Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Opacity, Misrecognition, and Other Complexities of Symbolic Communication -- Part I: Sources of Communicative Opacity: Many Meanings, One Meaning, the Aesthetic -- 1. Japanese Cherry Blossoms: From the Beauty of Life to the Sublimity of Sacrificial Death -- 2. European Roses: From "Bread and Roses" to the Aestheticization of Murderers -- 3. The Subversive Monkey in Japanese Culture: From Scapegoat to Clown -- 4. Rice and the Japanese Collective Self: Purity by Exclusion -- Part II: Collective Identities and Their Symbolic Expression -- 5. The Collective Self and Cultural/Political Nationalisms: Cross-Cultural Perspectives -- Part III: (Non-)Externalization: Religious and Political Authority/P ower -- 6. The Invisible and Inaudible Japanese Emperor -- 7. (Non-)Externalization of Religious and Political Authority/Power: A Cross-Cultural Perspective -- Afterword -- Notes -- References -- Index.