Annika A. Culver's Books

Japan's Empire of Birds

Aristocrats, Anglo-Americans, and Transwar Ornithology

By: Annika A. Culver

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Japan's Empire of Birds

Aristocrats, Anglo-Americans, and Transwar Ornithology

By: Annika A. Culver

As a transnational history of science, Japan's Empire of Birds: Aristocrats, Anglo-Americans, and Transwar Ornithology focuses on the political aspects of highly mobile Japanese explorer-scientists, or cosmopolitan gentlemen of science, circulating between Japanese and British/American spaces in the transwar period from the 1920s to 1950s. Annika A. Culver examines a network of zoologists united by their practice of ornithology and aristocratic status. She goes on to explore issues of masculinity and race related to this amidst the backdrop of imperial Japan's interwar period of peaceful internationalism, the rise of fascism, the Japanese takeover of Manchuria, and war in China and the Pacific. Culver concludes by investigating how these scientists repurposed their aims during Japan's Allied Occupation and the Cold War. Inspired by geographer Doreen Massey, themes covered in the volume include social space and place in these specific locations and how identities transform to garner social capital and scientific credibility in transnational associations and travel for non-white scientists.

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Page Count

329

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1350184950

ISBN 13

9781350184954

Glorify the Empire

Japanese Avant-Garde Propaganda in Manchukuo

By: Annika A. Culver

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Glorify the Empire

Japanese Avant-Garde Propaganda in Manchukuo

By: Annika A. Culver

In the 1930s and ’40s, Japanese rulers in Manchukuo enlisted writers and artists to promote imperial Japan’s modernization program. Ironically, the cultural producers chosen to spread the imperialist message were once left-wing politically in Japan, where their work strongly favoured modernist, even avant-garde, styles of expression. In Glorify the Empire, Annika A. Culver explores how these once anti-imperialist intellectuals produced avant-garde works celebrating the modernity of a fascist state and reflecting a complicated picture of complicity with, and ambivalence toward, Japan’s utopian project. Manchurian-themed cultural representations accelerated during the eruption of conflict with China, and later during the Second World War, when Manchukuo served as a template for Japanese-occupied areas in Southeast Asia. A groundbreaking work, Glorify the Empire magnifies the intersection between politics and art in a rarely examined period of Japanese history.

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Page Count

285

Publisher

UBC Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0774824395

ISBN 13

9780774824392

Democratizing Luxury

Name Brands, Advertising, and Consumption in Modern Japan

By: Annika A. Culver

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Democratizing Luxury

Name Brands, Advertising, and Consumption in Modern Japan

By: Annika A. Culver

Democratizing Luxury explores the interplay between advertising and consumption in modern Japan by investigating how Japanese companies at key historical moments assigned value, or "luxury," to mass-produced products as an important business model. Japanese name-brand luxury evolved alongside a consumer society emerging in the late nineteenth century, with iconic companies whose names became associated with quality and style. At the same time, Western ideas of modernity merged with earlier artisanal ideals to create Japanese connotations of luxury for readily accessible products. Businesses manufactured items at all price points to increase consumer attainability, while starkly curtailing production for limited editions to augment desirability. Between the late nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, control over family disposable income transformed Japanese middle-class women into an important market. Growth of purchasing power among women corresponded with Japanese goods diffusing throughout the empire, and globally after the Asia-Pacific war (1931–1945). This book offers case studies that examine affordable luxury consumer items often advertised to women, including drinks, beauty products, fashion, and timepieces. Japanese companies have capitalized on affordable luxury since a flourishing domestic mercantile economy began in the Tokugawa period (1603–1868), showcasing brand-name shops, renowned artisans, and mass-produced woodblock prints by famous artists. In the late nineteenth century, personalized service expanded within department stores like Mitsukoshi, Shiseidō cosmetic counters, and designer boutiques. Shiseidō now globally markets invented traditions of omotenashi, Japanese ”values” of hospitality expressed in purchasing and consuming its products. In postwar times, when a thriving democracy and middle-class were tied to greater disposable income and consumerism, companies rebuilt a growing consumer base among cautious shoppers: democratizing luxury at reasonable prices and maintaining business patterns of accessibility, high quality, and exemplary service. Nationalism amid economic success soon blended with myths of unique Japanese identity in a mass consumer society, suffused by commodity fetishism with widely available brand names. As the first comprehensive history of iconic Japanese name brands and their unique connotations of luxury and accessibility in modern Japan and elsewhere, Democratizing Luxury explores company histories and reveals strategies that lead customers to consume these alluring commodities.

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Page Count

417

Publisher

University of Hawaii Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

082489670X

ISBN 13

9780824896706

Book's by Annika A. Culver

Japan's Empire of Birds

Japan's Empire of Birds

Glorify the Empire

Glorify the Empire

Democratizing Luxury

Democratizing Luxury

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