Asian Books

One of the best books about pre-war Japan. Each story brings to life a different aspect of life, culture, and class as they existed before the war. If you've visited Japan, you'll have a hard time believing this kind of world ever existed. I guarantee you won't be able to put it down.

This is a factual book in which a world that no longer exists becomes vividly real as seen through a provincial doctor's elderly patients recollections of their younger lives. My first introduction to this book came through my Japanese language teacher. Her physician is the son of the author. Each chapter covers the recollections of a single patient, so the book is very easily read in discreet portraits which together paint the overall picture. Dr Saga's patients tell their stories with such intimacy, warmth and frankness that you are drawn ever deeper into their world. All lived in and around Tsuchiura, a town on the edge of a large lake about 30 miles north of Tokyo. Many of the stories are of fishermen who made their living from the lake. There are also the merchants, gangsters and entertainers. Together, these people provide a real insight into the way people lived and worked in Japan before the rapid development of the latter half of the 20th century produced the comfortable lifestyles of today.

1st person accounts collected by a Tsuchiura doctor from elderly Japanese. Together, they piece together a quiltwork of Japanese society from the bottom on up. All, in pre-war Japan. Tsuchiura is just next door to Tsukuba, a modern science city and destination for many foreign researchers in Japan. As one such researcher, the book helped me understand some seemingly unexplainable remnants of old practices that still persist. I couldn't put the book down. The stories of lives jump out of the pages.

This book is filled with priceless historic snapshots of real-life everyday drama that cannot be found in any textbook. From farmers, fishermen, and merchants to executioners and geishas who entertained kamikaze pilots in the last days of their lives, these simple, unadorned memories of ordinary smalltown Japanese people living in a previous era under circumstances that we in modern, high-tech times cannot imagine left me in awe of the power of the human body and spirit. A learning experience in culture and history that reinforces how valuable the memories of our own elders are.

A collection of interviews with people who tell stories of their lives in a small japanese village from about 1890 to 1930. Arranged by occupation, all are very interesting. One of the most intriguing aspects of the book is the commonality the stories share with my own American relatives (as to the hardships of farm life, what people did for fun, etc.). The book even occasionally slips into a "when I was a kid we had to walk two miles uphill in the snow" sort of mode, but this makes many of the stories all the more touching.

Poetry is soppy, Zen is impractical and Orientals don't think or feel like the rest of mankind - three myths demolished in one elegant little book. Every poem breathes humanity and warmth, and the pictures complement them beautifully. A translator should above all respect and preserve the intent of the original author; Clements' fine, perceptive translations allow the underlying emotions and sensations of the works room to breathe, and give the reader space to make his own interpretation. These are poets who, attempting detachment from the world, have stood back far enough to observe it and themselves with loving exactness. Beautiful in every way.

This book is beautiful not only for the wonderful poetry but also forthe wonderful artwork throughout. Here's one of my favorite haikus from the book:

A fallen flower
Flew back to its perch
A butterfly

Then on the opposing page there is a wonderful chinese painting of a butterfly amongst some flowers.

The haiku included here (and there are many!) are so beautiful, they make me slow down and breath when I read them. Here's another wonderful one:

Without a brush
The willow paints the wind.

Simply wonderful. This would make a fantastic gift for the nature lover or the lover of haiku.

The cover itself - so beautifully - lets the reader know the jewels to come. In a sparse, delicate writing style, these haiku take us through dawn to dusk.

The illustrations - wood block prints, scenes from painted folding screens - create a haiga in the mind.

If you can procure a copy, please do so. It will enrich your life immeasurably.

A book to savor. If you're familiar with haiku, you keep feeling a shock of recognition when you encounter a favorite redone in Clements's thoughtful lean style. Fresh organization, by time of day. Illustrations well chosen and well reproduced. This would be a fine gift book for a young person you want to interest in poetry.

A beautiful gift book. Each page of three haiku faces breathtaking paintings in the Japanese style. Most of the paintings are of nature, giving a sense of the season as one reads haiku of that season. The combination of painting and haiku gives a much deeper value.

I ordered this book for my granddaughter to read this summer.
I was pleased with it and she will enjoy the book and pass it on to
her classmates, I'm sure.
Bonnie Cadwell

Mountain light is a really good book. i would give it 5 stars because it is an all together really good book. it is about Cassia and her "friend" squeaky, and how they help their villages, and how squeaky goes the the land of the golden mountain.

this book was a great sequel to The Serpent's Children, which i recommend. it shows a more subtle romeo+juliet deal, except less dramatic and fatal. it shows us that friendship and love can conquer all.

Mountain Light shows how a friendship can survive the adversity of war and ancient grudges. The two characters are hardly alike but they seem to be the same person.

