Japan Books

This is a wonderful book that takes the reader into the depths of Japanese culture and relationships at the turn of the century. Japan is leaving behind the world of the samurai and the shogun, and cautiously opening up to the influence of the politics and values of the west.

Kenichi Yamamoto is a samurai who ignores his wife, Lady Masa, as he pursues his mistress, Osen. But Kenichi and Masa have a son, Renzo, around whom the story revolves. Renzo is confronted by the changes in Japan, which previously had sealed itself off to all outside influence. Though he must perform his traditional duties to family, he experiences life in London and Paris, becomes an art dealer, and befriends westerners in his country. The interactions in the relationships among the characters are poignant and strange, as they should be to readers of a foreign place and time. The author creates a wonderful picture with these characters-their customs, thoughts, feelings, and dress. You can easily visualize the houses they live in, and the various locations from a coastal seaport to the stinky streets of Tokyo. This book added to my knowledge and understanding of Japan.

This is a wonderful book which I really enjoyed reading.
The narrative painted a vivid picture of what life might have been like in Japan before the country was opened to the Western world and the modern day.
It fills the reader in to the customs, expected roles of women
and the entitlements of men in the early days of Japan.

It even touches on a bit of history. This really is a wonderful book.

This is a wonderful book which I really enjoyed reading.
The narrative painted a vivid picture of what life might have been like in Japan before the country was opened to the Western world and the modern day.
It fills the reader in to the customs, expected roles of women
and the entitlements of men in the early days of Japan.

It even touches on a bit of history. This really is a wonderful book.

I read this book this semester in Professor Ohnuki-Tierney's class on Political and Cultural Symbolism. A must for any undergraduate student of symbolic or political anthropology. The book traces the use of the cherry blossom as a symbol throughout history, eventually arriving at the tokkotai (kamikaze) pilots of WWII.

EOT does a great job dispelling the myth that tokkotai pilots died for the emperor and committed suicide. Instead, she shows the lives of five young men, all highly intelligent university students fluent in Marxism and Western philosophy. These young men joined the Navy to herald a new age for Japan, they did not believe in the pro rege et patria mori ideology American media has assumed.

Don't watch the History Channel specials on tokkotai pilots. Read this book and learn about the harsh reality of war, the cruelty of government manipulation of symbol, and the brilliance of the Japanese men who lost their lives in WWII.

Exceptional book, I took a class with this professor. The western conception of "suicide pilots" is completly wrong.

From my experiences in reading historical non-fiction, there are generally two types of books. One of these simply tells you what happend, while the others, while also accomplishing the recount, also provide an analysis of perhaps why soemthing happend.

This is a must-read and an incredible in depth look at the japanese culture and the pride they have for their country and history.

The best way to know the traditional architecture of Japan. Very good pictures, technical drawings and very interesting articles explaining the Katsura Villa.

If you want some solicitude and repose, here is a book for you.
This book is extremely well crafted to show the essence of Katsura.
Status of Katsura in Japanese garden art production does not
demand any further explanation. Katsura is to Japan, what Alhambra is to Andalusia!

In it, I found that disciplinary simplicity can be profound and strong.
Especially in a world where one is inundated with images and media.
Katsura is an art that invites physical presence and spiritual
meditation. In that sense, it's an irony and a paradox to recommend to
experience Katsura thru a book...

Katsura is an art of water & island body formation/ relationally
positioning pavilions / sculpting stones/ borrowing landscapes/ laying
stone/ perfecting the shoji screens and combing the thatched roofs
naming the places and tea pavilions to arouse imagination/ etc, etc, etc.

However, what makes it stand out is that each mode of art does not stand
alone. It had synergetic effect by being relational to one and another.
Combined together, the density of experience exponentially grow to
challenge infinitum. Hence, here is an art that tells us, "the whole is
eternally greater than the parts."

The parts are orchestrated in such a way to arouse the art of seduction.
Not in a flamboyant manner, but in a subtly simple manner. Photographic
images in the book tell us the multi-faceted, yet almost tea-ceremonially
calm, story of Katsura. The book will make you retreat from the bustling
noisiness of daily life.

Isozaki's nicely written essay propels the experience of Kasura to
a thinking level. He has placed his viewpoint in contrast to the earlier
writers such as Bruno Taut/ Sutemi Horiguchi/ Kenzo Tange. Tange's
earlier writing was Mondrian-like, cropping Katsura to a abstract level.
The essay by Isojaki sets the curatorial tone to the images. It's very
expository, revealing indigenous and rustic elements.

