1st Edition

The Culture of Copying in Japan Critical and Historical Perspectives

Edited By Rupert Cox Copyright 2008
288 Pages 69 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

288 Pages 69 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

288 Pages 69 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book challenges the perception of Japan as a ‘copying culture’ through a series of detailed ethnographic and historical case studies. It addresses a question about why the West has had such a fascination for the adeptness with which the Japanese apparently assimilate all things foreign and at the same time such a fear of their skill at artificially remaking and automating the world around... Read more

Series Editor’s Preface: Joy Hendry  Introduction: Rupert Cox  Section 1: Original Encounters  1. Irit Averbuch Body to Body Transmission: the Copying Tradition of Kagura Performance  2. Jane Marie Law A Spectrum of Copies: Ritual Puppetry in Japan  3. Keiko Tanaka Copying in Japanese Magazines: Unashamed Copiers.  Section 2: Arts of Citation  4. Ronald Toby The Originality of the ‘Copy’: Mimesis and Subversion in Hanegawa Toei’s Chosenjin Ukie.  5. Alexandra Curvelo Copy to Convert: Jesuits’ Missionary Practice in Japan.  6. Morgan Pitelka Back to the Fundamentals: "Reproducing" Rikyu and Chojiro in Japanese Tea Culture  7. Rein Raud An Investigation of the Conditions of Literary borrowings in late Heian and early Kamakura Japan.  8. John Carpenter Chinese Calligraphic Models in Heian Japan: Copying practices and Stylistic Transmission.  Section 3: Modern Exchanges  9. William Coaldrake Beyond Mimesis: Japanese Architectural Models at the Vienna Exhibition and 1910 Japan British Exhibition  10. Christoph Brumann Copying Kyoto: the Legitimacy of Imitation in Kyoto’s Townscape Debates.  11. Chris Madeley Copying Cars: Forgotten Licensing Agreements.  12. Rupert Cox ‘Hungry Visions’: the Material Life of Japanese Food Samples 

Biography

Rupert Cox is Lecturer in Visual Anthropology, Director of the MA programme at the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology, University of Manchester, UK. He is the author of The Zen Arts: An anthropological study of the culture of aesthetic form in Japan (Routledge, 2002).