From the barbarian epics to the ethnographic museums, from the national languages to emblematic landscapes or typical costumes, this book retraces the cultural

Shirane and Suzuki examine how the Japanese canon of "classics" (The Tale of Genji, The Tale of the Heike, Noh drama, Saikaku, Chikamatsu, and Basho) was constr

What do people think when they imagine themselves as part of a nation? Nation and Commemoration answers this question in an exploration of the creation and recr

Memory is as central to modern politics as politics is central to modern memory. We are so accustomed to living in a forest of monuments, to having the past rep

What are the imagined communities that compel men to kill or to die for an idea of a nation? This notion of nationhood had its origins in the founding of the Am