The book also provides the hidden dimension of buildings. By providing
field-measured drawings, readers will be able to analyze quintessential
element of plans and sections of traditional buildings. Five past
writings of world-class architects and critics are also part of
publication.

I have been to Katsura several times, and have several books on Katsura villa, and this new book is the best.
This is how architectural books should be produced and photographed so other architects and people interested in architecture can actually learn and use the book not only as a beautiful catalog but as a tool.

The beautiful photographs are architecturally photograhed in 1 point perspective except for details, gardens, and exterior. This is helpful as you can deduct the proportion and scale of the rooms. Most of the drawings have measurements, and are very well drawn.

The introduction and text by Isozaki is excellent for understanding Katsura and Japanese architectural idealogy. Additionally, there are several past texts by Tange, Taut, Gropius, and etc. to get different perspectives.

Katsura, along with several temples and villas have been meticulously maintained for the last 400 years.

Kokeshi: Wooden Treasures of Japan, a Visual Exploration
offers both a beautiful object in its own right and a clarifying history of the dolls, leavened with nuances of cultural history and custom. For the general reader the book offers many delights, and for the specialist collector of Kokeshi, the images and marks will aid them for years to come.

I collect dolls from all over the world and search for books on subjects related to all forms of dolls. After having purchased this book I was extremely excited to find a text that describes specific dolls types in detail, while informing the reader of relevant cultural history, including the traditional use of Kokeshi to embody folkloric characters. Such tidbits enrich understanding and hint at the larger importance of the Japanese Kokeshi as a cultural expression. The dolls are beautifully portrayed by brilliant photographs and relevant historical background. I highly recommend this book for any doll collector or historian.

I go to extreme length to find informative publications on Japanese dolls, and a friend presented me with this exciting new publication. The authors have threaded throughout the text, oversized photographic images of individual Kokeshi, often with the marks of the makers incorporated into the design. This links visual information to content while honing the collector's eye. I take my book to every flea market to support my buying of these wonderful Japanese dolls.

"The koto...is a thirteen-string Japanese zither." The traditional koto is about six feet long with thirteen movable bridges placed under its strings. The player sits at the end known as the "head." Nontraditional kotos can vary in length as well as some of the design details. As with many objects and activities in Japanese society, the koto and the playing of it have been used to signify the social class and certain social situations. Varied individuals such as aristocrats, blind male professionals, and female amateurs indicated their status by how they played the instrument. An ethnomusicologist at the U. of Otago in New Zealand, Johnson ranges through the construction and design of the koto, music for it and the performance of this, the koto's place in Japanese culture, and changes in these as Japanese society has changed. Color photographs of different perspectives, including close-ups when called for, accompany the technical, historical, and sociological topics. With the size and quality of a coffee-table art book, this work makes this somewhat specialized subject readily accessible to readers with different interests about Japanese culture and musicology.

The Koto: A Traditional Instrument In Contemporary Japan is a thorough, illustrated history of a traditional stringed Japanese instrument. The text goes into depth on the koto's useage throughout history, techniques for tuning and playing it, its performance today, methods for constructing individual instruments as works of art, and much more. A comprehensive resource covering just about anything and everything there is to know about the haunting melodies that continue to be played on this remarkable instrument, up to the modern day.

Along with Mt. Fuji, Cherry Blossoms, Geisha, and the Shamisen, the Japanese koto is THE symbol of traditional Japan. Other then a couple of advanced musicological studies, and a chapter or two in other books about Japanese music, no other book gives such a complete reference to this all important instrument. Not only does this book include just about every aspect about the history, design, construction, and music theory of the Japanese koto, but it is also a beautiful book with wonderful photos, diagrams, and charts covering the full spectum of knowledge about this instrument. From Yatsuhashi to the most modern "Doremi Popcorn" koto, "The Koto" is also very accessible to the average reader. As a student of the koto, I only dared to dream about a work such as this, and now my dream has come true. My only small complaint (if any) is that for the price, a CD might have been included with a sampling of koto pieces, illustrating the diverse music that the koto has produced over its almost 2,000 year history.

All the more impressive because the author is not a polished writer. He merely recounts the most astounding events as if he just happened to be taking a walk.

