front cover of Orientals
Orientals
Robert Lee
Temple University Press, 1999
Sooner or later every Asian American must deal with the question, "Where do you come from?" It is probably the most familiar is least aggressive form of racism. It is a tip off to the persistent notion that people of Asian ancestry are not real Americans, that "Orientals" never really stop being loyal to a foreign homeland, no matter how long they or their family have been in this country. Confronting the cultural stereotypes that have been attached to Asian Americans over the last 150 years, Robert G. Lee seizes the label "Oriental"  and asks where it came from.
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front cover of Tokyo Commute
Tokyo Commute
Japanese Customs and Way of Life Viewed from the Odakyu Line
Robert Lee
Amsterdam University Press, 2011
A unique take on modern life in Japan’s capital city. A Japan of trains, every day to and fro, carriage scenes and theatre, vistas from the window, advertising posters. Each to be savoured through a specific Tokyo line – the Odakyu. Pitched as creative text and line-graphics, Tokyo Commute: Japanese Customs and Way of Life Viewed from the Odakyu Line offers on-track and off-track observations. A gallery of mirrors, musings, memories. This is less documentary than iconography, a poetics of Japanese routine and etiquette. It offers a wry diary of month-and-weekday observations, a ‘map’ of Shinjuku as key station and gathering-place, a run of notable Tokyo locations – from the National bunraku theatre to a Kawasaki sludge recycling centre. Other Odakyu travel involves the Hakone open air art gallery, Narita as both airport and temple complex, Yokohama as history and Chinatown. Essential reading for first-time, and second-time visitors, and even regular commuters.
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