{"product_id":"dancing-with-the-dead-memory-performance-and-everyday-life-in-postwar-okinawa-9780822343714","title":"Dancing with the Dead: Memory, Performance, and Everyday Life in Postwar Okinawa","description":"Challenging conventional understandings of time and memory, Christopher T. Nelson examines how contemporary Okinawans have contested, appropriated, and transformed the burdens and possibilities of the past. Nelson explores the work of a circle of Okinawan storytellers, ethnographers, musicians, and dancers deeply engaged with the legacies of a brutal Japanese colonial era, the almost unimaginable devastation of the Pacific War, and a long American military occupation that still casts its shadow over the islands. The ethnographic research that Nelson conducted in Okinawa in the late 1990s-and his broader effort to understand Okinawans' critical and creative struggles-was inspired by his first visit to the islands in 1985 as a lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps.\u003cbr\u003eNelson analyzes the practices of specific performers, showing how memories are recalled, bodies remade, and actions rethought as Okinawans work through fragments of the past in order to reconstruct the fabric of everyday life. Artists such as the popular Okinawan actor and storyteller Fujiki Hayato weave together genres including Japanese stand-up comedy, Okinawan celebratory rituals, and ethnographic studies of war memory, encouraging their audiences to imagine other ways to live in the modern world. Nelson looks at the efforts of performers and activists to wrest the Okinawan past from romantic representations of idyllic rural life in the Japanese media and reactionary appropriations of traditional values by conservative politicians. In his consideration of \u003ci\u003eeisā\u003c\/i\u003e, the traditional dance for the dead, Nelson finds a practice that reaches beyond the expected boundaries of mourning and commemoration, as the living and the dead come together to create a moment in which a new world might be built from the ruins of the old.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Christopher T. Nelson\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Duke University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 12\/12\/2008\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 277\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.90lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.80d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780822343714\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eChoice\u003c\/i\u003e 08\/01\/2009\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eChristopher T. Nelson is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Duke University Press","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":40265614000243,"sku":"9.78E+12","price":31.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0555\/9255\/0515\/products\/img_07cbf687-b501-46ea-a6ac-5f779b6f085d.jpg?v=1657721838","url":"https:\/\/bookstorenmore.com\/products\/dancing-with-the-dead-memory-performance-and-everyday-life-in-postwar-okinawa-9780822343714","provider":"Bookstore N More","version":"1.0","type":"link"}