Japan's castles : citadels of modernity in war and peace
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Japan's castles : citadels of modernity in war and peace
Cambridge University Press, 2019
- : hbk
Available at 14 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 331-350) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
An innovative examination of heritage politics in Japan, showing how castles have been used to re-invent and recapture competing versions of the pre-imperial past and project possibilities for Japan's future. Oleg Benesch and Ran Zwigenberg argue that Japan's modern transformations can be traced through its castles. They examine how castle preservation and reconstruction campaigns served as symbolic ways to assert particular views of the past and were crucial in the making of an idealized premodern history. Castles have been used to craft identities, to create and erase memories, and to symbolically join tradition and modernity. Until 1945, they served as physical and symbolic links between the modern military and the nation's premodern martial heritage. After 1945, castles were cleansed of military elements and transformed into public cultural spaces that celebrated both modernity and the pre-imperial past. What were once signs of military power have become symbols of Japan's idealized peaceful past.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Part I. From Feudalism to Empire: 1. Castles and the transition to the imperial state
- 2. The discovery of castles, 1877-1912
- 3. Castles, civil society, and the paradoxes of 'Taisho militarism'
- 4. Castles in war and peace: celebrating modernity, empire, and war
- Part II. From Feudalism to the Edge of Space: 5. Castles in war and peace II: Kokura, Kanazawa, and the rehabilitation of the nation
- 6. 'Fukko': Hiroshima Castle rises from the ashes
- 7. Escape from the center: castles and the search for local identity
- 8. Japan's new castle builders: recapturing tradition and culture
- Conclusions.
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