Mountain Light
Mountain Light by Lawrence Yep is the best children's book I have ever read. It is full of Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Mystery, love and at the same time like a cool documentary because it is so educational. It is about a young man that is faced with the decision whether or not to leave his friends and go back to his family or "pack" where he belongs. But he realizes that he has become so close to his new friend Cassia it is a hard decision to make. He decides to go to the land of the Golden mountain in America and work with his friend's brother and his friend to make money so maybe, just maybe he can be married to Cassia. It is full of hardship and a lot of drama. Mountain Light is actually a book in the Serpent Children Series which is one thing that I love about this kind of book, they never seem to end when it's a series. I don't find books very exciting if it's only one topic. This book is about every topic you can think of! Another thing about the book that makes it interesting is the characters in the book can relate to everything and everyone and it's fascinating. What makes this book so much unlike others that I have read before is every time you read a new book in the series it is always a different person in the series telling the story. I believe that anyone who likes to read at all would fall deep into this book. During the time reading this book I refused to go down to dinner! Mountain Light is defiantly the best children's book if not book i have ever read!

Santoka was a royal pain in the posterior for his long-suffering wife. No doubt he reeked from days on the road and a daily diet of sake and pickles and not much else. His manners, too, were less than couth. Not much about his personal life comes through the sometimes barely permeable wall between Japanese and English, and perhaps that's good for Santoka's English readers. The Japanese are a bit more tolerant of this kind of behavior, especially when one has a real literary genius to contend with. It's a fact: telling simplicity, and an incredible ear for saying (in the originals) just enough to make the magic happen. I've wrestled with translating this man's work and English doesn't even begin to begin to convey what Santoka does with the layers of meaning in the Chinese characters (Kanji) as well as the very sound of the Japanese itself. Take, for instance, that famous poem that sounds a bit like a commercial for a clothing company (Blue Mountain is a clothing chain in Japan that sells cheap suits to salary men)--that goes something like: "Push apart/ enter/ push apart/ enter/ blue mountain"? Well, it mimics, among other things, the sound of a work gang in the original. No kidding--that repetitive drum-beat in miniature. You can't get that into English, folks. No translation into English--not even these--can help you "get" Santoka's rightness as well as his breath-taking simplicity. The most one gets is an approximation here, a pointing. The original Japanese is where the real Santoka shows his stuff and no translation, however deft, is going to give him to you. I lived in Kyushu for eight years and am familiar with Kumamoto and those blue mountains that you can't look away from. On the train going to work in the morning and coming home in the evening I'd watch them and think "Santoka walked there."

This is a good book of translations, and one sturdy enough for those who want to take it along on their own forays into "walking Zen," though only a fool would elect to follow Santoka's path. Those blue mountains are steep and dangerous and you have to be sturdy and single-minded as a mule to climb them.

Kaneda Santoka, Mountain Tasting (Weatherhill, 1980)

Kaneda Santoka, itinerant Zen monk, storied drunkard, and haiku poet, never achieved the fame in the West as did more traditional haiku poets like Basho and Soseki. Some few admirers of his work have been silently pulling strings offstage to change that, and while it hasn't happened yet, things slowly progress.

Santoka was on the cusp of the nontraditional haiku movement when he began writing, and was drawn to the idea of haiku that didn't use seasonal imagery, nor stick to the exact seventeen-line syllable used for traditional haiku in Japan. In the hands of a good enough poet, nontraditional Japanese haiku remain haiku; short, image-laden pieces that beg reflection from the reader while offering a quick view through the eyes of the poet. And Santoka was assuredly a good enough poet.

This selection of just over three hundred haiku from his works was, to my knowledge, the first collection of his work published in English (a complete works has been published in Japan, along with a few biographies). Santoka's haiku are deceptively simple, but open farther upon meditation (which is why the books' subtitle calls them "Zen haiku," presumably):

Going deeper
and still deeper
the green mountains.

or

The green grass!
I return, barefoot.

A wonderful little book, well worth reading. Especially recommended for aspiring haiku poets who write in English, as Santoka's haiku translate very well and are also excellent examples of nontraditional haiku in English. *** ½

MOUNTAIN TASTING : ZEN HAIKU BY SANTOKA TANEDA. Translated by John Stevens. 126 pp. New York and Tokyo : Weatherhill, 1980 and Reprinted.

Santoka's life may seem tragic. Son of a womanizing father who lost the family property through an unwise business venture; a mother who committed suicide by throwing herself into a well when he was eight; himself a university dropout; failed jobs; alcoholism; a failed marriage; a series of nervous breakdowns; a suicide attempt which failed when the train was just able to stop in time. How could such a man have become one of Japan's best-loved poets? And what, we wonder, could we ourselves possibly have to learn from him? The answer to this last, in a word, is everything.

