Japanese Visual Culture

Download Japanese Visual Culture full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online Japanese Visual Culture ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!

Japanese Visual Culture

Author : Mark W. MacWilliams
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317466993
Total Pages : 446 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (174 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Japanese Visual Culture by : Mark W. MacWilliams

Download or read book Japanese Visual Culture written by Mark W. MacWilliams and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-18 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born of Japan's cultural encounter with Western entertainment media, manga (comic books or graphic novels) and anime (animated films) are two of the most universally recognized forms of contemporary mass culture. Because they tell stories through visual imagery, they vault over language barriers. Well suited to electronic transmission and distributed by Japan's globalized culture industry, they have become a powerful force in both the mediascape and the marketplace.This volume brings together an international group of scholars from many specialties to probe the richness and subtleties of these deceptively simple cultural forms. The contributors explore the historical, cultural, sociological, and religious dimensions of manga and anime, and examine specific sub-genres, artists, and stylistics. The book also addresses such topics as spirituality, the use of visual culture by Japanese new religious movements, Japanese Goth, nostalgia and Japanese pop, "cute" (kawali) subculture and comics for girls, and more. With illustrations throughout, it is a rich source for all scholars and fans of manga and anime as well as students of contemporary mass culture or Japanese culture and civilization.

Japanese Visual Culture

Author : Mark W. MacWilliams
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317467000
Total Pages : 365 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (174 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Japanese Visual Culture by : Mark W. MacWilliams

Download or read book Japanese Visual Culture written by Mark W. MacWilliams and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-18 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born of Japan's cultural encounter with Western entertainment media, manga (comic books or graphic novels) and anime (animated films) are two of the most universally recognized forms of contemporary mass culture. Because they tell stories through visual imagery, they vault over language barriers. Well suited to electronic transmission and distributed by Japan's globalized culture industry, they have become a powerful force in both the mediascape and the marketplace.This volume brings together an international group of scholars from many specialties to probe the richness and subtleties of these deceptively simple cultural forms. The contributors explore the historical, cultural, sociological, and religious dimensions of manga and anime, and examine specific sub-genres, artists, and stylistics. The book also addresses such topics as spirituality, the use of visual culture by Japanese new religious movements, Japanese Goth, nostalgia and Japanese pop, "cute" (kawali) subculture and comics for girls, and more. With illustrations throughout, it is a rich source for all scholars and fans of manga and anime as well as students of contemporary mass culture or Japanese culture and civilization.

Tokyo Cyberpunk

Author : Steven T. Brown
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 0230110061
Total Pages : 263 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (31 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Tokyo Cyberpunk by : Steven T. Brown

Download or read book Tokyo Cyberpunk written by Steven T. Brown and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-30 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Engaging some of the most canonical and thought-provoking anime, manga, and science fiction films, Tokyo Cyberpunk offers insightful analysis of Japanese visual culture. Steven T. Brown draws new conclusions about the cultural flow of art, as well as important technological issues of the day.

The Visual Culture of Meiji Japan

Author : Ayelet Zohar
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000477479
Total Pages : 263 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (4 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Visual Culture of Meiji Japan by : Ayelet Zohar

Download or read book The Visual Culture of Meiji Japan written by Ayelet Zohar and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-29 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the visual culture of Japan’s transition to modernity, from 1868 to the first decades of the twentieth century. Through this important moment in Japanese history, contributors reflect on Japan’s transcultural artistic imagination vis-a-vis the discernment, negotiation, assimilation, and assemblage of diverse aesthetic concepts and visual pursuits. The collected chapters show how new cultural notions were partially modified and integrated to become the artistic methods of modern Japan, based on the hybridization of major ideologies, visualities, technologies, productions, formulations, and modes of representation. The book presents case studies of creative transformation demonstrating how new concepts and methods were perceived and altered to match views and theories prevalent in Meiji Japan, and by what means different practitioners negotiated between their existing skills and the knowledge generated from incoming ideas to create innovative modes of practice and representation that reflected the specificity of modern Japanese artistic circumstances. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, Japanese studies, Asian studies, and Japanese history, as well as those who use approaches and methods related to globalization, cross-cultural studies, transcultural exchange, and interdisciplinary studies.

