These critical essays examine East Asian culture through an interdisciplinary, cross-cultural lens. Readings of film, television, and visual and literary texts reveal the historical condition as well as the contemporary impulses driving East Asian culture today. We feel the muted tension in a rural South Korean village; we walk down the bustling streets of Hong Kong and witness the city's protean possibilities for a postrevolutionary reality. The boisterous tarento shows on Japanese television force us to rethink the nature of information and image production in relation to leisure management; cinematic spectacles in Japan, North Korea, Taiwan, and China point to complex issues of agency, the formation of the public sphere, and postnationalist identities. We see contemporary fiction from China and Japan engage themes of desire and remembrance as metaphors to express a profound historical anxiety. Mirroring the fast-moving and multifaceted landscape is our ability to move freely through time as we confront legitimizing narratives of modernization in early-twentieth-century Japan and, against an emerging regime of global capitalism, reexamine the approaching century in imagined historical hindsight. By anticipating the geocultural shift to the Asian Pacific Rim in the twenty-first century, this volume serves as both an introduction to contemporary East Asian culture and an exploration of its global context.

Since the 1990s there has been a dramatic increase in cultural flows and connections between the countries in the East Asian region. Nowhere is this more apparent than when looking at popular culture where uneven but multilateral exchanges of Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Hong Kong and Chinese products have led to the construction of an ‘East Asian Popular Culture’. This is both influenced by, and in turn influences, the national cultures, and generates transnational co-production and reinvention. As East Asian popular culture becomes a global force, it is increasingly important for us to understand the characteristics of contemporary East Asian popular culture, and in particular its transnational nature. In this handbook, the contributors theorize East Asian experiences and reconsider Western theories on cultural globalization to provide a cutting-edge overview of this global phenomenon. The Routledge Handbook of East Asian Popular Culture will be of great interest to students and scholars of a wide range of disciplines, including: Cultural Studies, Media Studies, Communication Studies, Anthropology, Sociology and Asian Studies in general.

Known for a tradition of Confucian filial piety, East Asian societies have some of the oldest and most rapidly aging populations on earth. Today these societies are experiencing unprecedented social challenges to the filial tradition of adult children caring for aging parents at home. Marshalling mixed methods data, this volume explores the complexities of aging and caregiving in contemporary East Asia. Questioning romantic visions of a senior’s paradise, chapters examine emerging cultural meanings of and social responses to population aging, including caregiving both for and by the elderly. Themes include traditional ideals versus contemporary realities, the role of the state, patterns of familial and non-familial care, social stratification, and intersections of caregiving and death. Drawing on ethnographic, demographic, policy, archival, and media data, the authors trace both common patterns and diverging trends across China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, and Korea.

So very many teach introductions to East Asia under different disciplines, including the Humanities, Sociology, Economics, History, and Religious Studies, but what makes this work so promising is its transferability across these lines of demarcation for the student engaged in her first serious study of the region. Neuman's fine overview addresses the recurring cultural tasks across East Asia from family, to school and work, and socio-economic stratifications. Neuman has written an ideal introductory text with a sociologist's clarity, a humanist's learning, a researcher's sharp eye, and a teacher's fine sense of proportion. This is the only intellectual guidebook you will need to take with you for your voyage to East Asia.

"Wm. Theodore de Bary offers a selection of essential readings from his immensely popular anthologies Sources of Chinese Tradition, Sources of Korean Tradition, and Sources of Japanese Tradition so readers can experience a concise but no less comprehensive portrait of the social, intellectual, and religious traditions of East Asia."--

Seventeen scholars from varying fields here consider the implications of Confucian concerns--self-cultivation, regulation of the family, social civility, moral education, well-being of the people, governance of the state, and universal peace--in industrial East Asia.