To view the resulting photographs is an uncanny experience."--BOOK JACKET.

Manga from the Floating World is the first full-length study in English of the kibyôshi, a genre of sophisticated pictorial fiction widely read in late-eighteenth-century Japan. By combining analysis of the socioeconomic and historical milieus in which the genre was produced and consumed with three annotated translations of works by major author-artist Santô Kyôden (1761-1816) that closely reproduce the experience of encountering the originals, Adam Kern offers a sustained close reading of the vibrant popular imagination of the mid-Edo period. The kibyôshi, Kern argues, became an influential form of political satire that seemed poised to transform the uniquely Edoesque brand of urban commoner culture into something more, perhaps even a national culture, until the shogunal government intervened. Based on extensive research using primary sources in their original Edo editions, the volume is copiously illustrated with rare prints from Japanese archival collections. It serves as an introduction not only to the kibyôshi but also to the genre's readers and critics, narratological conventions, modes of visuality, format, and relationship to the modern Japanese comicbook (manga) and to the popular literature and wit of Edo. Filled with graphic puns and caricatures, these entertaining works will appeal to the general reader as well as to the more experienced student of Japanese cultural history.

Japanese schoolgirl fashions and subcultures have sprung up, burned out, mutated, and evolved into a pop culture phenomenon gone global—from Gwen Stefani's "Harajuku Girls" to Gothic Lolita-fueled manga and the deadly schoolgirl in Kill Bill, it's no wonder that international fashion designers look to the streets of Tokyo for fresh inspiration. This playful and thoroughly researched handbook examines the key styles and subcultures past and present: sailor-suited gangsters, Pippi Longstockings risen from the dead, girls in blackface, teens sporting giant hamster costumes, and more. Each fashion profile is packed with photos and illustrations, history, ideal boyfriends, and must-have items. Also included are a gatefold evolutionary fashion chart, resources, and makeup tips. At last, an in-depth guide to what the girls are wearing—and why on earth they're wearing it.

At first sight, it appears brand new, pure Tokyo pop. But The Japanese Experience: Inevitable reveals far more than the successful cloning of morphed manga motifs onto stretched canvas and museum walls. It represents eight positions in contemporary Japanese art and scrutinizes their complex visual vocabulary, noting references to Japanese and Western art traditions as frequently as the borrowing of mass culture motifs from the realms of manga and anime. Takashi Murakami's MR. DOB questions the place of contemporary art in our global society; Aya Takano's glowing watercolors combine Japanese sensitivity, issues of female identity, and sci-fi; Masahiko Kuwahara's mutant animals provide shades of softness and mysterious openness, and Yoshitomo Nara's reworking of historical Japanese woodcuts disturbs the floating world. Not only are the artists' visual repertoires new and surprising, but their creative methods and strategies help conquer a public that is mostly untouched by contemporary art. Published in association with the Ursula Blickle Foundation.

The exhibition, 'Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky, ' is an interpretive survey of the last fifty years of Japanese avant-garde art. It is a great pleasure for The Japan Foundation to be co-organizer of the American tour, which travels to the Guggenheim Museum SoHo, New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in association with the Center for the Arts at Yerba Buena Gardens.

This is the first modern study on Japanese erotic print art (so called shunga) and shows highlights from the oeuvre of Kitagawa Utamaro, Katsushika Hokusai, Suzuki Harunobu, Utagawa Kunisada, Utagawa Kuniyoshi and many others. Various essays written by international experts describe this fascinating genre in its social, historical and artistic context, discussing themes like homosexuality, voyeurism, life in Edo's brothels, techniques of composition etc.