Japanese Visual Culture

Author : Mark Wheeler Macwilliams
Publisher : East Gate Book
ISBN 13 : 9780765616029
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (16 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Japanese Visual Culture by : Mark Wheeler Macwilliams

Download or read book Japanese Visual Culture written by Mark Wheeler Macwilliams and published by East Gate Book. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born of Japan's cultural encounter with Western entertainment media, manga (comic books or graphic novels) and anime (animated films) are two of the most universally recognized forms of contemporary mass culture. Because they tell stories through visual imagery, they vault over language barriers. Well suited to electronic transmission and distributed by Japan's globalized culture industry, they have become a powerful force in both the mediascape and the marketplace.This volume brings together an international group of scholars from many specialties to probe the richness and subtleties of these deceptively simple cultural forms. The contributors explore the historical, cultural, sociological, and religious dimensions of manga and anime, and examine specific sub-genres, artists, and stylistics. The book also addresses such topics as spirituality, the use of visual culture by Japanese new religious movements, Japanese Goth, nostalgia and Japanese pop, "cute" (kawali) subculture and comics for girls, and more. With illustrations throughout, it is a rich source for all scholars and fans of manga and anime as well as students of contemporary mass culture or Japanese culture and civilization.

Art and Palace Politics in Early Modern Japan, 1580s-1680s

Author : Elizabeth Lillehoj
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004211268
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (42 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Art and Palace Politics in Early Modern Japan, 1580s-1680s by : Elizabeth Lillehoj

Download or read book Art and Palace Politics in Early Modern Japan, 1580s-1680s written by Elizabeth Lillehoj and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-08-29 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magnificent art and architecture created for the emperor with the financial support of powerful warlords at the beginning of Japan’s early modern era (1580s-1680s) testify to the continued cultural and ideological significance of the imperial family. Works created in this context are discussed in this groundbreaking study, with over 100 illustrations in color.

Kyoto Visual Culture in the Early Edo and Meiji Periods

Author : Morgan Pitelka
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317286898
Total Pages : 237 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (172 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Kyoto Visual Culture in the Early Edo and Meiji Periods by : Morgan Pitelka

Download or read book Kyoto Visual Culture in the Early Edo and Meiji Periods written by Morgan Pitelka and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-20 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The city of Kyoto has undergone radical shifts in its significance as a political and cultural center, as a hub of the national bureaucracy, as a symbolic and religious center, and as a site for the production and display of art. However, the field of Japanese history and culture lacks a book that considers Kyoto on its own terms as a historic city with a changing identity. Examining cultural production in the city of Kyoto in two periods of political transition, this book promises to be a major step forward in advancing our knowledge of Kyoto’s history and culture. Its chapters focus on two periods in Kyoto’s history in which the old capital was politically marginalized: the early Edo period, when the center of power shifted from the old imperial capital to the new warriors’ capital of Edo; and the Meiji period, when the imperial court itself was moved to the new modern center of Tokyo. The contributors argue that in both periods the response of Kyoto elites—emperors, courtiers, tea masters, municipal leaders, monks, and merchants—was artistic production and cultural revival. As an artistic, cultural and historical study of Japan's most important historic city, this book will be invaluable to students and scholars of Japanese history, Asian history, the Edo and Meiji periods, art history, visual culture and cultural history.

The Art of Persistence

Author : Charlotte Eubanks
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 082488230X
Total Pages : 342 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (248 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Art of Persistence by : Charlotte Eubanks

Download or read book The Art of Persistence written by Charlotte Eubanks and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2019-12-31 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Art of Persistence examines the relations between art and politics in transwar Japan, exploring these via a microhistory of the artist, memoirist, and activist Akamatsu Toshiko (also known as Maruki Toshi, 1912–2000). Scaling up from the details of Akamatsu’s lived experience, the book addresses major events in modern Japanese history, including colonization and empire, war, the nuclear bombings, and the transwar proletarian movement. More broadly, it outlines an ethical position known as persistence, which occupies the grey area between complicity and resistance: Like resilience, persistence signals a commitment to not disappearing—a fierce act of taking up space but often from a position of privilege, among the classes and people in power. Akamatsu grew up in a settler-colonial family in rural Hokkaido before attending arts college in Tokyo and becoming one of the first women to receive formal training as an oil painter in Japan. She later worked as a governess in the home of a Moscow diplomat and traveled to the Japanese Mandate in Micronesia before returning home to write and illustrate children’s books set in the Pacific. She married the surrealist poet and painter Maruki Iri (1901–1995), and together in 1948—and in defiance of Occupation censorship—they began creating and exhibiting the Nuclear Series, some of the most influential and powerful artwork depicting the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing. For the next forty or more years, the couple toured the world to protest war and nuclear proliferation and were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995. With abundant excerpts and drawings from Akamatsu’s journals and sketchbooks, The Art of Persistence offers a bridge between scholarship on imperial Japan and postwar memory cultures, arguing for the importance of each individual’s historical agency. While uncovering the longue durée of Japan’s visual cultures of war, it charts the development of the national(ist) “literature for little citizens” movement and Japan’s postwar reorientation toward global multiculturalism. Finally, the work proposes ways to enlist artwork generally, and the museum specifically, as a site of ethical engagement.

The Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese Culture

Author : Yoshio Sugimoto
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107495466
Total Pages : 672 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (74 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese Culture by : Yoshio Sugimoto

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese Culture written by Yoshio Sugimoto and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Companion provides a comprehensive overview of the influences that have shaped modern-day Japan. Spanning one and a half centuries from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 to the beginning of the twenty-first century, this volume covers topics such as technology, food, nationalism and rise of anime and manga in the visual arts. The Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese Culture traces the cultural transformation that took place over the course of the twentieth century, and paints a picture of a nation rich in cultural diversity. With contributions from some of the most prominent scholars in the field, The Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese Culture is an authoritative introduction to this subject.

Since Meiji

Author : J. Thomas Rimer
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824861027
Total Pages : 554 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (248 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Since Meiji by : J. Thomas Rimer

Download or read book Since Meiji written by J. Thomas Rimer and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2011-10-31 with total page 554 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research outside Japan on the history and significance of the Japanese visual arts since the beginning of the Meiji period (1868) has been, with the exception of writings on modern and contemporary woodblock prints, a relatively unexplored area of inquiry. In recent years, however, the subject has begun to attract wide interest. As is evident from this volume, this period of roughly a century and a half produced an outpouring of art created in a bewildering number of genres and spanning a wide range of aims and accomplishments. Since Meiji is the first sustained effort in English to discuss in any depth a time when Japan, eager to join in the larger cultural developments in Europe and the U.S., went through a visual revolution. Indeed, this study of the visual arts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries suggests a fresh history of modern Japanese culture—one that until now has not been widely visible or thoroughly analyzed outside that country. In this extensive collection, which includes some 190 black-and-white and color reproductions, scholars from Japan, Europe, Australia, and America explore an impressive array of subjects: painting, sculpture, prints, fashion design, crafts, and gardens. The works discussed range from early Meiji attempts to create art that referenced Western styles to postwar and contemporary avant-garde experiments. There are, in addition, substantive investigations of the cultural and intellectual background that helped stimulate the creation of new and shifting art forms, including essays on the invention of a modern artistic vocabulary in the Japanese language and the history of art criticism in Japan, as well as an extensive account of the career and significance of perhaps the best-known Japanese figure concerned with the visual arts of his period, Okakura Tenshin (1862–1913), whose Book of Tea is still widely read today. Taken together, the essays in this volume allow readers to connect ideas and images, thus bringing to light larger trends in the Japanese visual arts that have made possible the vitality, range, and striking achievements created during this turbulent and lively period. Contributors: Stephen Addiss, Chiaki Ajioka, John Clark, Ellen Conant, Mikiko Hirayama, Michael Marra, Jonathan Reynolds, J. Thomas Rimer, Audrey Yoshiko Seo, Eric C. Shiner, Lawrence Smith, Shuji Tanaka, Reiko Tomii, Mayu Tsuruya, Toshio Watanabe, Gennifer Weisenfeld, Bert Winther-Tamaki, Emiko Yamanashi.

Warriors of Art

Author : Yumi Yamaguchi
Publisher : Kodansha International
ISBN 13 : 9784770030313
Total Pages : 190 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (33 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Warriors of Art by : Yumi Yamaguchi

