Japanese for Travellers
A Journey Through Modern Japan
1st Edition
Published on 5. April 2007
272 pages
978-0-14-190177-0 (ISBN)
Description
Can you be a stranger in your own country?
A Japanese-American raised in California, 24-year-old Katie Kitamura returns to Japan to discover the country she left behind.
Travelling across this foreign landscape, she visits middle-class gambling halls, fight stadiums and giant shopping meccas, luxury care homes and cramped apartments housing four generations under a single roof. And she wonders in which version of modern Japan she might have belonged.
Defined by its adventurous youth culture, but with the fastest-ageing population in the world, renowned for its strict social code, but producing the black-comedy violence of the Battle Royale films, the Japan she discovers is an often contradictory land of Godzilla toys and war memorials, of futuristic manga characters and brightly coloured vending machines.
A Japanese-American raised in California, 24-year-old Katie Kitamura returns to Japan to discover the country she left behind.
Travelling across this foreign landscape, she visits middle-class gambling halls, fight stadiums and giant shopping meccas, luxury care homes and cramped apartments housing four generations under a single roof. And she wonders in which version of modern Japan she might have belonged.
Defined by its adventurous youth culture, but with the fastest-ageing population in the world, renowned for its strict social code, but producing the black-comedy violence of the Battle Royale films, the Japan she discovers is an often contradictory land of Godzilla toys and war memorials, of futuristic manga characters and brightly coloured vending machines.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
File size
1,89 MB
ISBN-13
978-0-14-190177-0 (9780141901770)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
04/2007
Penguin Books Ltd
€29.89
Article exhausted; check different version
Person
Katie Kitamura was born in 1979 and currently lives in California. Japanese for Travellers is her first book.
