The Orient Strikes Back

To make the leap from doing anthropology in what were taken to be small bounded communities to exploring a global phenomenon is one that many anthropologists have yet to make ... Joy Hendry appears to have successfully crossed that divide by beginning with a global topic and then following it through to a particular place: Japan ... This is a book to read and enjoy. Teachers of anthropology, Japanese Studies, museum and tourism studies, will want to add it to their reading lists. The Japan Foundation London Newsletter 'Hendry has written a book which is both extremely academically satisfying and accessible to readers without an anthropological background. The large number of photographs, along with her lively descriptions of the theme parks, ensure that even the reader who, like myself, may not have visited even one such park, remains interetsed and intrigued. Indeed my appetite to visit foreign country theme parks was well and truly whetted.' The Japan Society 'A scholarly and serious investigation of its subject.' The Japan Times [A] valuable book which examines a major social phenomenon in contemporary Japan: theme parks. To my knowledge, it is one of the first books devoted to a technical analysis of this seemingly trivial, but in fact significant, subject in the study of cultural represenation ... I find Hendrys contributions extremely valuable ... A precious book brimming with insights. Anthropological Science