Download or read book Warriors of Art written by Yumi Yamaguchi and published by Kodansha International. This book was released on 2007 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recently the West has been inundated by a steady flow of images from manga, anime, and the video games that are a key part of todays Japanese visual culture. At the same time, Japanese contemporary artists are gaining a higher profile overseas: many Westerners are already familiar with Takashi Murakamis brightly colored, cartoonlike characters, or with Junko Mizunos grotes-cute Lolita-style girls. Perhaps less familiar are the absurd fighting machines of Kenji Yanobe, the many disguises of Tomoko Sawada, or the grotesque fairytale landscapes of Tomoko Konoike. Warriors of Art features the work of forty of the latest and most relevant contemporary Japanese artists, from painters and sculptors, to photographers and performance artists, with lavish full-color spreads of their key works. Author Yumi Yamaguchi offers an insightful introduction to the main themes of each artist, and builds up a fascinating portrait of the society that has given birth to them: a Japan that still bears the scars of atomic destruction, a Japan with a penchant for the cute and the childish, a Japan whose manga and anime industries have come to dominate the world. Warriors of Art takes its title from a phrase used to describe Taro Okamoto (1911-1996), perhaps the first truly influential contemporary artist to emerge in postwar Japan, who fought to bring modern art to a wider audience. Following in Okamotos footsteps, the forty artists featured in this book are a new generation of warriors, attacking our senses with a shocking mix of the cute, the grotesque, the sexy, and the violent, forcing us to sit up and take notice of their vision of Japan.

Gender and Power in the Japanese Visual Field

Author : Joshua S. Mostow
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 9780824825720
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (257 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Gender and Power in the Japanese Visual Field by : Joshua S. Mostow

Download or read book Gender and Power in the Japanese Visual Field written by Joshua S. Mostow and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this, the first collection in English of feminist-oriented research on Japanese art and visual culture, an international group of scholars examines representations of women in a wide range of visual work. The volume begins with Chino Kaori's now-classic essay Gender in Japanese Art, which introduced feminist theory to Japanese art. This is followed by a closer look at a famous thirteenth-century battle scroll and the production of bijin (beautiful women) prints within the world of Edoperiod advertising. A rare homoerotic picture-book is used to extrapolate the grammar of desire as represented in late seventeenth-century Edo. In the modern period, contributors consider the introduction to Meiji Japan of the Western nude and oil-painting and examine Nihonga (Japanese-style painting) and the role of one of its famous artists. The book then shifts its focus to an examination of paintings produced for the Japanese-sponsored annual salons held in colonial Korea. The post-war period comes under scrutiny in a study of the novel Woman in the Dunes and its film adaptation. The critical discourse that surrounded women artists of the late twentieth-century - the Super Girls of Art - i

Edwardian London Through Japanese Eyes

Author : Yoshio Markino
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004220399
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (42 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Edwardian London Through Japanese Eyes by : Yoshio Markino

Download or read book Edwardian London Through Japanese Eyes written by Yoshio Markino and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-12-23 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Japanese artist Yoshio Markino enjoyed a successful career in early twentieth century London as an artist and author. This book examines his uniquely Asian perspective on British society and culture at a time when Japan eagerly sought engagement with the West.

Femininity, Self-harm and Eating Disorders in Japan

Author : Gitte Marianne Hansen
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317444396
Total Pages : 225 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (174 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Femininity, Self-harm and Eating Disorders in Japan by : Gitte Marianne Hansen

Download or read book Femininity, Self-harm and Eating Disorders in Japan written by Gitte Marianne Hansen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-12-22 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the 1980s onwards, the incidence of eating disorders and self-harm has increased among Japanese women, who report receiving mixed messages about how to be women. Mirroring this, women’s self-directed violence has increasingly been thematised in diverse Japanese narrative and visual culture. This book examines the relationship between normative femininity and women’s self-directed violence in contemporary Japanese culture. To theoretically define the complexities that constitute normativity, the book develops the concept of ‘contradictive femininity’ and shows how in Japanese culture, women’s paradoxical roles are thematised through three character construction techniques, broadly derived from the doppelgänger motif. It then demonstrates how eating disorders and self-harm are included in normative femininity and suggests that such self-directed violence can be interpreted as coping strategies to overcome feelings of fragmentation related to contradictive femininity. Looking at novels, artwork, manga, anime, TV dramas and news stories, the book analyses both globally well known Japanese culture such as Murakami Haruki’s literary works and Miyazaki Hayao’s animation, as well as culture unavailable to non-Japanese readers. The aim of juxtaposing such diverse narrative and visual culture is to map common storylines and thematisation techniques about normative femininity, self-harm and eating disorders. Furthermore, it shows how women’s private struggles with their own bodies have become public discourse available for consumption as entertainment and lifestyle products. Highly interdisciplinary, it will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Japanese studies, Japanese culture and society and gender and women's studies, as well as to academics and consumers of Japanese literature, manga and animation.

