The Culture of Japan as Seen through Its Leisure

by Sepp Linhart (Editor), Sabine Fruhstuck (Editor)

Overview

Provides a wealth of information about leisure activities in Japan including sports, travel, theater, music, games, and gambling.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780791437926
Publisher:	State University of New York Press
Publication date:	05/28/1998
Series:	SUNY series in Japan in Transition
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	408
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Sepp Linhart is Professor of Japanese Studies and Sabine Frühstück is Assistant Professor of Japanese Studies at the Institute for Japanese Studies at the University of Vienna.

Table of Contents

Preface

1. Introduction: The Japanese at Play: A Little-Known Dimension of Japan

Sepp Linhart

Part One: Everyday Activities as Leisure

2. Respite from Everyday Life: Kôtô-ku (Tokyo) in Recollections

Peter Ackermann

3. How Cooking Became a Hobby: Changes in Attitude Toward Cooking in Early Twentieth-Century Japan

Katarzyna Cwiertka

4. Then Science Took Over: Sex, Leisure, and Medicine at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century

Sabine Frühstück

Part Two: Sports

5. Budô : Invented Tradition in the Martial Arts

Inoue Shun

6. Blood and Guts in Japanese Professional Baseball

William W. Kelly

7. Contemporary Japanese Athletics: Window on the Cultural Roots of Nationalism-Internationalism

T. J. Pempel

8. Golf, Organization, and "Body Projects": Japanese Business Executives in Singapore

Eyal Ben-Ari

Part Three: Travel and Nature

9. Pilgrimage in the Edo Period: Forerunner of Modern Domestic Tourism? The Example of the Pilgrimage to Mount Tateyama

Susanne Formanek

10. Work and Play in the Japanese Countryside

Nelson H. H. Graburn

11. Cherry Blossoms and Their Viewing: A Window onto Japanese Culture

Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney

12. Leisure Parks in Japan

Angelika Hamilton-Oehrl

Part Four: Theater and Music

13. From Pleasure to Leisure: Attempts at Decommercialization of Japanese Popular Theater

Annegret Bergmann

14. Takarazuka and Kobayashi Ichizô's Idea of Kokumingeki

Roland Domenig

15. The Politics and Pursuit of Leisure in Wartime Japan

Jennifer Robertson

16. The Disappearance of the Jazu-Kissa : Some Considerations about Japanese "Jazz-Cafés" and Jazz-Listeners

Eckhart Derschmidt

Part Five: Playing Games and Gambling

17. From Kendô to Jan-ken : The Deterioration of a Game from Exoticism into Ordinariness

Sepp Linhart

18. Gambling and Changing Japanese Attitudes Toward It

Nagashima Nobuhiro

19. Time, Space, and Money: Cultural Dimensions of the Pachinko Game

Wolfram Manzenreiter

Notes on Contributors

Index

Editorial Reviews

"This book opens up an important and very understudied field and does so in ways that are often in themselves somewhat entertaining, as befits its subject matter. It also provides a good guide to the literature in both Japanese and English." — John Clammer, Sophia University, Tokyo

"The Culture of Japan as Seen through Its Leisure provides a wealth of information about a wide variety of leisure pursuits in Japan, typically grounded in their historical development, and at times relates these pursuits to Japanese society more generally." — Joy Hendry, Oxford Brookes University

From the Publisher

Papers from a March 1995 conference held in Vienna discuss different forms of leisure activities in past and present Japan, with sections on leisure, sports, travel and nature, theater and music, playing games, and gambling. Some subjects include Japanese professional baseball, attempts at decommercializing Japanese popular theater, and changing attitudes toward gambling. An introduction places leisure activities in Japan in a historical framework and relates them to Roger Caillois' classification scheme of games. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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