Charles Longfellow, son of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, arrived in Yokohama in 1871, intending a brief visit, and stayed for two years. He returned to Boston laden with photographs, curios, and art objects, as well as the elaborate tattoos he had "collected" on his body. His journals, correspondence, and art collection dramatically demonstrate America’s early impressions of Japanese culture, and his personal odyssey illustrates the impact on both countries of globetrotting tourism. Interweaving Longfellow’s experiences with broader issues of tourism and cultural authenticity, Christine Guth discusses the ideology of tourism and the place of Japan within nineteenth-century round-the-world travel. This study goes beyond simplistic models of reciprocal influence and authenticity to a more synergistic account of cross-cultural dynamics.

Extreme Exoticism explores the role of music in shaping American perceptions of the Japanese, the influence of Japanese music on American composers, and the place of Japanese Americans in American musical life over the past 150 years.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 174-203) and index.

Japanese Dolls: The Fascinating World of Ningyo, is a wealth of information for Japanese art collectors, Asian doll collectors and doll enthusiasts of all levels and interests. Full of beautiful photographs, the book details 18 kinds of widely collected, obtainable and affordable, antique and vintage dolls and figurines (ningyo). Author Alan Scott Pate--the leading American expert on Japanese dolls--writes in illuminating detail about the traditions of each type of doll and shares practical tips on how to collect this amazing Japanese art form. Included in this guide to Japanese ningyo are: Festival dolls: hina-ningyo, musha-ningyo, tableau dolls Display dolls: saga-ningyo, gosho-ningyo, isho-ningyo, iki-ningyo Wood dolls: kamo-ningyo, nara-ningyo, kokeshi-ningyo Clay dolls: fushimi-ningyo, hakata-ningyo Mechanical dolls: karakuri-ningyo, kobe-ningyo Theatrical dolls: bunraku-ningyo, takeda-ningyo Play dolls: ichimatsu-ningyo, keue saiko

The 'Opening of Japan' has been central to the retelling of Japan's modern history. Reopening the Opening of Japan fundamentally reconsiders what that historical moment entailed. What did intensified connections between Japan and the world mean both inside and outside of the country, and what does this tell us about Japan's historical significance on a global scale? The chapters excavate a rich array of surprising cross-border connections, from the global trade in mummified mermaids to the Japanese-Russian intellectual links underpinning the work of Akira Kurosawa. Re-thinking connectivity through non-state transnational perspectives, the book guides readers to new ways of doing and writing history. Contributors are: Lewis Bremner, Natalia Doan, Manimporok Dotulong, Maki Fukuoka, Eiko Honda, Sho Konishi, Mateja Kovacic, Joel Littler, Chinami Oka, Yu Sakai, Olga Solovieva, and Warren Stanislaus.

Based on an exhibition at the Houghton Library and was originally published as a special issue of the Harvard Library Bulletin, Volume 17, Numbers 3-4.

In 1891 J. Murakami travelled from Japan, via San Francisco, to Vancouver Island and began working in and around Victoria. His occupation: creating permanent images on the skin of paying clients. From this early example of tattooing as work, Jamie Jelinski takes us from coast to coast with detours to the United States, England, and Japan as he traces the evolution of commercial tattooing in Canada over more than one hundred years. Needle Work offers insight into how tattoo artists navigated regulation, the types of spaces they worked in, and the dynamic relationship between the images they tattooed on customers and other forms of visual culture and artistic enterprise. Merging biographical narratives with an examination of tattooing’s place within wider society, Jelinski reveals how these commercial image makers bridged conventional gaps between cultural production and practical, for-profit work, thereby establishing tattooing as a legitimate career. Richly illustrated and drawing on archives, print media, and objects held in institutions and private collections across Canada and beyond, Needle Work provides a timely understanding of a vocation that is now familiar but whose intricate history has rarely been considered.