Santoka was pulled from the tracks and taken to a nearby Zen temple. The head priest, Gian Mochizuki Osho, a shrewd and kindly man, simply took him in without any reprimands or questions, and offered to let him stay as long as he liked. Santoka had always been interested in Buddhism, and after one year of Zen meditation, chanting sutras, and working around the temple, at the age of forty-two he was ordained a Zen priest. The Zen he was ultimately to practice, however, though traditional, was unusual. It was the Zen of solitary walking. The open road was to become his home and his monastery.

John Stevens has provided a truly interesting and moving account of Santoka's life and work which will fill you in on the details. Suffice to say here that Santoka's first walking pilgrimage through Japan, begging as he went from village to village, began in April 1926 and was to last for four years. During this trip to Shikoku, he visited the 88 shrines and temples associated with the Buddhist saint Kukai (774-835) to pray for the troubled spirit of his departed mother.

There is a wonderful photograph of Santoka on page 30, which shows him setting out on a similar pilgrimage in 1933. With his straw sandals, white cotton pants, long robe, monk's staff, and large woven straw hat, he looks an odd, if not laughable, figure. Few would suspect they were looking at a person of incredible courage, someone who had undertaken the most fearsome and difficult task of all, the full acceptance and savoring of the moment, despite what it may bring.

All told, Santoka is said to have walked more than twenty-eight thousand miles, starting out each morning penniless and with no food, and not knowing where he would stay or even if he would find lodging for the night. These were very hard miles, miles which brought sun and rain, generosity and hostility, food and hunger, smiles and scowls, health and illness, thirst and pure water, loneliness and moments of companionship, grief and intense happiness, but moments always lived with the thought that everything should be welcomed, whether good or bad, just as he himself was not judged but welcomed and taken in by the kindly Gian.

The record of his various thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and of the myriad sights and sounds he encountered on his walks of self-discovery, will be found in his poems. The poems are characterized by an absolute simplicity, an absolute honesty, a total absence of artifice. In a world such as ours, brimming over as it is with lies, disinformation, propaganda, and the totally phony, Santoka's spontaneous utterances come to us like a pure, cool, and refreshing breath of air. He is even, as Stevens points out, honest about his failure to solve what for him was the ultimate Koan - sake.

After his very fine 29-page Introduction, Stevens has given us 372 of Santoka's free-style haiku in excellent translations. Since the poems are linguistically very simple, their literal meaning carries over easily into English. What is lost, however, as Stevens points out, is the beautiful rhythm, assonance, and onomatopoeia of many of the poems, and to offset this he has thoughtfully provided, at the bottom of each page, the romanized Japanese of the originals, a few of which are accompanied by his notes. He has also provided a useful Selected Bibliography of both Japanese and English sources at the end of the book.

Here, to give you a taste of Santoka, is Poem 18 as translated and annotated by Stevens (with my indication of pronunciation added). A halftone of Santoka's striking brush calligraphy of this poem has been used as frontispiece to the book:

"Going deeper / And still deeper - / The green mountains.

Wake itte mo wake itte mo aoi yama [wa-ke it-te mo wa-ke it-te mo a-o-i ya-ma]. This was written in early summer in the mountains of Kumamoto Prefecture and is perhaps Santoka's best-known poem. Deeper and deeper into the human heart without being able to fathom its depth. . . ." (page 37).

The human heart, yes, but also self, nature, time, reality, the mystery of existence, and, ultimately, the world of Buddha, or, for others, God.

Santoka's great merit is that he returns us to a reality that is also ours, though most of the time we choose to overlook it. I can't even begin to do justice to him here - he's just too big. But what can be said is that there is a depth and resonance to his poems that will evoke a powerful response in all sensitive readers. His love of the simple things in life, of nature, and of all life-forms and living creatures, is infectious.

'Mountain Tasting' is a golden book that would make a wonderful gift for someone very special to you, but you'd better not start reading it - or you won't want to part with it!

