This book challenges the perception of Japan as a ‘copying culture’ through a series of detailed ethnographic and historical case studies. It addresses a question about why the West has had such a fascination for the adeptness with which the Japanese apparently assimilate all things foreign and at the same time such a fear of their skill at artificially remaking and automating the world around them. Countering the idea of a Japan that deviously or ingenuously copies others, it elucidates the history of creative exchanges with the outside world and the particular myths, philosophies and concepts which are emblematic of the origins and originality of copying in Japan. The volume demonstrates the diversity and creativity of copying in the Japanese context through the translation of a series of otherwise loosely related ideas and concepts into objects, images, texts and practices of reproduction, which include: shamanic theatre, puppetry, tea utensils, Kyoto town houses, architectural models, genres of painting, calligraphy, and poetry, ‘sample’ food displays, and the fashion and car industries.
Author(s): Rupert Cox
Series: Japan Anthropology Workshop Series
Publisher: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group
Year: 2007
Language: English
Commentary: ---PDF (Conv. / Not TruePDF)---
Pages: 181
Tags: Material Culture: Japan, Technological Innovations: Japan, Japan: Civilization: Foreign Influences
List of contributors......Page 10
Series editor's preface......Page 12
Acknowledgements......Page 14
PART I Original encounters......Page 26
1 Body-to-body transmission: the copying tradition of Kagura......Page 28
2 A spectrum of copies: ritual puppetry in Japan......Page 39
3 Copying in Japanese magazines: unashamed copiers......Page 46
PART II Arts of citation......Page 56
4 The originality of the 'copy': mimesis and subversion in Hanegawa Tôei's Chôsenjin Ukie......Page 58
5 Copy to convert: Jesuits' missionary practice in Japan......Page 80
6 Back to the fundamentals: 'reproducing' Rikyû and Chôjirô in Japanese tea culture......Page 89
7 An investigation of the conditions of literary borrowings in late Heian and early Kamakura Japan......Page 98
8 Chinese calligraphic models in Heian Japan: copying practices and stylistic transmission......Page 107
PART III Modern exchanges......Page 129
9 Beyond mimesis: Japanese architectural models at the Vienna Exhibition and 1910 Japan British Exhibition......Page 131
10 Copying Kyoto: the legitimacy of imitation in Kyoto's townscape debate......Page 140
11 Copying cars: forgotten licensing agreements......Page 155
12 Hungry visions: the material life of Japanese food samples......Page 165
Index......Page 173