Writing Technology in Meiji Japan

Author : Seth Jacobowitz
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 1684175623
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (841 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Writing Technology in Meiji Japan by : Seth Jacobowitz

Download or read book Writing Technology in Meiji Japan written by Seth Jacobowitz and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-05-11 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writing Technology in Meiji Japan boldly rethinks the origins of modern Japanese language, literature, and visual culture from the perspective of media history. Drawing upon methodological insights by Friedrich Kittler and extensive archival research, Seth Jacobowitz investigates a range of epistemic transformations in the Meiji era (1868–1912), from the rise of communication networks such as telegraph and post to debates over national language and script reform. He documents the changing discursive practices and conceptual constellations that reshaped the verbal, visual, and literary regimes from the Tokugawa era. These changes culminate in the discovery of a new vernacular literary style from the shorthand transcriptions of theatrical storytelling (rakugo) that was subsequently championed by major writers such as Masaoka Shiki and Natsume Sōseki as the basis for a new mode of transparently objective, “transcriptive” realism. The birth of modern Japanese literature is thus located not only in shorthand alone, but within the emergent, multimedia channels that were arriving from the West. This book represents the first systematic study of the ways in which media and inscriptive technologies available in Japan at its threshold of modernization in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century shaped and brought into being modern Japanese literature.

Yumeji Modern

Author : Nozomi Naoi
Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 : 029574684X
Total Pages : 302 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (957 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Yumeji Modern by : Nozomi Naoi

Download or read book Yumeji Modern written by Nozomi Naoi and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2020-04-30 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The hugely popular Japanese artist Takehisa Yumeji (1884–1934) is an emblematic figure of Japan’s rapidly changing cultural milieu in the early twentieth century. His graphic works include leftist and antiwar illustrations in socialist bulletins, wrenching portrayals of Tokyo after the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923, and fashionable images of beautiful women—referred to as “Yumeji-style beauties”—in books and magazines that targeted a new demographic of young female consumers. Yumeji also played a key role in the reinvention of the woodblock medium. As his art and designs proliferated in Japan’s mass media, Yumeji became a recognizable brand. In the first full-length English-language study of Yumeji’s work, Nozomi Naoi examines the artist’s role in shaping modern Japanese identity. Addressing his output from the start of his career in 1905 to the 1920s, when his productivity peaked, Yumeji Modern introduces for the first time in English translation a substantial body of Yumeji’s texts, including diary entries, poetry, essays, and commentary, alongside his illustrations. Naoi situates Yumeji’s graphic art within the emerging media landscape from 1900s through the 1910s, when novel forms of reprographic communication helped create new spaces of visual culture and image circulation. Yumeji’s legacy and his present-day following speak to the broader, ongoing implications of his work with respect to commercial art, visual culture, and print media.

The Stakes of Exposure

Author : Namiko Kunimoto
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 : 1452953767
Total Pages : 419 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (529 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Stakes of Exposure by : Namiko Kunimoto

Download or read book The Stakes of Exposure written by Namiko Kunimoto and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2017-02-21 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How would artistic practice contribute to political change in post–World War II Japan? How could artists negotiate the imbalanced global dynamics of the art world and also maintain a sense of aesthetic and political authenticity? While the contemporary art world has recently come to embrace some of Japan’s most daring postwar artists, the interplay of art and politics remains poorly understood in the Americas and Europe. The Stakes of Exposure fills this gap and explores art, visual culture, and politics in postwar Japan from the 1950s to the 1970s, paying special attention to how anxiety and confusion surrounding Japan’s new democracy manifested in representations of gender and nationhood in modern art. Through such pivotal postwar episodes as the Minamata Disaster, the Lucky Dragon Incident, the budding antinuclear movement, and the ANPO protests of the 1960s, The Stakes of Exposure examines a wide range of issues addressed by the period’s prominent artists, including Tanaka Atsuko and Shiraga Kazuo (key members of the Gutai Art Association), Katsura Yuki, and Nakamura Hiroshi. Through a close study of their paintings, illustrations, and assemblage and performance art, Namiko Kunimoto reveals that, despite dissimilar aesthetic approaches and divergent political interests, Japanese postwar artists were invested in the entangled issues of gender and nationhood that were redefining Japan and its role in the world. Offering many full-color illustrations of previously unpublished art and photographs, as well as period manga, The Stakes of Exposure shows how contention over Japan’s new democracy was expressed, disavowed, and reimagined through representations of the gendered body.