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About
Both personally revealing and informed by years of Fulbright, and MTV-sponsored research, “Japanthem's” honest vignettes delve beyond the aspects of Japanese culture that have captivated the western world to portray a society's deep relationship with music, and what it means to listen and understand as a cultural outsider.
Following a decade of back-and-forth across the Pacific while researching her doctoral thesis in ethnomusicology, “Japanthem” author Jillian Marshall reveals contemporary Japan through a prism of magic, serendipity, frustration, unique underground culture, learning life lessons the hard way, and an insatiable curiosity for the human spirit. The book's twenty vignettes, including what it's like to be subtly bullied by your Buddhist dance teacher, go to a secret rave in woods near Mt. Fuji, meet a pop star at a basement club while tipsy, and experience a nuclear disaster unfold by the minute, are based off first-hand experience, and illustrate music's fascinating relationship to (Japanese) society with honesty, intelligence, and humor. “Japanthem” offers a uniquely nuanced portrayal of life in the Land of the Rising Sun, while encouraging us to listen more deeply in (and to) Japan in the process.
Following a decade of back-and-forth across the Pacific while researching her doctoral thesis in ethnomusicology, “Japanthem” author Jillian Marshall reveals contemporary Japan through a prism of magic, serendipity, frustration, unique underground culture, learning life lessons the hard way, and an insatiable curiosity for the human spirit. The book's twenty vignettes, including what it's like to be subtly bullied by your Buddhist dance teacher, go to a secret rave in woods near Mt. Fuji, meet a pop star at a basement club while tipsy, and experience a nuclear disaster unfold by the minute, are based off first-hand experience, and illustrate music's fascinating relationship to (Japanese) society with honesty, intelligence, and humor. “Japanthem” offers a uniquely nuanced portrayal of life in the Land of the Rising Sun, while encouraging us to listen more deeply in (and to) Japan in the process.