Introduction: work it: traveling texts and the work of reading Afro-Japanese cultural exchange / William H. Bridges IV and Nina Cornyetz -- Art and performance. Urban geishas: reading race and gender in Irozealb's paintings / Crystal Anderson -- The theatrics of Japanese blackface: body as mannequin / Nina Cornyetz -- Abbey Lincoln and Kazuko Shiraishi's art-making as spiritual labor / Yuichiro Onishi and Tia-Simone Gardner -- Poetry and literature. Playing the dozens on zen: Amiri Baraka's journey from a "pre-black" Bohemian outsider to a "post-American low coup" poet / Michio Arimitsu -- Richard Wright's haiku and modernist poetics / Yoshinobu Hakutani -- In the beginning: blackness and the 1960s creative nonfiction of Oe Kenzaburo / William H. Bridges IV -- Future-oriented blackness in shawa robot culture, 1924 to 1963 / Anne McKnight -- Sound, song, music. "This is who I am": Jero and the polycultural politics of black Enka / Kevin Fellezs -- Extending diaspora: the NAACP and up-"lift" cultures in the interwar black Pacific / Shana Redmond -- Hip-hop and reggae in recent Japanese social movements / Noriko Manabe -- Can the Japanese rap? / Dexter Thomas Jr -- Race, ethnicity and affective community in Japanese rastafari / Marvin Sterling.
