Book excerpt: Scholars, Japanese and non-Japanese alike, have studied the greater Taisho era (1900-1930) within the framework of Taisho demokurashii (democracy). While this concept has proved useful, students of the period in more recent years have sought alternative ways of understanding the late Meiji-Taisho period. This collection of essays, each based on new research, offers original insights into various aspects of modern Japanese cultural history from "modernist" architecture to women as cultural symbols, popular songs to the rhetoric of empire-building, and more. The volume is organized around three general topics: geographical and cultural space; cosmopolitanism and national identity; and diversity, autonomy, and integration. Within these the authors have identified a number of thematic tensions that link the essays: high and low culture in cultural production and dissemination; national and ethnic identities; empire and ethnicity; the center and the periphery; naichi (homeland) and gaichi (overseas); urban and rural; public and private; migration and barriers. The volume opens up new avenues of exploration for the study of modern Japanese history and culture. If, as one of the authors contends, the imperative is " to understand more fully the historical forces that made Japan what it is today," these studies of Japan's "competing modernities" point the way to answers to some of the country's most challenging historical questions in this century. Contributors: Gail L. Bernstein, Barbara Brooks, Lonny E. Carlile, Kevin M. Doak, Joshua A. Fogel, Sheldon Garon, Elaine Gerbert, Jeffrey E. Hanes, Helen Hardacre, Sharon A. Minichiello, Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Jonathan M. Reynolds, Michael Robinson, Roy Starrs, Mariko Asano Tamanoi, Julia Adeney Thomas, E. Patricia Tsurumi, Christine R. Yano.