Puntogf Antiques.

Meiji Era Japanese

Welcome to Tokyo - Welcome to a New World

Tokyo is not a city for the hurried tourist making a quick stopover en route to other destinations in Japan. Tokyo comes as a real surprise to most travelers. Much more than a city, it is a completely different world.

When visitors to Japan first arrive at Narita International Airport, they often experience immediate culture shock. Signs point the way in Kanji (Japanese characters), but most tourists can't read them. Without a few helpful signs in English, it would be easy to get quite lost.

At first sight, Tokyo itself is crowded, loud and not especially beautiful. The air quality is not particularly good. Men wearing white gloves shove people inside the regional transit cars in order to fit more people inside, and most Japanese respond with a blank stare when spoken to in English.

Tokyo can be hard to negotiate and travel around town can be stressful - but it is also a unique and exhilarating experience.

Kagemusha, the Shadow Warrior.

Prior to 1456-1457, there is very little salient knowledge available about the city of Edo, Tokyo's predecessor. With the building of the Edo Fortress during these years in the mid-fifteenth century, the city on Hibiya Bay gained in importance.

The greatest advance, however, came in 1653, when the shogun Tokugawa leyasu established his centre of government here. Director Akira Kurosawa staged the life and work of this prominent, powerful shogun in his 1980 film Kagemusha - The Shadow Warrior. George Lucas did not shoot the backdrop of the film, but he spun the threads, so to speak.

In his novel Shogun, writer James Clivell also painted a portrait of the most imposing figure in Japanese history. Ieyasu is considered the founder of modern Tokyo, even though the city did not take its official name or become the "Capital of the East" until the emperor moved there in 1868.

Beginnings of Western influence.

The population of the city is said to have already exceeded a million at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Edo was not only the capital city under the Tokugawa shogunate, it was also the economic centre of Japan. The end of the shogunate is closely connected to the history of Edo, and by association, Tokyo. The balance of power changed under the Meiji emperors. Shogun Yoshinobu Tokugawa, who was rather weak with regard to the West, especially the United States, abdicated in 1867 and left Edo to the emperor.

But the actual goal of sealing Japan off from the West was never implemented by the shogun's adversaries, headed by the emperor. In fact, just the opposite occurred: a very active period of modernization based on the Western model began.

Destruction and rebuilding.

In Tokyo, European-style houses were built right in between traditional wooden houses. Some of the most famous examples are the houses on Ginza Street, which were built from red brick in order to create more European surroundings for foreign residents of the capital. In spite of everything, such changes were mainly superficial. The city plan and homes of the native Japanese remained closely tied to the Edo tradition of the Shogun Era. But that changed in 1923, the year of the Great Earthquake, measuring more than 8.0 on the Richter scale.

The earthquake itself and the fires that resulted from the it reduced nearly all of Tokyo to ruins. However, destruction has always represented an opportunity for change in Japan. Tragically, the Second World War came quite soon after the earthquake, signaling yet another period of devastating destruction.

The new development of Tokyo began after the end of the Second World War, and literally began on top of debris and ashes. On the basis of new technologies, a modern Tokyo cityscape consisting of skyscrapers, steel and concrete emerged. Special construction methods had to be used, because Tokyo lies in one of the most active earthquake zones in the world. Earthquakes are nothing out of the ordinary here, and smaller tremors can be felt in the city almost daily.

About the Author

Traveling to Japan? Flight Centre has a great range of
cheap airfares
and
cheap holidays
. Go online and browse through some of the world's best holiday bargains. STFC160309-1

Meiji Ceramics $108.27 The author examines the history of Japanese export porcelain in the Meiji era in the context of political, economic and cultural developments and with special emphasis on stylistic influence from the West. The more than 150 illustrations reproduce major i

Japanese Wigs from the Meiji Period $49.99 Japanese Wigs from the Meiji Period - Giclee Print

Japanese Documentary Films : The Meiji Era Through Hiroshima $32.5 No Synopsis Available

Japanese Documentary Film: The Meiji Era Through Hiroshima $65.81 No Synopsis Available

Army,Empire and Politics in Meiji Japan $140 Dramatic innovations in modern Japan include a mass army, overseas empire, and constitutional polity. This is the first book to link these changes in the Meiji era (1868-1912). It focuses on the life of General Katsura Taro, one of the architects of the modern military, a leading figure in Japanese colonialism, and prime minister through the 1900s. Challenging the received wisdom about Japanese militarism and imperialism, it exposes the army's ambivalence about empire but also its positive role in political change.

