Japan Books

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.

Awareness of economic needs as well as a tendency to playfullness make modern religions in Japan (whether Buddhist or Shinto is not important in this case) much more successful than in most other industrialized nations. This book shows by a number of detailled cases and examples how that works and has always been working. At the same time Western observers begin to understand that praying for worldly benefits is not at variance with sincere religious belief, as a Western perception of religion often presupposes. Rather, it is an intrinsic part of religious activity, and the fact that it is not ridiculed in the Japanese context is probably one factor for the still dominant role of religion in this country.

Professors Tanabe and Reader provide a superb analysis of Japanese religion. Tanabe and Reader are highly respected scholars in the field of Japanese and Asianb religions and their collective works could well provide the nucleus for any library on the subject. The authors amply demonstrate that there is a distinct commonality to Japanese religion that underlies the rich varieties and apparent contradictions of Japanese religious practice. They provide a myriad of examples and case studies to demonstrate the this-worldly nature end emphasis on personal gain / advantage aspects of Japanese religious culture.

To put it simply, this is one of those books that make you say: "By Jove, I've got it." The authors cut through the complexities of Japanese religion to clearly exhibit the common core. I used this book as a text for my course on Japanese religion and the students really benefitted from the experience.

I have also read Ian Reader's work on the Japanese sect, Aum Shinrikyo. He understands Aum far better than any other scholar and I commend his Aum books to both the scholar and general reader. Reader's books are written in a clear and lively manner.

Tobin et al compare preschools in Japan, the US and China in a fascinating cross-cultural study. What makes this study so compelling is that you hear not only the authors' interpretations of what they see, but also the opinions of the teachers, administrators and the parents OF ALL THREE CULTURES. By having parents, teachers and administrators watch video tapes of the preschools in the non-native country, you get an eye-opening assesment of what each preschool is trying to do in its culture and how it compares with what other preschools accomplish. I have my daughter enrolled in a Japanese preschool, and the opnions and analysis on what Japanese preschools are like is dead-on, as is the analysis of the American preschool.

The real eye-opener for those readers not familiar with preschools in Japan is how chaotic, loosely-structured, and easy-going they are. The 30-1 child-teacher ratio makes chaos inevitable, but it forces the kids to learn how to deal with each other, rather than an authority figure. Contrasted to the American pre-school style, where the teacher runs the show, enforces the rules and molds the kids to act in a manner that the teacher/school has decided is appropriate, Japanese kids actually get more practice resolving conflicts and taking responsibility for problem-solving.

This is actually one study that is fun to read, too! Highly recommended.

Tobin's book has been around for a number of years now. Nevertheless, it continues to set the standard in the creation of video ethnography. Graduate students across the nation use this book for its brilliant methodology and for his insightful readings of culture.

This is from the book: There are predominant view that Asian cultures are objectified and understood strictly through Western ideas. Based on a detailed examination of presentations by Japanese Buddhists at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, Snodgrass argues that Buddhists themselves helped reformulate Buddhism into a modern world religion.

This is really an excellent book. Using the World's Parliament of Religions in 1893 as a focal point, Snodgrass explores the various issues, conflicting interests and uneasy alliances, and mutual perceptions and misperceptions coming together in and branching out from this seminal event in religious history. Snodgrass has a historian's knack for critical scholarship and turns a keen eye towards the political dimensions of all of this without being reductive...one still gets a clear sense of the various deeply felt religious beliefs and spiritual convictions held by the different people who appear in the book. The Buddhist reform movements of the Meiji period and their formulation of a modern Buddhism (formulations that have become "common sense" in both Japan and America today) are covered in great, illuminating detail and with careful analysis. American assumptions of Buddhism are also dissected, and the author's critique of Paul Carus' "Gospel of Buddha"--a popular work that introduced (in a highly distorted fashion, as she shows) many Americans to the "other world religion" (besides Christianity)--is quite to the point.

"Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West" is scholarly and sophisticated yet written in a clear, engaging prose style. It should be of particular interest especially to anyone interested in modern Japanese Buddhism and modern American religion, in colonial and post-colonial studies, or in the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago.

Great details on how to slice the parts of the fish and how to distinguish fish.