There is a notion of the spiritual life especially prevalent in Christian circles that our shortcomings are something we should seek to eliminate. As in so many other aspects of our life these days, we "wage war" on the many things that make us less than ideal specimens. Obesity, drinking, sexual hangups, shiftlessness, and a hundred other vices are seen as antithetical to the spiritual life. One of the things that Santoka has helped me to understand is how narrow a view of the life of the spirit this kind of thinking is. Santoka was by most people's standards a shiftless drunk. He was poor, unemployed (in fact he lived as a beggar) and content to remain so. His family and marital life were pretty much a disaster. That he was also one of Japan's greatest haiku poets is, according to the narrow, eliminate-the-vice, make-something-of-your-life mentality, an achievement in spite of his failings. I see his poetry as a measure of his success in living with his vices, and at least in part of deriving from them some of the depth and simplicity that makes his work so appealing. As psychologist Thomas Moore tells us, the things we seem to fail in may in fact be our path to greater spiritual depth, not necessarily by overcoming them, but in learning from them about a spiritual reality that is direct and earthy and real. It is a spirituality of not arriving, or, what amounts to the same thing, of arriving with every step. There is no destination, only the journey. Although there were other poor, itinerant haiku poets, none, not even the great Issa, is as earthy as Santoka, "earthy" not in a vulgar sense, though he and Issa too could be delightfully and sometimes not-so-pleasantly vulgar, but in that he lives very close to the physical reality of life largely unmediated by social security, health insurance, family, friends, and a "real" job.

Santoka finds a very sympathetic interpreter in John Stevens, whose translation and brief biographical summary are the best introduction you'll find to this great poet. Burton Watson's For All My Walking: Free-Verse Haiku of Taneda Santoka is also worth reading, especially for the translation of Santoka's diary excerpts, but the haiku selection is (deliberately, because he didn't want to duplicate Stevens) not as rich. Stevens gives us the cream. Of course, there are also many of Santoka's haiku in Reginald Blyth's still unsurpassed anthology of haiku (Haiku, in four volumes), and Blyth's translations are unfailingly insightful. But in Stevens we have more, and we have it all together.

If you're interested in other books on haiku, I've posted a bibliography of my personal recommendations (in PDF format) at http://www.redrockyellowstone.com. Once there, go to The Art of Haiku and click the link entitled "Read more about haiku..."

Beware! The haiku of Santoka is nuanced and subtle - deceptively simple:

The green grass!
I return barefoot.

Upon my first reading I had the overwhelming impulse to race through the book which I gave into. But then, I found myself reaching for it and savouring one or two of these wonderful translations.

For those writers of haiku, trying to imitate Santoka's style is quite an exercise. How to approach:

Even the sound of the raindrops
Has grown older.

or

The moonlight

pierces
my empty stomach

These haiku will resonate long after you put the book down.

Myths of Light is a compilation of articles and lectures given over the years by Joseph Campbell. The topics explored in these pieces are quite varied. However, the main theme that ties these works together is that they all explore aspects of Eastern belief, mythology, iconography, and symbolism.

Written from the perspective of the outsider taking a look into the beliefs and mythology of the East, Campbell provides an insightful overview. Campbell takes the stance that whether our stories are based upon fact or are merely fiction meant to illustrate proper behavior really isn't the issue. The truly important thing is that within mythology, dogma, and ritual we see the remnants of belief.

I believe it is this viewpoint that allows Campbell to look within the various belief systems of the Eastern World with wonder and objectivity. Quite interesting. Perfect for new to the study.

This book was a lovely, focused introduction to Hinduism and Buddhism, with a little Jainism and Taoism thrown in for good measure. I loved Cambpell's ability both to find the lovely, telling details in each of these traditions, and to find the overarching themes--especially the idea of Brahman, which he sees as underpinning all of them. I also particularly loved Cambpell's sense of humor--in one section he's describing the reincarnation of the soul, and says it's putting on and taking off bodies "like a shopper at Macy's trying on scarves"! That page is marked in my copy by the tea I sputtered because I laughed so loudly.
The only downside from my point of view was an emphasis in the sections on Buddhism on Mahayana as opposed to Theravada Buddhism. Though he does discuss the older branch of the Buddhist tradition, it is somewhat in passing. Nonetheless, I enjoyed this book enormously.

Having devoured Campbell's work in the nineties, I'd almost given up on his unpublished essays and lectures ever seeing the light of day. Then came Thou Art That and now Myths Of Light. These books are just perfect echoes of Campbell's comparative conclusions, only more concise. After a lifetime of work, his lectures honed his thoughts into great clarity. These two books are actually great introductions to Campbell's thoughts and work. They touch here and there on historical evidence, but mainly stay in the line of clarifying what occident and orient mythology entails.
If you've been waiting a long time to read more Campbell, you'll have bought these books already. And if you haven't, you'll be very surpised.

I heard about this book at the Campbell Foundations website and was very interested--I'd always wanted to learn more about Asian religions but had found the books I'd looked at either too hard-core academic or too new-agey or too obscure. I tried reading the Bhagavad Gita ten years ago, and thought it was cool, but couldn't really understand it.

This book really gave me an insight into the mindset that lies behind Buddhism and Hinduism. I'd always thought the emphasis on reincarnation was a little creepy, but now I have an idea of what its about. Campbell tells some wonderful stories and connects the dots between what seem like really random ideas. And the short section on the Bhagavad Gita was really eye-opening. I went back and reread the book and feel like I finally understand it.

