Japan Books

E.H. Norman's seminal work, , is now available in other places, but when John W. Dower issued this volume, Norman's work was difficult to find in print, and so this collection was as welcome as it was valuable, especially for rising PhD hopefuls who wanted to read Norman but had trouble getting their hands on his stuff. In the end, though, it was Dower's long introductory essay that really caught everyone's attention, with its discussion of Norman's adventures in McCarthy's red scare America, and its innuendoes about other prominent Asia scholars. It set off a flurry of reviews in the scholarly journals, reviews noteworthy for their vituperative attacks on Norman's scholarship, more than for their implied criticisms of a young colleague who would presume to dignify Norman's scholarly accomplishments by editing a reissue of his work. Now at the other end of a long and distinguished career as scholar and teacher, Dower can look back on this volume as an achievement that still merits careful attention, not only by students of Japanese history, but equally by anyone interested in the politics of scholarship. Likewise, anyone interested in the historiography of modern Japan needs to come to grips not only with Norman's work but also with the political controversies that came to surround it as a result of American Cold War culture.

Before his premature death in 1957, the Canadian scholar-diplomat E. Herbert Norman had established himself as the pre-eminent Western interpreter of early modern and modern Japan. This present edition includes the classic Japan's Emergence as a Modern State. It also introduces materials by Norman never before made widely available in the West, including an essay on the role of the historian and chapters from an unpublished book, Feudal Background of Japanese Politics.
--- from book's back cover.

This book was a delight in that I managed to learn quite a lot about Japanese culture, about music, and a slew of other things all the while being wrapped up in Ginger's adventures. I was particularly fascinated by the level of cross-cultural confidences exchanged between Ginger and her Japanese host's wife, Sakiko. Of course, the handsome, mysterious Akiko with his pony tail served as just the right device to move us through the story and to motivate Ginger, at last, to overcome a psychological demon from her past.

Congratulations to Mary Claire Mahaney for her triumph in combining elements of romance, suspense, music and cuisine in this novel. I especially like her technique of following this single teacher's adventures in Japan through entries in her personal journaling. Not that she's journaling, Ginger would have you know, she detests that word. How else, though, can she put forth her most personal feelings about sushi, music, and the enigmatic Japanese man she meets on her first day in Osaka. Oh, yes, this book heats up, and it is a delightful read.

A well-written account of the early years of US involvement with Ho Chi Minh in the second world war. It is a sad commentary on what might have been. Had the US not abandoned their ally to cruel colonialism, the US and Vietnam may never have suffered the long costly and unnecessary war they did. It seems an all too common tale of strange cold war bed-fellows and betrayel.

This book goes far to provide the background to the recent history of Vietnam and the United States. Ho Chi Minh is not portrayed as a saint but neither is French colonialism. In the portrayal, the nationalist rather than communist undercurrents of the Vietnam war are expounded and explained. A worthy addition to the history of twentieth century Vietnam-US relations.

The OSS and Ho Chi Minh, by Dixee Bartholomew-Feis, was an unexpected pleasure. Books written on the OSS or the British equivalent in World War II, SOE, so frequently fall headfirst into a muddy miasma of internal politics, blame and counter-blame, and a fixation on minutiae that they often obscure more than they illuminate. Thankfully, Bartholomew-Feis gives a well-written and lucid account of the OSS in Viet Nam on the cusp between war and peace in 1945. She steps neither into the "Ho was a nationalist and if only they had listened to the OSS then the Vietnam war never would have happened" camp nor into the "Those naive fools helped Ho get to power and brought communism to Southeast Asia" camp, for which every reader should be grateful.

At first, her book gives one pause. She starts off with dual mini-biographies of Ho Chi Minh and F.D.R. and one wonders where on earth she will go with those. However, once she actually gets from contextual background to Vietnam itself, and begins to display the depth of her research and understanding, the book is on much firmer footing. The OSS encountered the Viet Minh in an intelligence-gathering context, so she focuses first on the intelligence networks in Vietnam and how the Allies used them (introducing the reader to a fascinating "free-lance" intelligence network that gave intel to the British, US and Chinese), then shows how the OSS gradually was introduced into this intelligence context. In the process, she illuminates the tensions between the French in Vietnam and the Vietnamese Communists, between north and south Vietnam, and between the Japanese occupiers and both the French and Vietnamese.

