Geographical Studies and Japan

Geographical Studies and Japan
Author: John Sargent
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2014-04-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1134240619

Describes the trends, diversity and differences in Japanese and British geographical studies.

Tokyo as a Global City

Tokyo as a Global City
Author: Toshio Kikuchi
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2018-03-28
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9811076383

This book examines Tokyo’s changes, current challenges, and future trends through a new kind of regional geography and serves as an important source of comprehensive information about the past, present, and future perspectives of Tokyo as a global city. Regional geography relies on two main approaches. The traditional one addresses each geographical element of a region individually and in depth, in a descriptive and static manner. The other focuses on a region’s specific phenomena and realities as a starting point and proceeds to identify the region’s constituent elements and their interactions, which it records and explains in a systematic and dynamic manner. The present volume, unlike its predecessors, relies on the dynamic approach and endeavors to offer a fresh view of Tokyo’s new and diverse geographical realities, analyzed in a holistic, systematic manner allowing identification of its specific features. The book covers a broad range of topics including landform variations and volcanic activity, biodiversity concerns, transportation management, waste management, population issues, religious functions, and urban tourism, all of which facilitate understanding of the unique characteristics of Tokyo. Extensive views from different fields of studies make the book a valuable reference to comprehend both the development of Tokyo into a global city and its sustainability.

Printing Landmarks

Printing Landmarks
Author: Robert Goree
Publisher: Harvard East Asian Monographs
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2020
Genre: Books and reading
ISBN: 9780674247871

Spanning the fields of book history, travel literature, map history, and visual culture, Printing Landmarks provides a new perspective on Tokugawa-period culture. Robert Goree draws on diverse archival and scholarly sources to explore why meisho zue enjoyed widespread and enduring popularity.

The SAGE Handbook of Modern Japanese Studies

The SAGE Handbook of Modern Japanese Studies
Author: James D Babb
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 673
Release: 2014-12-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1473908795

A welcome addition to any reading list for those interested in contemporary Japanese society. - Roger Goodman, Nissan Professor of Modern Japanese Society, University of Oxford "I know no better book for an accessible and up-to-date introduction to this complex subject than The SAGE Handbook of Modern Japan Studies." - Hiroko Takeda, Associate Professor, Organization for Global Japanese Studies, University of Tokyo "Pioneering and nuanced in analysis, yet highly accessible and engaging in style." - Yoshio Sugimoto, Emeritus Professor, La Trobe University The SAGE Handbook of Modern Japanese Studies includes outstanding contributions from a diverse group of leading academics from across the globe. This volume is designed to serve as a major interdisciplinary reference work and a seminal text, both rigorous and accessible, to assist students and scholars in understanding one of the major nations of the world. James D. Babb is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University.

Insularity and Geographic Diversity of the Peripheral Japanese Islands

Insularity and Geographic Diversity of the Peripheral Japanese Islands
Author: Akitoshi Hiraoka
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2022-06-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9811923167

This book clarifies the geography of the peripheral Japanese islands from a variety of angles. The islands are distributed in the tropical and cool temperate zones, and the most distant inhabited islands are more than 1,000 km from the mainland. In the past, they were Japan's frontier, close to neighboring countries. However, during Japan's modernization process, the islands were positioned as backward regions, supplying food, resources, and labor. Today, the islands are considered to be on the periphery of Japan, with lifestyles different from those of the mainland. The islands are also getting attention as sightseeing locales and emigration regions attracting those who prefer country life—an image of the islands that has been created by the romanticized gaze from the Japanese mainland. The authors describe the various forms of the outlying Japanese islands and at the same time discover their common regional characteristics, as defined by the view from the mainland.