This is a perfect book to start your exploration of Eastern Religion.

Having not much more background in Asian religion than a Zen Buddhism class I took to fulfill a distribution requirement in college 20 years ago, I approached this book with some anticipation and some anxiety. My main memory of those long-ago days in that lecture class was of reading and discussing religious texts that seemed to have been written by another species--the basic assumptions were beyond me, and my professor (who had spent his adult life immersed in the study of esoteric Buddhism) had a hard time understanding why we didn't just get it. But I'd been fascinated by what little I'd understood and always wanted to find a more accessible guide to the ins and outs of Asian myth. This book is it! Campbell, who I knew from Power of Myth, lays out the basic principles that underlie Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism (and he touches on Taoism too) with the same sort of humor and wisdom that I'd expected. What a fun book to start the summer reading season with!

There are a lot of high quality photographies of very wonderful netsuke, interesting design, good advice how to do the photographies of small netsuke better! This book is very good for beginning carvers, galleries!

Symmes does a wonderful job of composing this text. He gives a nice history of netsuke, covering the span of time from feudal Japan to the present. He includes a small section on netsuke manufacture, and another on photographic techniques for macro photography and design, and then the text opens into a wonderful collection of full-page photographs of several varied and incredible pieces, some dating back to the seventeenth century. He includes brief descriptions of the netsuke, although he could have elaborated on the Japanese (and Chinese) fables that inspired many of these creations for Western audiences. Many of the pieces in this book are available today in reproduction form, and the netsuke are composed of several different materials, not just the "typical" ivory or wood. This text is a must have for any collector, beginning or advanced, as it will inspire readers to research their private collections as well as create the desire to build them! The reproduction of detail from the photographs is amazing!

Between the introductory text and the stories attached to each picture, this book serves to both educate and whet the appetite. I struggled with the desire to own each of the pieces that Symmes so lovingly photographed.

As author Symmes says, netsukes have the "power to influence people and pocketbooks." This statement is true in several aspects. First, the collector of netsukes will find that they are expensive. Second, the purpose of a netsuke is to fasten an "inro," or case holding valuables, to an obi or belt. "Ne" translates as "root" and "tsuke" translates as "to fasten." An inro's cords are held tightly by an "ojime," or bead, to keep it closed and the netsuke keeps the inro from falling off of the wearer.

The highly-detailed photographs of netsukes are in harmony with the scenery and objects surrounding them, so lusciously artistic that you may consider framing them.

HIH Prince Norihito of Takamado, who wrote this book's foreward, says he looks for "warmth, wit, and a certain twist" in his own netsuke collection. To fully appreciate a netsuke, "hold it, feel it, and examine it closely in one's hand."

Netsuke figures have stories associated with them. Many figures are puns in which the same word may have several meanings. For example, monkey is "saru" which is pronounced the same as "to leave," so it would be unlucky to marry in a monkey year.

If you are not familiar with Asian astrology, this book will teach you much about the associated legends. One tale that fascinated me was about Daruma, the 28th patriarch of Zen Buddhism. Daruma meditated for 9 years, sitting so long that his legs lost their strength. My sister, who lived in Japan for many years, sent me a wooden Daruma doll with two blank eyes. When you knock over the Daruma doll, it pops back upright, reflecting an undaunted spirit. Here's what you are supposed to do with a Daruma doll: you color one eye to make a prayer, then you color the other one when the prayer is answered.

You'll learn much about Japanese life and legend from studying these tiny netsukes -- and Symmes provides us with a fun way to learn.

This book is a lot like the netsuke themselves. At first, it looks like it might be something interesting, so you pick it up, look a little closer, and...you are inside a whole different world. Something deceptively simple shows itself to have hidden depths.

I had been interested in netsuke for awhile, ever since buying a little ivory sumo in an antique shop in Japan one day. There was something about the miniature wrestler that fascinated me, and I found myself going back to the shop over and over again, just to look at it. I finally knew that, even though it was expensive, it had to be mine.

This is much like the feeling that author Edwin Symmes describes, leading me to believe that it must be a universal experience amongst netsuke appreciators. He is someone who loves the stories behind the tiny figures, who tries to find their personality rather than figure out their rarity or value. In "Netsuke: Japanese Life and Legend in Miniature", he combines his fascination with his skills in photography, creating small vignettes incorporating the figures with appropriate settings, such as an ivory tiger emerging from real bamboo, or a wooden Daruma nestled inside a rock cave. Next to each image is a story, detailing the legends behind the figure, or maybe a little something about the carver, something that you wouldn't know just by looking but which deepens the understanding and appreciate of the figure.

