The Monkey as Mirror: Symbolic Transformations in Japanese History and Ritual

Description

Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney examines the historical transformations of the concept of self and other in Japan by inquiring into the meanings assigned to the monkey and the ""special status"" people (often referred to as ""outcasts""), who produce the monkey performances still popular in Japan.

Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, a native of Japan, is Vilas Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Among her works are Illness and Healing among the Sakhalin Ainu: A Symbolic Interpretation and Illness and Culture in Contemporary Japan: An Anthropological View (both Cambridge).

"In an important and interesting new work the anthropologist author examines the historical transformations of the concept of self and other in Japan. This subject, basic in any culture, sometimes seems central in Japan, and any elucidation it can receive is to be welcomed... [This] is a fair, impartial, balanced reading of a neglected chain of metaphors which can teach us much about this country."--Donald Richie, The Japan Times