Bücher der Reihe Routledge Contemporary Japan Series

Mental health, including widespread depression and a very high suicide rate, is a major problem in Japan. At the same time, the mental health system in Japan has historically been more restrictive than elsewhere in the world. This book looks at the challenges of mental illness in Japan, including deficiencies in health care such as the abuse of patients and the institutionalisation of long term patients in mental hospitals.

Over the last 70 years, Japanese Studies scholarship has gone through several dominant paradigms, from 'demystifying the Japanese', to analysis of Japanese economic strength, to discussion of global interest in Japanese popular culture. This book assesses this literature, considering future directions for research into the 2020s and beyond.

The contributors to this volume elaborate how manga and by extension graphic art rewrites, reinvents and re-imagines the historicity and dialectic of bygone epochs in postwar/contemporary Japan.

The image of the shinkansen - or 'bullet train' - passing Mount Fuji is one of the renowned images of modern Japan. This title provides an account of the history of the shinkansen, from its planning during the Pacific War, to its launch in 1964 and subsequent development. It analyzes the reasons behind the bullet train's success.

How does the conception of modern Japan as a culture of translation affect our understanding of Japanese modernity and its relation to the East/West divide? And how does the example of a distinctly East Asian tradition of translation affect our understanding of translation itself? This book addresses these questions.