Japanese Mandalas

Japanese Mandalas
Author: Elizabeth ten Grotenhuis
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 1998-11-01
Genre: Design
ISBN: 9780824820817

The first broad study of Japanese mandalas to appear in a Western language, this volume interprets mandalas as sanctified realms where identification between the human and the sacred occurs. The author investigates eighth- to seventeenth-century paintings from three traditions: Esoteric Buddhism, Pure Land Buddhism, and the kami-worshipping (Shinto) tradition. It is generally recognized that many of these mandalas are connected with texts and images from India and the Himalayas. A pioneering theme of this study is that, in addition to the South Asian connections, certain paradigmatic Japanese mandalas reflect pre-Buddhist Chinese concepts, including geographical concepts. In convincing and lucid prose, ten Grotenhuis chronicles an intermingling of visual, doctrinal, ritual, and literary elements in these mandalas that has come to be seen as characteristic of the Japanese religious tradition as a whole. This beautifully illustrated work begins in the first millennium B.C.E. in China with an introduction to the Book of Documents and ends in present-day Japan at the sacred site of Kumano. Ten Grotenhuis focuses on the Diamond and Womb World mandalas of Esoteric Buddhist tradition, on the Taima mandala and other related mandalas from the Pure Land Buddhist tradition, and on mandalas associated with the kami-worshipping sites of Kasuga and Kumano. She identifies specific sacred places in Japan with sacred places in India and with Buddhist cosmic diagrams. Through these identifications, the realm of the buddhas is identified with the realms of the kami and of human beings, and Japanese geographical areas are identified with Buddhist sacred geography. Explaining why certain fundamental Japanese mandalas look the way they do and how certain visual forms came to embody the sacred, ten Grotenhuis presents works that show a complex mixture of Indian Buddhist elements, pre-Buddhist Chinese elements, Chinese Buddhist elements, and indigenous Japanese elements.

Geography Education in Japan

Geography Education in Japan
Author: Yoshiyasu Ida
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2014-12-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 4431549536

In a globalized market where the emerging workforce will increasingly travel within their nations and abroad for work opportunities, it is valuable to learn about the international education system and practices, to assess the competition. For example, annual comparison of student performance is measured across math and science subjects globally. What is not well known is how geography educational systems compare around the world and how student success in this subject translates to learning in other courses or employment after graduation. The importance of geography in our personal, professional, and civic lives is transparent when one considers how finding one’s way with a map, understanding of world cultures, or identifying spatial patterns of disease spread might influence the decisions we make. Written for a global audience, this is the first English publication on geography education in Japan, addressing some fundamental questions. What is the nature of the geography educational systems in Japan? How does the focus on content and skills in Japanese schools differ from that in other countries? This book includes 25 authors from diverse geography instruction and research experiences, making it an authoritative publication on Japan’s geography education system. The contribution of this book to the larger geography educational community is sharing the key strengths, concerns, and future of this school subject in English, where previously most publications were in Japanese. It will be a useful source for researchers and teachers to understand Japan’s evolving geography instruction in the past, present, and future. The 21 chapters are organized into themes, beginning with an overview of the geography education system in Japan, followed by chapters that deal with regional geography and fieldwork, teacher training, geography education’s contributions to society, and a comparative study of geography education across multiple countries. The book ends with a vision of geography education in the future.

Japanese Geography

Japanese Geography
Author: Robert Burnett Hall
Publisher: Praeger
Total Pages: 248
Release: 1956
Genre: Education
ISBN:

The intent in compiling this bibliography was to bring the attention of Western geographers and other interested scholars those geographical writings of the Japanese which have appeared in the 20th century.

Rethinking Locality in Japan

Rethinking Locality in Japan
Author: Sonja Ganseforth
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2021-07-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000415406

This book inquires what is meant when we say "local" and what "local" means in the Japanese context. Through the window of locality, it enhances an understanding of broader political and socio-economic shifts in Japan. This includes demographic change, electoral and administrative reform, rural decline and revitalization, welfare reform, as well as the growing metabolic rift in energy and food production. Chapters throughout this edited volume discuss the different and often contested ways in which locality in Japan has been reconstituted, from historical and contemporary instances of administrative restructuring, to more subtle social processes of making – and unmaking – local places. Contributions from multiple disciplinary perspectives are included to investigate the tensions between overlapping and often incongruent dimensions of locality. Framed by a theoretical discussion of socio-spatial thinking, such issues surrounding the construction and renegotiation of local places are not only relevant for Japan specialists, but also connected with topical scholarly debates further afield. Accordingly, Rethinking Locality in Japan will appeal to students and scholars from Japanese studies and human geography to anthropology, history, sociology and political science.