Night-time and Sleep in Asia and the West: Exploring the dark side of life
Edited by Brigitte Steger and Lodewijk Brunt = BEITRÄGE ZUR JAPANOLOGIE Band 38 (BzJ 38)

CONTENTS

Notes on contributors vii
Foreword by Josef Kreiner ix
Preface and acknowledgements xi

1 Introduction: into the night and the world of sleep | BRIGIT TE STEGER AND LODEWIJK BRUNT
2 Sleeping time in early Chinese literature | ANTJE RICHTER
3 Discourse of mid-day napping: a political windsock in contemporary China | LI YI
4 Negotiating sleep patterns in Japan | BRIGITTE STEGER
5 Sleep without a home: the embedment of sleep in the lives of the rough-sleeping homeless in Amsterdam | PETER RENSEN
6 Sleep and night-time combat in contemporary armed forces: technology, knowledge and the enhancement of the soldier’s body | EYAL BEN-ARI
7 ‘The Mirk Shades O’Nicht’: nocturnal representations of urban Scotland in the nineteenth century | IRENE MAVER
8 Night-time and deviant behaviour: the changing night scene of Japanese youth | AYUKAWA JUN
9 Between day and night: urban time schedules in Bombay and other cities | LODEWIJK BRUNT
10 ‘What Time Do You Call This?’: change and continuity in the politics of the city night | CHRIS NOTTINGHAM
Index

DESCRIPTION

The phenomena of sleep and night are experiences that most people take for granted as a natural part of their daily lives. However, both ideas and practices concerning sleeping and night-time are constantly changing and widely differ between cultures and societies. Night-time and Sleep in Asia and the West traces the many different associations attached to the night as well as highlighting the diverse sleep patterns and attitudes towards sleep between cultures.

Drawing on case studies from China, Japan, India, Europe and the USA, the
contributors address:
• notions of sleep and sleeping time in pre-Buddhist Chinese texts
• the concept of the ‘mid-day nap’
• historical developments of sleep patterns determined by socio-economic changes
• the role of sleep in the life of the homeless and the military
• the relationship between fear and sleep
• night-time behaviour of the young in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

This book suggests that far from being natural phenomena, sleep and night-time are sites of political struggle between groups as distinct as religious leaders, school boards and political parties. The essays here provide an important resource for students of Asian and cultural studies and will also appeal to the general reader interested in such a rarely studied everyday event.