An important center of dancehall reggae performance, sound clashes are contests between rival sound systems: groups of emcees, tune selectors, and sound engineers. In World Clash 1999, held in Brooklyn, Mighty Crown, a Japanese sound system and the only non-Jamaican competitor, stunned the international dancehall community by winning the event. In 2002, the Japanese dancer Junko Kudo became the first non-Jamaican to win Jamaica’s National Dancehall Queen Contest. High-profile victories such as these affirmed and invigorated Japan’s enthusiasm for dancehall reggae. In Babylon East, the anthropologist Marvin D. Sterling traces the history of the Japanese embrace of dancehall reggae and other elements of Jamaican culture, including Rastafari, roots reggae, and dub music. Sterling provides a nuanced ethnographic analysis of the ways that many Japanese involved in reggae as musicians and dancers, and those deeply engaged with Rastafari as a spiritual practice, seek to reimagine their lives through Jamaican culture. He considers Japanese performances and representations of Jamaican culture in clubs, competitions, and festivals; on websites; and in song lyrics, music videos, reggae magazines, travel writing, and fiction. He illuminates issues of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class as he discusses topics ranging from the cultural capital that Japanese dancehall artists amass by immersing themselves in dancehall culture in Jamaica, New York, and England, to the use of Rastafari as a means of critiquing class difference, consumerism, and the colonial pasts of the West and Japan. Encompassing the reactions of Jamaica’s artists to Japanese appropriations of Jamaican culture, as well as the relative positions of Jamaica and Japan in the world economy, Babylon East is a rare ethnographic account of Afro-Asian cultural exchange and global discourses of blackness beyond the African diaspora.

Rabid to impress girls at underground dinner parties, Port of Cape Town mud traffic control officers Geronimo Chanboon and Darius Coochoomber III strive to smuggle and cook every rare critter on the endangered species roster. Meanwhile, Corsicana Malva, nursing a crush on retired circus orangutan Lahnee-O, spearheads the campaign to have the great apes declared human. Lovesick and gun-crazy, travel agent Gool Eunus, on the other hand, plots to take down the pretender to the throne of the Saudi Caliphate. This comical masterpiece holds the answers to who the Tanuki Ichiban really is and offers a witty and provocative milieu where elements of dreams and reality intertwine.

Introduces the 18 traditional Japanese martial arts and provides readers with a deeper understanding of the styles formulated in the samurai era - both those that are little known and those still being taught today.

In A New History of Japanese Cinema Isolde Standish focuses on the historical development of Japanese film. She details an industry and an art form shaped by the competing and merging forces of traditional culture and of economic and technological innovation. Adopting a thematic, exploratory approach, Standish links the concept of Japanese cinema as a system of communication with some of the central discourses of the twentieth century: modernism, nationalism, humanism, resistance, and gender. After an introduction outlining the earliest years of cinema in Japan, Standish demonstrates cinema's symbolic position in Japanese society in the 1930s - as both a metaphor and a motor of modernity. Moving into the late thirties and early forties, Standish analyses cinema's relationship with the state-focusing in particular on the war and occupation periods. The book's coverage of the post-occupation period looks at "romance" films in particular. Avant-garde directors came to the fore during the 1960s and early seventies, and their work is discussed in depth. The book concludes with an investigation of genre and gender in mainstream films of recent years. In grappling with Japanese film history and criticism, most western commentators have concentrated on offering interpretations of what have come to be considered "classic" films. A New History of Japanese Cinema takes a genuinely innovative approach to the subject, and should prove an essential resource for many years to come.

The story of humanity overcoming divinity is about an orphan and a princess. Two very different individuals would go on to write human history. Together they gather other powerful humans to combat the powerful Onika. Using powerful spells to trap the Onika in their weapons, they fight against the very gods for their freedom.

Featuring translations of terms from Korean, Chinese and Japanese this dictionary is a must have for any serious martial arts practitioner. The modern martial artist requires more than a mere vocabulary listing. The modern practitioner wants an in–depth exploration not only of the equivalency of meaning but also the cultural and historical background of the terms relevant to the martial arts. To answer that need, this dictionary includes: Over 7,100 of the most important martial arts terms in Korean, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, and Okinawan Full description of techniques Weapons Styles Martial Arts Masters This martial arts dictionary is a must have for every martial arts student. With its culturally relevant terminology, this book includes everything to satisfy both traditional purists and eclectic practitioners. As this is the combined work of four separate compilers, each a specialist in a region's language and martial arts, this is in fact four dictionaries in one. Each compiler's expertise contributes to the consistent high quality and linguistic accuracy throughout.