Review by Choice Review
Western visitors are often most interested in finding evidence of the "real" Japan; the authentic, exotic Japan untainted by crass outside, materialistic influences. Japanese, too, are interested in authenticity. Ivy (Univ. of Washington) examines what she calls Japan's "ethnographic longing" and the efforts to seek genuine remnants of preindustrial culture as "ghostly reminders" of "modernity's losses." Ivy uses interesting analyses of a 1970s "Discover Japan" advertising campaign; the rural community that gave rise to Japanese ethnography; the mountain of the dead, Mount Osore, in northern Japan; and itinerant variety theater to show how Japanese seek to recapture the past and demonstrate continuities with the present. She argues that the intensity of this search and the very act of searching itself speak of Japanese attempts to deny modernity's disruptions of a seamless history. This is a complex and difficult study of Japan's dialogue with its own past. A self-consciously dense postmodernist rhetorical style makes the arguments often needlessly difficult to follow. Nevertheless, this is an important book for graduate students and professionals in cultural and Japan studies. W. D. Kinzley; University of South Carolina
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