This book brought me to tears, when I realized what our soldiers went through. He talks about beatings and bombings and life in Japanese POW camps, and it sounds like you are there. Somehow all the documentaries I've seen and all the books I read never made me understand what it was REALLY like.

I highly recommend this book as a first person account for anyone who wants to know the truth about being a POW in Japan, and the Bataan Death March.

I started this book with the thought that it needed an editor. I ended the book with the thought that this book was one of the best books I have read in years. It is a very personal view of a young man from a small rural world dumped into big time history as it happend. He is thrilled and scared and constantly in the present of the war itself. You feel for the teen age kid as he reels through the events like a pinball in a pinball machine. He jumps in sometimes and other times just rolls with the punches. His discriptions are weak (not a writer) but real and griping.

I started this book with the thought that it needed an editor. I ended the book with the thought that this book was one of the best books I have read in years. It is a very personal view of a young man from a small rural world dumped into big time history as it happend. He is thrilled and scared and constantly in the present of the war itself. You feel for the teen age kid as he reels through the events like a pinball in a pinball machine. He jumps in sometimes and other times just rolls with the punches. His discriptions are weak (not a writer) but real and griping.

Now, this was my first Let's Draw Manga book, and I wondered what I would get out of it, but as soon as I opened it, I was amazed. The art is amazing, it shows you things you would not even consider, and it's not even just about Fantasy, though it goes into a great deal about it. It doesn't just throw you into the world of Fantasy. It makes sure you know the basics b4 you drown in all the knowledge that may be ahead of you. It's really great for beginners. I, personally, am not one, but needed a reference for different fantasy worlds (Feudal Japan and Medieval Europe, for example which this book includes), so this book is an amazing reference book for those who are intermediates and experts as well. With that said, it's for anyone and is well worth your money.

This book is wonderful in so many ways. I was a bit skeptical when I was about to buy this book. Not because of the cover, which is cute by the way, but because I have at least 2 books from let's draw manga, and the books are ok, but nothing to fascinating. I was totally wrong about this book! I love everything in this book. This book is a good foundation for those growing imaginations, as well as expanding imaginations to help feed your ideas and make you manga even better. This books contents includes:

Chapter one: Let's create some characters!...

1. Drawing human bodies
practice corner
planning page

2. Illustrating human sized characters
Western style-medival characters
planning page/ let's draw western-style
medival characters
sci-fi style
science fantasy character illustration
asain-style characters
Planning page/let's draw asian-style characters

Chapter 2: Let's establish our world!

1. Creating a western medival world
Let's illustrate our western
medieval world in color

2. The world of science fantasy
Let's draw a picture board

3. Creating an asian-style world
Let's illustrate our asian-style world in color

Chapter 3: Enemy and supporting characters!

1. New relationships
Planning page

2. Let's create enemy monsters
Sample drawing/ color process

3. let's create friendly monsters
planning page
drawing process: digital color illustration

Fantasy variations
drawing process: black and white illustration

Chapter four: Magic and eguipment

1. Weapons and armor

costumes
weapons
accessories
2. Magic and magical equpiment
medival
science fantasy
asian
let's digitally illustrate a magical scene

Chapter five: Let's draw fantsy manga!

steps:
1. Ideas
2.Ecstablishing the plot
3. story boarding
4. drawing and inking a draft

Manga " the spring seekers"

Chapter six: Author illustrations

All in all, I think this is a fun and interesting book. It is a good foundation to start you off in your manga processes. I difintely recommend this book! It is a total steal. Plus there is no nudity at all in this book, so those of you who are offended by nudity, this book is right up your alley!

I have a collection of How to Draw Manga books, but this was my first Let's Draw Manga and I love it. Simply put: The book is extremely well done - no skimping on the art quality (what you see on the cover resembles the inside art, if not better) and excellent color graphics. It is probably for upper-level beginners and up as far as details in how to draw.
There are six chapters, each with about two subsections. The chapters are:
Let's create some characters
Let's establish our world
Enemy and Supporting characters
Magic and equipment
Let's draw fantasy manga
Author illustrations.

There are body shapes that you can photocopy (intelligent move by the authors), very detailed descriptions, CG instructions(which are great), background development and explanations, character designs and costumes, and finally a book with a good proportion of male character information (which I find hard to get out of the How to Draw Manga book series). It is almost like a compilation of the many of the How to Draw Manga books. Well worth the purchase. Useful. Great addition to collection.