What this book is not is a collector's guide to netsuke. Anyone new to the art form, and looking for a "How to.." guide to give them tips as what to look for, isn't going to find that here. Not that it is entirely lacking in practical information. There are sections describing the history of netsuke, their original use and their evolution, but that is not the focus. To those who's interest lies in photography, Symmes includes a fascinating section on photographing netsuke. But the real joy lies in looking at the pictures, reading the stories, and sharing the love of netsuke that radiates from this book.

Beautifully photographed, lovingly and humorously written, 'Noodle' is simply superb. First readers are introduced to the various noodles of the world in the Noodle ID section. Then readers are treated to truly wonderful Asian recipes, country by country. (I do hope that the author writes a follow-up focusing on European and American culinary uses of the noodle.)A great book that honors a great, comforting food. Thanks, Terry Durack!

It is true. This book is fantastic. I have cooked 3 dishes from this book so far, and they have all been very good. One was out of this world. Well done Terry Durack. You can't go wrong with this book if you want to cook quick authentic noodle dishes.

Excellent presentation that demystifies the process with simple recipes using easy-to-find ingredients. Yes, you CAN recreate the tastes you experienced in that noddle tent in Fukuoka!

This is the most enjoyable cookbook/informative guide to what some might think as the lowly noodle. Nevermore, Terry Durack has presented the who,what, where, when and why of 20 types of Asian noodles, with recipes from 13 countries. With color photos of each type and over 100 mouth watering recipes from soup/salad/main dish and deserts. There is an opportunity for the reader to become immersed enough to become an expert quickly.
The uniqueness lies in the love of the author who shares stories and history along the way.

This is sure to become a family treasure. Buy one to keep and one or more for gifts.

Enjoy!

Terry Durack has written the penultimate reference book for all serious noodle-heads, or wannabes. If you've ever wandered the aisles of an Asian market, enchanted yet baffled by fresh, dried, yellow, green, white, thin, fat and medium noodles...get this book. Noodles are ID'd with photos, then identified in 3 or 4 languages, how-to-cook, how to serve and recipes follow. Fabulous recipes and, as a bonus, you'll be educated AND entertained by Durack's wicked sense of humor. No cook should be without this one!!

Many decades ago as I was standing in a seemingly endless line at the college bookstore waiting to pay for my texts, I happened to pick up a copy of Kenneth Rexroth's 100 POEMS FROM THE JAPANESE and started thumbing through it in order to kill some time while I waited...and waited...and waited for my turn at the register. By the time I finally made it up there I couldn't have cared less, I was totally engrossed in the small volume that had been meant merely to keep me from thoughts of violence as I continued to wait...and wait...and wait. I knew that I had to have this book, I had fallen in love with Japanese poetry. Since that day I've had 3 copies of the book in all. The first was stolen by a "friend", the second died from over-work, and the third is sitting in front of me as I try to cobble together this review.

I had long hated poetry since its writers tended to exhume every archaic word they knew and went on for as long as they possibly could until they had finally beaten what ever sentiment, or thought they had tried to express into into a gelatinous pulp and left it and the reader whimpering on the floor in helpless submision. Writers of Western and European poetry that is. For when I openned Rexroth's book I learned there was an alternative to the pompous florid verbosity of Western poets and it could be found in the powerful, exquisitely crafted yet extremely economical poetry of Japan.

There are several different poetic forms and a great many shadings and other things to be concerned with, as in the works of all poets, and Rexroth deals with these things both in his introduction as well as in individual notes in the back of the book. He explains everything you need to know in order to understand these poems if you're interested in going beneath their surface beauty. Each poem is presented in romanized Japanese as well as English, which is a nice bonus, and each poet has his own little section. Every poet's name is presented in calligraphy down the side of each page.

This is an extraordinary collection of poems translated by a man who himself is an extraordinary poet. Perhaps the best way to convice you might be to offer one or two of my favorites and let you see for yourself what treasures this book has to offer.

A strange old man
Stops me,
Looking out of my deep mirror. HITOMARO

Although I hide it
My love shows in my face
So plainly that he asks me,
"Are you thinking of something?" TAIRA NO KANEMORI


l

He has gathered a wonderful collection of quiet often powerful poems. I used to always keep a copy at my desk at work when I needed a break from programming. I think everyone who loves poetry should have a copy.

