ABSTRACT
This book explores the multiplicity of special times and spaces in Japan within which people get together to decide, celebrate or play, in gatherings such as organizational meetings, community festivities, preschool games or drinking bouts. It analyzes these gatherings in relation to the theoretical model of sociocultural frames, examining how such occasions are put together, their unfolding stages, interactive encounters, and relations between participants and the wider social and cultural contexts. It considers the cognitive, emotional and behavioural dimensions, the scope for manipulation and the effects, intentional and unintentional, on participants and the connections to the ways in which in society and culture change. Overall, besides describing specific rites and ceremonies in Japan, the book provides great insights into the process whereby the interactions, feelings and action of individuals and groups shape popular culture.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|50 pages
Body, child development and organization
chapter 3|8 pages
The gambaru complex
part II|29 pages
Community, tensions and presentation
chapter 5|11 pages
A sports day in suburban Japan
chapter 6|16 pages
Posing, posturing and photographic presences
part III|33 pages
Business, bodies and dialogues
chapter 8|19 pages
“Not precisely work”
part IV|28 pages
Nation, violence and memory
chapter 9|14 pages
Coincident events of remembrance, coexisting spaces of memory
chapter 10|12 pages
Public events and the Japanese Self-Defense Forces
part V|16 pages
Transformations