Professors Yamanouchi & Quinn offer a much needed corrective to the five-decade old demonization of the Japanese soldier. This evocative, poetic, and compelling collection of soldiers' letters strikes down the dusty image of Japan's warriors as mindless, unthinking fanatics. In this volume we discover an entirely new and fresh insight into the mind-set and attitudes of young sailors, soldiers, and airmen who died in the service of Japan. The reader cannot help but be impressed by the sensitivity of these young men, by their literary yearnings, by their touching hopes for their families and futures, by the lyrical portraits they paint of even the grim and dangerous settings to which the war brought them. No little debt is owed to the editors for their masterful translation of these letters into useful and understandable American idiom. This is a rare and unforgettable reading experience which illuminates once again the common threads which bind humanity.

Dr. Midori Yamanouchi's translation of this post World War II collection of letters is brilliant. The work is a deeply moving collection of diaries written by young Japanese soldiers who gave their lives in a series of battles going from China, through the Pacific to the skies closer to Japan. Many of them were cultivated young university students, full of life and dreams, reflecting on the beauty of life, the love of their families and the painful duty that was their lot. These are sad voices, the now stilled voices of tragedy. Overall, an insight into war and the human spirit that rivals such western classics as "The Red Badge of Courage" or "All Quiet on the Western Front". Generations often forget the 'sins' of the past. Reading this book - now in English - may just remind us to avoid the trajedy of war at all costs.

One of the best Pacific War stories told by the people who had to be there.
Each story captures your soul and makes you wonder why we even had to fight.
The saddest thing of all is that war still goes on somewhere in this world and that young people are still being killed just like the ones in the book.

This book must be read by as many people as possible, so perhaps we learn something and war will never start again.
I wonder when we, the human beings, will stop fighting and begin talking, negotiating...

There are books like this for the US as well as Germany soldiers. And, they are equally powerful.
It is said: People who never learn from the past will repeat the same mistakes all over again.

Ever since this book was originally published in 1949, four years after the end of the World War II, it has been one of the best sellers in Japan, even to this day.

Books on Japan that are worth reading must fulfill three criteria. They must be based on a direct access to primary sources, which presupposes a high degree of familiarity with the Japanese language and social history. They have to build upon the scholarly literature, including analysis and commentary presented by Japanese scholars. And they have to offer a theoretical perspective that is relevant to the subject under consideration.

The Logic of Japanese Politics meets these three criteria with a wide margin. Professor Curtis seems to know every major political figure firsthand and has developed with many of them a personal relationship since their rookie years as junior Diet members. As a distinguished political scientist, he brings intellectual breadth as well as historical depth to his topic, and has himself published extensively in Japanese. He is careful not to placate preconceived notions on the Japanese political system, and develops useful comparisons with politics in Europe (whereas most observers, including Japanese political actors, tend to overuse the comparison with US politics).

The 1990s was an important turning point for Japanese politics. From 1989 to 1998, Japan had nine prime ministers; there had been only eleven over the previous thirty-four years. From 1955 to 1993, only one party, the LDP, was in power at the national level. Then during one year beginning in August 1993, every party in the Diet except for the Communists participated in one coalition government or another. Among parties opposed to the LDP, affiliations were in such a flux that a number of Diet members stopped indicating their party membership on their name cards. Although the PLD's absence from power lasted for less than a year, before they returned to government in an alliance with their former arch-rival the Japan Socialist Party, the period marked a dramatic rupture in Japanese politics, with the end of the so-called '55 system and the quest for a new political landscape that took some time consolidating.

Each chapter focuses on a particular phase of this transition: the ouster of the LDP from government and its replacement by a seven-party coalition led by the charismatic prime minister Morihiro Hosokawa; the unraveling of this coalition that nonetheless achieved to pass an important electoral reform; the LDP's return to power in a coalition led first by the Socialist Party's chairman Tomiichi Murayama, then by former MITI minister Ryutaro Hashimoto; the disappointing results of the 1998 upper-house election and the appointment of Keizo Obuchi over Junichiro Koizumi as party chairman and head of government.

The result of these changes and reorganization was immobilism and confusion precisely at a time when Japan needed policy change and strategic direction in order to deal with an ailing economy. Despite the rhetoric on the need for political reform, administrative restructuring and deregulation, Curtis shows that the Japanese public felt ambivalent toward undoing the system that brought Japan its postwar success, and that the authorities delivered relatively little in terms of real departures from the past. He also castigates the Japanese's infatuation with the idea that the two-party system of Westminster democracy would magically cure Japanese politics from all its ills, arguing instead that the "rice-roots" quality of Japanese democracy is its strength rather than its weakness.