This is one of the greatest "small" books I have ever read. Rexroth conveys a good bird's eye view of classical japanese poetry, with poems selected and translated by him, mostly from the Manyoshu (A.D. 759) and Kokinshu (A.D. 905)compilations.
You will be surprised by the intensity and sensibility that these short poems reflect. Also you will be delighted to read the different depictions of states of mind and heart in this poetry which will eerely convey the atemporal dimension of sorrow, pain, joy and appeasement to the contemporary human being.
An example of what to expect:
The flowers whirl away
In the wind like snow.
The thing that falls away
Is myself.....(Prime Minister Kintsune)

Rexroth neither adds or takes anything away. The book is brilliantly styled, and his notes are truly informative. A definite must have.

In freshman year of high school, I went through an "Asian" phase, I guess, and this was one of the books I bought. The poetry carried me to a world (or rather, Japan) of times past. It's amazing how such short pieces could impact so much. I especially liked that Rexroth included the Japanese words with the poems (even though I know about 20 words of Japanese). However, then (and now), many of the references to various objects and places in the poems went over my head since I have little background in Japanese history or literature (everything I know about Japan, I learned from anime and the three week unit on Asia in World History class). For instance, I never heard of the River Izumi and plains of Mika nor did I know the importance of the Isle of Awaji (let alone where it was). So some of the poems, though they sounded beautiful, were little more than entertaining to me. I lost the significance and meaning. Fortuneately, Rexroth provides a guide in the back to the poets and some of the works in this collection.
If you've never read Japanese poetry before (or read very little), this book is a good introduction. However, having familiarity with Japanese places, literature and symbols helps, since you won't have to flip to the back every other poem.

See the article written by G Nicosoia>in SF Chroncile..to be posted. comparing & summarizing two war books...

WD Ehrhart's journey into the lives of fellow Marines who served with him in his 1966 basic training platoon during one of the most trying times of American history is exemplary. This is due to his persistence and meticulous research into the labyrinth of Veteran's Administration (VA) records, his hundreds of phone calls and letters of inquiry, and the other ways he found people whom he had no idea where they lived, or if they were still alive.

The book is arranged alphabetically by the platoon member's name. What the reader finds in these men's lives runs the gamut from the enigmatic to the ordinary to the heartbreaking, and at least a few whose circumstances evoke Kipling's 'angry and defrauded young.'

Most of the men served in Vietnam at some point in their enlistments. In the course of Ehrhart's inquiries, he found that some of these men simply could not be found, while others offered terse replies to his requests for interviews, and a few gave Ehrhart nothing more than reticence. Others declined an interview after initially agreeing to one. In another reply, a man who had a life at sea after the Marine Corps said his history was private, and Ehrhart's query was not welcomed; when I read this I thought of a line from a Richard Hugo poem, 'Man always brought\his anguish to the sea.'

Hence, for some of the bios in the book, there exists nothing more than a few facts gleamed from the VA records or brief facts derived from other Marines or the veteran's families. Yet for those he did reconnect with, Ehrhart was welcomed, sometimes with only telephone interviews but very often with personal visits that provided the crux of the book that emerged.

Although critics elsewhere note that the book lacks the emotional impact of war memoirs, Ehrhart's work is a vital contribution to studies of the often-misunderstood Vietnam generation, and to studies of the war's veterans in particular. As such,'Ordinary Lives' makes a perfect parallel study to Rick Atkinson's 'The Long Gray Line: The American Journey of West Point's Class of 1966.'

This is another fine book by an under-appreciated writer. Mr. Ehrhart, by combining talent with an enormous amount of sheer brute-force legwork, has transformed the individual, often mundane, sagas of his fellow recruit training platoon members into a work of art that is greater than the sum of its parts, much like the Marine Corps itself.

There is a minimalist economy to Mr. Ehrhart's prose, owing, no doubt, to the fact that he is an accomplished poet and therefore acutely sensitive to the value of individual words. This allows, or causes, the reader to think, really think, about any unadorned contradictions present in the lives presented. One man profiled, successful, decent, religious, thinks the United States should have "annihilated" North Vietnam.

The United States should not have been in Vietnam in the first place. Mr. Ehrhart knows this. "Ordinary Lives," without editorializing, allows us to hate the war without hating the warrior brotherhood that is the Marine Corps, and allows us to love the warriors who fought it, our sons and brothers.

This book has a different slant about the military. It follows up the lives of 80 young men who completed Marine basic training at Parris Island, S.C. Most of the men knew they were headed for Vietnam. As a veteran, I always thought about my fellow recruits and what happened to them. I was sadden by parts of the book. The chaotic nature of some after leaving the Marines, and the death of others. I read many books, rarely military types, as I flinch from violence in my older days, but this type of book had a certain measure of attraction for me. I can't get this book out of my mind, and I don't know why. An interesting concept for a book.

