Description:
She is not afraid of the authorities. She saunters in, inviting laughter and liveliness. With an open mind, not with a weapon, she redefines the world and nation. She is Ame no Uzume, the half-naked dancing Japanese goddess.
Brief description: Shunsuke Tsurumi (1922-2015) was a Japanese-leading philosopher, cultural and intellectual historian, sociologist, critic, editor and social activist. He was born and raised in Tokyo. In 1942, after obtaining a bachelor's degree with honours in philosophy from Harvard University, he was repatriated to Japan. Then in 1943, he was posted to Java, where he worked as a navy intelligence officer. After the war, in collaboration with Maruyama Masao and others, Tsurumi established the journal Shisō no kagaku (Science of thought, 1946-1996). He was also one of the key figures in the pacifist movement Beheiren (The Citizen's League for Peace in Vietnam, 1965-1974). Between the late 1940s and 1970, Tsurumi taught at Kyoto University, Tokyo Institute of Technology and Dōshisha University. He authored An Intellectual History of Wartime Japan (1986) and A Cultural History of Postwar Japan 1945-1980 (1987), both of which were based on lectures given at McGill University, Montreal, as well as numerous publications in Japanese, some of which are collected in Tsurumi Shunsuke shū (1991-1992, 12 volumes) and Tsurumi Shunsuke shū zoku (second series, 2000-2001, 5 volumes).
Review Quotes:
'Funny, erotically charged, analytical ... this is a remarkable book by Japan's most remarkable intellectual rebel. More than anyone else, Tsurumi set the example of tolerance and social activism in Japan for the twenty-first century.' --- Roger Pulvers, author of My Japan
"This vividly original book brings us a Japan that is startlingly at odds with the West's usual understanding of it. Taking his cue from the rollickingly erotic goddess Ame no Uzume who plays a crucial and outrageous role at the heart of Japanese mythology, the great critic Tsurumi Shunsuke traces her heritage through multiple manifestations down to the convention-defying women of modern Japan. In doing so, he provides a fascinating and compelling alternative cultural history of Japan and specifically its women. This major work by a major Japanese writer and thinker will be welcomed by anyone interested in reaching deeper into some of the complexities and surprises of Japan's hidden psyche." --- Meredith McKinney, translator of The Pillow Book
'I think that everyone makes their own personal catalogue of Japanese traditions as they go about their lives', writes Tsurumi Shunsuke, one of modern Japan's most respected and imaginative thinkers, in this hidden classic, a kind of valedictory statement written in the autumn of his life. For him, the ancient goddess Ame no Uzume, who lured Amaterasu out of her cave through nudity and laughter and so returned light to the world, stands at the beginning, presenting an ancestral ideal for how he wants Japan to be in the world. He limns the state of mind of postwar Japan through a series of portraits of women he regards as Ame no Uzume's modern descendants, ranging from the famous striptease artist Ichijō Sayuri to the taboo-defying modern women writers Setouchi Jakuchō and Tanabe Seiko. This expansive meditation on the underpinnings of Japanese culture as outward-looking and intrinsically opposed to the myth of Japanese uniqueness, is many things at once: a contribution to the philosophy of play, a reminder that dance was once used by the living to commune with the dead, and, enfin, a panoramic history of Japan in global context with women at the very center. The translators, for their part, have done an admirable job in making the author's thought accessible in all its detail and winning style.' --- Janine Beichman, translator and editor of This Overflowing Light: Selected Poems by Ishigaki Rin