Distinctly Japanese political institutions are introduced throughout the text. The zokugiin is a Diet member who concentrates on a single issue, developing expertise and influence through his contacts with the bureaucracy and special interest representatives. The habatsu is a faction within the LDP bound together by ties of personal allegiance more than doctrinal content. The most powerful faction usually leaves the position of party president (and thus prime minister) to someone from another faction, while exercising power from the shadow through control of the post of party secretary-general and through controlling the composition of the prime minister's cabinet. The all-important secretary-general has final say on candidate nominations and is in charge of the party's funds, two sources of power that enable him both to do favors and to punish party members.

The kokutai or kokkai taisaku iinkai is a party's Diet-strategy committee that doubles the formal House Management Committee (giin unei iinkai, or giun) and that offers the channel for backroom deals between parties or for informal contacts with the bureaucracy. The innai kaiha is a parliamentary caucus that can be distinct from the political party (or parties) it supports. It came to play a critical role after the collapse of LDP one-party dominance in 1993 as politicians seeked to restructure the party system.

Detailed knowledge of the functioning of these institutions and others is important in order to understand how politicians operate within particular institutional constraints. Politics in Japan makes sense in Japanese terms, and clear reasoning can make sense of Japanese politics.

I have lived in Japan for a few years in the 1990s and have always assumed that (at least for now) the politicians there don't really matter. And compared to American politics, Japanese politics seemed dry with one party rule until 1993. But Curtis shows how exciting it all is under the surface. I read this book very slowly, wanting to absorb every detail; however, Curtis writes well and will keep you moving through the events of the 1990s.

So if you are a student of Japan and are trying to piece together some of the highlights you already know, read this book. Curtis has done us a great service.

As the title of the book suggests, there is a logic to Japanese politics, just as there is a logic, a coherence, to other social phenomena and behavior. This will no doubt disturb those students of the Asian "mind" who are prone to boil down Japanese "national character" to some sort of ahistorical essence. As Professor Curtis says, he hopes he "will leave the reader with a sense of the culture of Japanese politics. It is not a book that argues that culture explains Japanese politics." This is revisionism operating in a healthy sense. There are a couple of specific points I would like to make. In dissecting electoral reform, he does not mention recent play given to direct election of the prime minister, an idea first raised by Nakasone in the 1960s. Of course, the conservatives are betting this would benefit the election of a strong right-wing leader in the mold of Shintaro Ishihara, the present governor of Tokyo. Secondly, in speculating on the direction Japanese politics may take, he mentions only briefly what he terms the New Right and the implications for U.S.-Japan relations. The drift to the right in Japanese politics is unmistakable, which in its worst form would lead to remilitarization and indeed pose a problem for Far East security. Already, the national anthem and national flag, replete with their war-time associations, have been officially recognized. This past February both the upper and lower houses of the Diet formed committees to study revising the Constitution. The New Right, or neo-nationalists, if you will, see this as an opening for revising Article 9, the anti-war article. Just one small error to point out in a name: read Taku Yamasaki vice Yamazaki. All in all, this is a tremdously valuable study.

This was the first Japanese craft book I ever owned (I got it for my 14th birthday - I'm now 27), and given the recent popularity of Japanese crafts, I'm surprised that it's not still in print. "Lovable Mini-Dolls" provides patterns for making 165 little (about 3 - 4 inch) felt dolls, including costumed dolls (a pirate, a soldier, a princess, a king, etc), insects, birds, fish, zoo animals and story book characters. Most of these dolls are very simple to make, particularly the animals (I can guarantee that they are easy enough for a 14 year old with minimal sewing skills to make) and colour pictures of the dolls are provided throughout. People who like this book should also consider buying "The Cute Book", which is the closest book to this one, which is currently in print.

The patterns and ideas in this book are adorable. The instructions and patterns (full size patterns) are clear and easy to understand. You'll love it!

This book was definitely worth the price and more! You get 165 different patterns! If this book does not inspire the dollmaker-crafter,then I don't know what to say. The instructions were wonderful with the cute illustrations! Even the novice would understand and create these dolls,no problem. So go ahead and get this book, you won't be disappointed!!