Bartholomew-Feis does a good job describing the various OSS missions into Vietnam at the end of the war and the personalities behind them. What is perhaps most striking is how few, how young, and how junior most of these American personnel were, yet the great responsibilities they had in representing their country in matters relating from intelligence to strategy to policy and diplomacy. Almost as fascinating is how, virtually without exception, all of the Americans (conservative and liberal alike) were impressed with Ho Chi Minh, who must positively have oozed charisma. It is quite interesting to compare the personal relationships between the American OSS representatives and Ho and his close collaborators on one hand with the much more bitter, taxing, and dysfunction relations between the British and Tito (see Dedjier's diaries on his views of the British, for example) or the British and the Albanian communists or the British and the Greek communists. Perhaps the only real comparison is with Mao Zedong who managed to win over a bevy of Westerners from left-wing reporters like Edgar Snow and Agnes Smedley to Marine officers like Evans Carlson. In any case, it is quite interesting to see how genuinely friendly the Vietnamese were towards the Americans, more so than almost all of the other communist movements with which the OSS worked.

Bartholomew-Feis does write, rather often, of how the Vietnamese "manipulated" the Americans, yet some of the incidents of which she writes sound not so much as a deliberate underhanded manipulation so much as they seem a genuine (if perhaps temporary) convergence of interests. She is on firmer footing when she describes how the Vietminh used their rather tenuous official contacts with the United States as a way to gain status and legitimacy. The Vietminh were quite clever in that regard.

Overall, Bartholomew-Feis does an excellent job in covering a difficult and--given the fact that any book on this is heavily burdened with foreshadowing to begin with--sensitive subject. It would have been nice to have seen more use of Vietnamese sources but overall the book is well-researched and Bartholomew-Feis demonstrates a considerable grasp of her subject.

I have read scores of books on the OSS and SOE dealing with various resistance movements in World War II and I think this is definitely one of the better ones. Scholars and general readers interested in intelligence gathering during World War II, the origins of the Indochina War, Vietnamese nationalism, and the end of the Second World War will all be interested in this well-written study. I recommend it.

I was very excited to find out about this book. My wife and I have a burden for Japan. While we would love to be missionaries there someday we are not at that point yet. This book provides some very valuable insight on how to pray for Japan. It takes a look at some of major choices that were made by a select few and the ramifications that are still be felt today. I highly recommend this book as a historic spiritual reference point and as a guide on how to pray for the strong holds in Japan.

I am the author of this little book. I'm amazed at the life of this book! It continues to go at a steady pace year after year. I attribute this to three factors: 1) There are so few books available on Christianity in Japan that are ministry focused, as this one is; 2) A steady interest among Christians to share the Gospel with Japanese; and 3) The spiritual and cultural solutions I've outlined outlined in Overcoming Spiritual Barriers in Japan are unique.

I'm pleased with how this book helps others to understand Japan's complicated early Christian history, provides culture tools to understand why Japanese behave in the ways they do, and inspires Christians to pray more specifically and powerfully for Japan.

I hope you enjoy and are blessed by the book!

My son was delighted with it. It contained the Japanese business etiquette information he was seeking.

For a first time American businessperson (woman, at that) it is a comprehensive and high-level look at doing business the Japanese way.

This is an outstanding reference for the researcher and patent attorney alike. The book provides a solid overview of patent law in the major markets, with emphasis on pharmaceutical, chemical and biotechhnology patents. What distinguishes this book from others in its class, however, is the emphasis on practical and strategic aspects of patent filing and enforcement. The author has a lifetime's worth of experience in this field, and it shows. Moreover, the book is uncommonly well-written, with clarity and occassional humor. Highly recommmended!

This is quite simply the best general work on patent law and practice I've ever read. Presented in clear, crisp language and with wit and flair, it is essential reading for anyone in the patent and allied professions and I would suggest mandatory reading for any students.