Japanese Students at Cambridge University in the Meiji Era, 1868-1912 : Pioneers for the Modernization of Japan $27.59 No Synopsis Available

Looking Shy: The Appearance of a Young Girl of the Meiji Era $19.99 Taiso Yoshitoshi Looking Shy: The Appearance of a Young Girl of the Meiji Era - Giclee Print

Promulgation of the New Japanese Constitution by Emperor Meiji of Japan at Tokyo $34.99 Promulgation of the New Japanese Constitution by Emperor Meiji of Japan at Tokyo - Giclee Print

The Meiji Restoration $85 The Meiji Restoration of 1868 is one of the most astonishing political events of the modern era, yet it doesn't fit easily with Western precedents of mass mobilization and social transformation. This book challenges some of the preconceptions that have hindered the Restoration being understood on its own terms.

Perfectly Japanese $15.95 Are Japanese families in crisis? In this dynamic and substantive study, Merry Isaacs White looks back at two key moments of "family making" in the past hundred years--the Meiji era and postwar period--to see how models for the Japanese family have been constructed.

Japanese Communists Swarm Platform in Meiji Park and Call For a March on Imperial Plaza $79.99 Michael Rougier Japanese Communists Swarm Platform in Meiji Park and Call For a March on Imperial Plaza - Photographic Print

Newlyweds after their Traditional Japanese Wedding at the Meiji-Jingu Shinto Shrine, Tokyo $19.99 Brent Winebrenner Newlyweds after their Traditional Japanese Wedding at the Meiji-Jingu Shinto Shrine, Tokyo - Photographic Print

Strolling: the Appearance of an Upper-Class Wife of the Meiji Era and Itchy $34.99 Tsukioka Kinzaburo Yoshitoshi Strolling: the Appearance of an Upper-Class Wife of the Meiji Era and Itchy - Giclee Print

Japanese Erotic Fantasies $87.36 Japanese Erotic Fantasies: Sexual Imagery of the Edo Period. Japanese Erotic Fantasies presents over 200 images, principally from the Edo period but also from the following Meiji era. Many of these works - drawn from international private and museum colle

Mizuta: Foundations of Japanese Feminism: A Collection of Western Sources : Series 1: books translated into japanese during the meiji and taisho era in five Vol $1062.75 No Synopsis Available

Modern Japanese Art and the Meiji State (Hardcover) $73.16 This broad-ranging and profoundly influential analysis describes how Western art institutions and vocabulary were transplanted to Japan in the late nineteenth century. In the 1870s and 1880s, artists, government administrators, and others in Japan encountered the Western “system of the arts” for the first time, as objects and information from Japan reached European and American audiences following the collapse of the shogun’s regime. Under pressure to exhibit and sell its artistic products abroad, Japan’s new Meiji government came face-to-face with the need to create European-style art schools, museums, government-sponsored exhibitions, and artifact preservation policies—and even to establish Japanese words for “art,” “painting,” “artist,” and “sculpture.”   Modern Japanese Art and the Meiji State represents nothing less than a reconceptualization of the field of Japanese art history. It exposes the politics through which the words, categories, and values that still structure our understanding of the field came to be while revealing the historicity of Western and non-Western art history.  

Technology and the Culture of Progress in Meiji Japan $160 In this book David Wittner situates Japan’s Meiji Era experience of technology transfer and industrial modernization within the realm of culture, politics, and symbolism, examining how nineteenth century beliefs in civilization and enlightenment influenced the process of technological choice

Since Meiji $44.8 Since Meiji

Essays on the Modern Japanese Church : Christianity in Meiji Japan $28.23 No Synopsis Available

Japanese Political History Since the Meiji Renovation 1868-2000 $36.08 No Synopsis Available

The Religions of Japan: From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji $24.33 No Synopsis Available

A Political History of Japan During the Meiji Era 1867-1912 $30.18 No Synopsis Available

The Beginnings of Western Music in Meiji Era Japan $97.45 No Synopsis Available

Adaptations of Western Literature in Meiji Japan $90 This book examines three examples of late nineteenth-century Japanese adaptations of Western literature: a biography of U.S. Grant recasting him as a Japanese warrior, a Victorian novel reset as oral performance, and an American melodrama redone as a serialized novel promoting the reform of Japanese theater. Written from a comparative perspective, it argues that adaptation (hon'an) was a valid form of contemporary Japanese translation that fostered creative appropriation across many genres and among a diverse group of writers and artists. In addition, it invites readers to reconsider adaptation in the context of translation theory.

Meiji Shrine $219.99 Andre Kertesz Meiji Shrine - Limited Edition

Japanese Bamboo Baskets $33.6 Once neglected in the West, Japanese basketry now claims a loyal following among art lovers, collectors, and craftspeople in the United States and Europe. Japanese Bamboo Baskets: Meiji, Modern, and Contemporary acknowledges this growing interest by prese

Military Communication of Feudal Japan : Japanese Cryptology from the 1500s to Meiji $8.97 No Synopsis Available

Novel Japanese: Spaces of Nationhood in Early Meiji Narrative, 1870-88 $58.5 No Synopsis Available

Meiji Era, Japan.