As Japan enters the 21st century with a new emperor, this title continues to be an indispensable guide through often enigmatic and historical idiosyncrasies of Japanese culture and politics that are often confusing to the outsider. This title includes information on the latest social developments, customs, rituals, business culture, medicine and arts.

Joseph Kitagawa, one of the founders of the field of history of religions and an eminent scholar of the religions of Japan, published his classic book Religion in Japanese History in 1966. Since then, he has written a number of extremely influential essays that illustrate approaches to the study of Japanese religious phenomena. To date, these essays have remained scattered in various scholarly journals. This book makes available nineteen of these articles, important contributions to our understanding of Japan's intricate combination of indigenous Shinto, Confucianism, Taoism, the Yin-Yang School, Buddhism, and folk religion. In sections on prehistory, the historic development of Japanese religion, the Shinto tradition, the Buddhist tradition, and the modem phase of the Japanese religious tradition, the author develops a number of valuable methodological approaches. The volume also includes an appendix on Buddhism in America. Asserting that the study of Japanese religion is more than an umbrella term covering investigations of separate traditions, Professor Kitagawa approaches the subject from an interdisciplinary standpoint. Skillfully combining political, cultural, and social history, he depicts a Japan that seems a microcosm of the religious experience of humankind.

This book outlines the particulars of Japanese management and how modern Japanese management employs many practices which are very successful and worth adopting. The main objective of this book is to illustrate the many teachings that Japanese management practice can offer the rest of the world. The book thus targets managers who deal with Japanese business partners, or work in Japan, students of Japanese Studies, Asian Studies or International Business.

According to Shinto belief, the human body in Japan is part of nature and must be in harmony with the wider world. This is a cultural history of the human body in Japan - from the Samurai to Issy Miyake- exploring the social codes and aesthetics of behaviour it involves. The sacred body of religion, the body of the dead, the theatrical body of the Kabuki actor, the warrior's body and much more are revealed.

"A brilliant wedding of 'national character' studies and analyses of small societies through the structural approach of British anthropology. One is of course reminded of Ruth Benedict's Chrysanthemum and the Sword which deals also with Japanese national culture. Studies by Margaret Mead and Geoffrey Gorer deal with other national cultures; however, all of these studies take off from national psychology. Professor Nakane comes to explanation of the behavior of Japanese through analysis rather of historical social structure of Japanese society, beginning with the way any two Japanese perceive each other, and following through to the nature of the Japanese corporation and the whole society. Nakane's remarkable achievement, which has already given new insight about themselves to the Japanese, promises to open up a new field of large-society comparative social anthropology which is long overdue." —Sol Tax "This is an important book!"--Robert E. Cole, Journal of Asian Studies "If you have time for just one book on Japan, try this one."--David Plath, Asian Student "Should be taken to heart by everyone who has dealings with Japan. . . .Even those--or, perhaps, most of all those--who know Japan intimately will be grateful to Professor Nakane for her brilliant study."--Times Literary Supplement

Fully updated, revised and expanded, this is a welcome new edition of this bestselling book providing a clear, accessible and readable introduction to Japanese society.