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Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
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612-822-4611
Tears of Longing: Nostalgia and the Nation in Japanese Popular Song

Tears of Longing: Nostalgia and the Nation in Japanese Popular Song

Paperback

Series: Harvard East Asian Monographs, Book 206

Japanese HistoryWorld Music

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0674012763
ISBN13: 9780674012769
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: Sep 1 2003
Pages: 280
Weight: 0.83
Height: 0.79 Width: 5.58 Depth: 9.58
Language: English
Enka, a sentimental ballad genre, epitomizes for many the nihonjin no kokoro (heart/soul of Japanese). To older members of the Japanese public, who constitute enka's primary audience, this music--of parted lovers, long unseen rural hometowns, and self-sacrificing mothers--evokes a direct connection to the traditional roots of Japaneseness. Overlooked in this emotional invocation of the past, however, are the powerful commercial forces that, since the 1970s, have shaped the consumption of enka and its version of national identity. Informed by theories of nostalgia, collective memory, cultural nationalism, and gender, this book draws on the author's extensive fieldwork in probing the practice of identity-making and the processes at work when Japan becomes Japan.

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Japanese History