Debate on the how, when and why of mankind's creation brims over mere academic study. Sabine Fruhstuck and Anne Walthall, professors of Modern Japanese Culture and History in the University of California system, playfully yet soundly consider something more practically important: how society recreates the image of man.
Each essay in their collection, "Recreating Japanese Men," traces the shifting parameters of manhood throughout Japanese society and history: how guns became a symbol of status while the true warrior kept his sword; controversial personality and acclaimed writer Yukio Mishima's devotion to both bushido and "manly beauty"; rock climbing in Japan as equally an androgynous sport and an enclave of machismo; the tangle of techno-geeks, animation and "pure" obsessions in the modern two-dimensional love revolution; and men asserting their manliness by rejecting society and living on the street in Japan's growing homeless concern.
By elucidating various societal constructions of masculinity across 400 years, this collection transcends gender and borders to become an insightful provocation on what it means to be human.
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