The author offers a fantastic view of the Japanese monarchy that is well worth the read. A wonderful historical take on the subject.

Kenneth J. Ruoff is an Associate Professor of Japanese History at Portland State University. Dr. Ruoff is the Director of the Center for Japanese Studies at the university.

Professor Ruoff received the 2004 Jiro Osaragi Commentary Prize for the Japanese translation of his book THE PEOPLE'S EMPEROR. The prize was given at a ceremony at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo January 27, 2005. The prize include an award of two million yen. Dr. Ruoff is the first foreigner to receive the Osaragi Prize.

This is a thought-provoking book. It is immediately accessible with a clear structure and attractive images, but the informative footnotes indicate it also deals with important questions for readers who wish to think more deeply about architecture; and with the aid of the bibliography they will be able to do so. Since the Enlightenment western architects have had some difficulty, or maybe have just been embarrassed, in describing the transcendental nature of their art - usually the result is either an over-bearing rhetoric or a sentimental retreat into poetry. As it has done for at least the last two hundred years, the Japanese tradition provides an insight, by analogy, into issues that concern us all, as inhabitants of our fragile planet.

Rather than being a study of the unique characteristics of Japanese architecture, this book examines universal parameters which many Japanese buildings seem to manifest especially clearly. It helps to explain the unusually wide popular appeal of many traditional Japanese buildings, even among those with little knowledge of their cultural context, and also makes them practically useful to anyone interested in learning from Japanese architecture without importing its formal language. As such, it is a genuinely valuable contribution to contemporary cross-cultural studies, made all the more significant by its direct addressing of the issue of individual human identity in the context of globalization. The book is also visually stunning.

I've been an astronomy buff for 28 years and this is the most detailed planisphere I've found. It is simple and easy to use. You can look up the night sky by standard and military time and each day of the month. Most planispheres only show days by groupings, not individually as this one does. The brighest stars are named without destroying the readability. Also included is the declination and right ascension for the more advanced user.

A planisphere allows you to calculate the positions of the stars, by aligning the date (outer dial) and time (inner dial) for your location. A twist of the dial that is divided into 24 hours shows the positions of the stars at that particular time, on any day (the outer dial), for a particular latitude. This particular planisphere is for Latitude 42 degrees North, which is fine for me since I'm at 45 degrees north latitude. Other planispheres are designed for different latitudes, so choose one that is closest to your latitude.

The name 'planisphere' refers to the representation of the celestial sphere on a two-dimensional plane (this means that the constellations near the southern horizon are slightly distorted or stretched along the horizon).

Because of the motion of the earth, the appearance of the sky changes with each hour of each day of the year. A planisphere is more useful than a star chart for identifying the constellations in your sky because you can dial it to the correct date and time. The brighter the star, the larger its representative dot on the planisphere.

Detailed charts such as those to be found in "Norton's Star Atlas" will be useful later in your astronomical career when you are ready to observe fainter objects such as galaxies and nebulae in the heavens.

Once you have your planisphere, all you will need is a small flashlight with a piece of red celluloid taped over the lens. This set-up will allow you to look at your planisphere without ruining your night vision.

I originally borrowed a copy from the library, and many other books about working in Japan. This is the most useful book out of all of them. The information is quite recent(2002), and it has a load of contact details in the back, airlines, embassy addresses and much more. It also contains useful pictures, and good tips to surviving in Japan. Definitely a must have. Suitable for anyone looking to move or live in Japan.

A Practical Guide To Living In Japan: Everything You Need To Know To Successfully Settle In by travel expert Jarrell D. Sieff is a definitive, "user friendly" guide for students, business travelers, and vacationers arriving in Japan for their studies, business operations, or sight-seeing. A Practical Guide To Living In Japan covers immigration matters, finding a place to stay, money and banking, studying the Japanese language, getting around Japanese cities and countryside, health and insurance, as well as Japanese customs and social etiquette. A Practical Guide To Living In Japan is a highly recommended resource that will save the traveler, businessman or student an immeasurably valuable amount of time, expense, anxiety, confusion, and hassle.