows how Japanese intellectual culture ultimately became complicit, even instrumental, in an increasingly repressive and militaristic regime that ultimately brought the world to war. Pincus provides an extensive critical study of Kuki's intellectual lineage and shows how it intersects with a number of central figures in both European and Japanese philosophy. The discussion moves between Germany, France, and Japan, providing a guide to the development of culture in a number of national settings from the turn of the century to the 1930s. Inspired by the work of Foucault, the Marxist culturalists, and the Frankfurt School, Pincus reads against the grain of traditional interpretation.
Her theoretically informed approach situates culture in a historical perspective and charts the ideological dimensions of cultural aesthetics in Japan. "Authenticating Culture in Imperial Japan" makes an important contribution to our understanding of modernity, nationalism, and fascism in the early twentieth century.
Leslie Pincus is Associate Professor of History at the University of Michigan.