I hated finishing Ordinary Lives because I like the book so much. I think Ehrhart has written one of the great books about America in our time, the sort of book Studs Terkel would write if he could. Talk about American Dreams in our time, Lost and Found! Ehrhart's book is also full of mystery. Why did some of the men manage to get their act together and make something of their lives, when others who seemed to have as much or more going for them, ended up suicides? I love the relentless alphabetical format. It emphasizes the arbitrariness of our lives and works well with the military subject. Ehrhart's compassion and respect for the people he interviewed is the great strength and backbone of the book, I think. I had tears in my eyes many times. I also laughed out loud several times. While reading Steven T. Summerscales' entry I thought, there but for fortune go I. How did I end up with such a sweet deal in life, when others, perhaps more deserving, are long since dead? Ehrhart's book handles this mystery in a sensitive yet relentless way. His relentlessness also comes across in his manner of search, but he does know when to let a man go. He strikes a perfect balance between sensitivity and relentlessness in this wonderful engrossing book. David A. Willson Author, REMF Diary

This book covers a lot of ground. It is generally considered to be one of the two (along with Honor Bound) major accounts of the POW experience in Vietnam. Unlike "Honor Bound" this book is not published by the Navy Press.

While writing a long article on a particular POW I was able to use this book as an excellent guide to the various timelines, facilities and actual implementations of the Code of Conduct. The book does not seek to be damning, except in one case where 8 men are named as total turncoats charged by their Sr. Ranking Officer with treason.

The book is smooth reading, but long. It is possible that this could be the only POW book many people will ever need.

As the title states, this is a definitive exploration of the experience of US heroes while in Vietnam captivity. Hubble's research is exemplary. The book is fact based with little bias. If one is interested in this topic, then this is the FIRST book they should read - from there, the reader can find particular people/topics of interest and branch out. The next book to read is "Honor Bound" by Rochester and Kiley - a later text using declasified sources. In reading these two books, a reader will come to understand the POW experience in Vietnam and appreciate America's TRUE heroes. Personnaly, I feel these should be required reading for ALL Americans - particularly our youth.

Researched over a 9 year time span using information gleaned from hundreds of interviews from Vietnam war POW's, this extensive saga of captivity is truly outstanding in its depth.

John G. Hubbell not only relates the stories of high profile POW's from North Vietnam, he explores the many aspects and rigors faced by U.S. servicemen in the brutal Southern Vietnamese prison camps. In helping the reader to truly understand the entire experience, this being a cautionary note to everyone, torture methods suffered by our U.S. servicemen are described very graphically throughout the text and may be difficult to read about at times.

Included in the superbly written and well researched narrative are maps of the various prison compounds, photographs of POW's and their captors, and the entire list of repatriated servicemen at Operation Homecoming in 1973.

"P.O.W. - A definitive history of the American Prisoner of War Experience, 1964-1973" is a very comprehensive and powerful study that makes for a lasting, memorable, and emotional reading experience. Upon recommending this book to everyone with interests in POW captivity, I would also like to suggest the brilliant and epic work "Honor Bound - American Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia, 1961-1973".

As a POW researcher, I would have been lost without Hubbel having gone before me to pave the way. This book continues to be a resource for me, a one of a kind history that says it all. I recommend it to anyone who wants to understand what the 566 POWs who were repatriated to the US in 1973 endured. The books by and about individuals give their person accounts, but Hubbel offers an objective analysis and global persecptive.

I regretted loaning my Readers Digest Press hardcopy of this book and never seeing it return. I had to wait years for the re-publication of this marvelous book.

This book is the quintessential book on the POW experience in North Vietnam, and I have read many of them. The atrocities committed by the North Vietnamese captors were barbaric, horrific, and inhuman. The POWs mostly Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force pilots and crewmen were left with no guidance other than their consciences, their moral compass, their pride of service, their patriotism and an outmoded "Code of Conduct" to fight back against unspeakable tortures designed to win over and break the "American Enemy" and score political propaganda points. For these prisoners, the war was not over when they were shot down. A new and completely unexperienced war commenced upon their capture, a cold, calculating battle to exploit those most vulnerable in the Vietnam War in order to exact concessions from the United States of America.

Against the background of these torturous events, North Vietnam's enablers from the U.S. and international anti-war activists cravenly cooperated with North Vietnamese officials to further undermine the courageous efforts of our POWs who endured barbaric handling to not betray their country's honor.

Not all POWs held up to the rigors of the "Code of Conduct" as well as the greatest majority. However, fortunately not having walked in their shoes, I cannot judge their behavior. The activities of the most stalwart POWs as well as those who were less so are chronicled it this very readable and very moving book. These were the true "heroes" of the Vietnam War. They have never received due honor and recognition. This book attempts to do so in a very meaningful way. If you read ANY book on the Vietnam experience, this must be the one.