"Japan’s “Christian Century” began in 1549 with the arrival of Jesuit missionaries led by Saint Francis Xavier, and ended in 1639 when the Tokugawa regime issued the final Sakoku Edict prohibiting all traffic with Catholic lands. “Sakoku”—national isolation—would for more than two centuries be the sum total of the regime’s approach to foreign affairs. This policy was accompanied by the persecution of Christians inside Japan, a course of action for which the missionaries and their zealots were in part responsible because of their dogmatic orthodoxy. The Christians insisted that “Deus” was owed supreme loyalty, while the Tokugawa critics insisted on the prior importance of performing one’s role within the secular order, and denounced the subversive doctrine whose First Commandment seemed to permit rebellion against the state. In discussing the collision of ideas and historical processes, George Elison explores the attitudes and procedures of the missionaries, describes the entanglements in politics that contributed heavily to their doom, and shows the many levels of the Japanese response to Christianity. Central to his book are translations of four seventeenth-century, anti-Christian polemical tracts."

The decade of the 1960s encompassed a "New Wave" of films whose makers were rebels, challenging cinematic traditions and the culture at large. The films of the New Wave in Japan have, until now, been largely overlooked. Eros plus Massacre (taking its title from a 1969 Yoshida Yoshishige film) is the first major study devoted to the examination and explanation of Japanese New Wave film. Desser organizes his volume around the defining motifs of the New Wave. Chapters examine in depth such themes as youth, identity, sexuality, and women, as they are revealed in the Japanese film of the sixties. Desser's research in Japanese film archives, his interviews with major figures of the movement, and his keen insight into Japanese culture combine to offer a solid and balanced analysis of films by Oshima, Shinoda, Imamura, Yoshida, Suzuki, and others.

List of transactions, v. 1-41 in v. 41.

This book compares two countries with striking parallels in economic and political outcomes, yet with some distinct features in terms of institutional structures, relative size, and culture. Therefore, this book forms a fruitful platform for the study of the similarities and differences in the economic and societal development of Japan and Finland. Despite their geographic distance from one another and the aforementioned differences, both countries experienced rather similar economic and societal development patterns after the Second World War. The study of these societies both individually and through commonalities will provide a unique perspective on the emergence of modern economies and institutions. The book provides comprehensive coverage on issues such as welfare state formation and society, security and military spending, education system, industrial development, international trade, governmental economic policies, energy solutions, and bubbles and their collapse; thus, issues typical for these countries, as well as most modern states, studied from a longitudinal perspective. The book aims to answer a fundamental question in social science: Why do there seem to be common trends and developmental paths among countries differing in size, culture, and economic structure? This book will provide insights for those seeking to decipher how the developments in their own countries came about and where they may be headed to.