Mirrored Worlds

In recent years Japanese culture has become increasingly prevalent in the West, with Japanese products, designs and motifs becoming commonplace in everyday life. For every Starbucks in Japan there is now a Muji store in Europe and North America. 'Mirrored Worlds' explores the remarkable history of the cultural interaction between Japan and the West from the late medieval era to the present day. Each chapter takes the reader through a series of journeys in cultural memory, encountering figures from Oscar Wilde and Madame Butterfly to Godzilla and Kurosawa. Andrew Cobbing shows that the cultural exchange between Japan and the West is of great importance in understanding modern Japan and its place in a rapidly-changing world. He provides a colourful history of a country that is playing an increasingly important global role and shows that beneath the contemporary layers of cultural exchange lie several hundred years of interaction which have irreversably shaped the way that Japanese and Western people view themselves.