Joseph D. Hankins received his PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago in 2009 and is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego. His research investigates the politics and aesthetics of stigmatized labor in Japan.

Carolyn S. Stevens holds degrees in anthropology from Harvard and Columbia, and is Professor in Japanese Studies and Director of the Japanese Studies Centre at Monash University, Australia. She is the author of On the Margins of Japanese Society, Japanese Popular Music and Disability in Japan (all published by Routledge).

This book examines sonic practices in contemporary Japan in a range of areas - social movements, popular culture and avant-garde art forms. It explores how the production and perception of sound is affected by the spaces in which sonic practices occur, how sonic practices reflect politics, aesthetics and ethics, and how human relations are entrenched in social and sonic practices. Overall the book makes a significant contribution to the developing field of sensory anthropology.

1. Introduction 2. Sound and the Tactics of Publicity in the Buraku Liberation Movement3. Facing the Nation: Sound, Fury, and Public Oratory among Japanese Right-Wing Groups 4. Military Aircraft Noise and the Politics of Spatial Affect in Okinawa 5. Distraction, Noise, and Ambient Sounds in Tokyo6. Sounding Imaginative Empathy: Chindon-ya's Affective Economies on the Streets of Osaka7. The Swinging Phonograph in a Hot Teahouse: Sound Technology and the Emergence of the Jazz Community in Prewar Japan