I bought this book in a bookshop here in Tokyo actually after reading through it, I worked in Japanese resturants both in Australia and Japan for about 4 years and after making a change in my line of work I wanted a reference book on some of the areas that I didn't get time to learn in full. I'd made Sushi professionally but wasn't doing it long enough to rotate through all of the different areas of prep

There are very good step by step picture (glossy photos) instructions for how to cut fish and prepare different types of fish plus there are some great novelty chirashi items for kids too.

The proof in the pudding for me though was the part on Shari (sushi rice), if that more fundumental part isn't good then it calls the quality of the whole book into question. It was certainly not lacking!

In the end, with the sushi rice in this book so good the fact that there are lots of imaginative recipes in here that you might get in a japanese home but never in a resturant on top of the standard stuff really makes this book worth while. All the fundamentals are here, plus a lot of fun stuff so you get to involve yourself to a level that suits you.

During World War II, Japanese railway soldiers constructed the 415-kilometer (258 miles) Burma-Thailand railway, very ardous task deep in rugged mountains heavily infected by cholera and tropical diseases. Building the urgently-needed railway within fifteen months was a great engineering achievement, but one accomplished at the cost of unfortunate death of 12,656 prisoners of war, including 133 Americans, and 8600 local workers. Both Japanese soldiers and the prisoners of war worked in a punishing enviroment, facing almost continious rain, shortage of supplies and food. The Japanese officers and the Korean guards of the prisoners camps were under the intense psycological strains, caught between strict military orders and demands of humanity.
After Japan surrendered in August 1945, two railway officers and 43 men from the prisoners camps were hanged, through military crimes courts. A prisoners camp commander wrote in his will (abstrated)
'Under these most adverse conditions, I proceeded to perform my duty with selfless devotion to my country, as well as doing my best to improve and rationalise the situation in the camp. It was not in my power to prevent many precious lives being lost during the construction work because of such adverse conditions.
However Heaven did not favor us and we were defeated, and I am now to fade away'
This book tells, vividly and for the first time in English, the personal accounts of these railwaymen throughout the war.

The book is a wonderful addition to the English-speaking literature on the World War II which gives a fine impression of the young men of the Japanese Railway Regiment and their attitude to the life. It will help Westners to understand the Japanese better, and make better connections between the Japanese today and the Japanese then - however much we have all changed, there are a lot of misconceptions we can still have about each other, and this is sad. It is not suprizing that some of the Prisoners of War were able to get on well with the Japanese railwaymen, and and it is a pity that this is not better known, but such episodes will be known by the book.

Comprised of eleven stories, one play, and five poems written in Japan during the first half of the 20th Century, A Rainbow In The Desert: An Anthology of Early Twentieth-Century Japanese Children's Literature presents a seminal and invaluable contribution to the study of Japanese literature for American students. The stories themselves reflect an essential element of Japanese popular culture, while illustrating the evolving concept of children in early 20th Century Japanese thought including such issues as motherhood, education, and gender as applied to childhood. The contributors represent a full spectrum of Japanese literary talent and their work is very ably translated into English by Yukie Ohta. Also available in hardcover ..., Rainbow In The Desert is an exceptional body of work and highly recommended for students of modern Japanese literature, culture, and history.

Comprised of eleven stories, one play, and five poems written in Japan during the first half of the 20th Century, A Rainbow In The Desert: An Anthology of Early Twentieth-Century Japanese Children's Literature presents a seminal and invaluable contribution to the study of Japanese literature for American students. The stories themselves reflect an essential element of Japanese popular culture, while illustrating the evolving concept of children in early 20th Century Japanese thought including such issues as motherhood, education, and gender as applied to childhood. The contributors represent a full spectrum of Japanese literary talent and their work is very ably translated into English by Yukie Ohta. Also available in hardcover ..., Rainbow In The Desert is an exceptional body of work and highly recommended for students of modern Japanese literature, culture, and history.

There has been very little written about the various 'puppet' forces raised by the Japanese following the September 1931 Manchurian Incident, and Philip Jowett's book is a welcome arrival. Drawing from a wide range of sources, Mr. Jowett covers not only the major 'puppet' forces of Manchukuo and the Nanking Army, but also the Inner Mongolian Army, White Russians in Japanese service and a number of the smaller forces in North China. In addition to the written information there are a good selection of photos, organisational charts and four pages of colour plates showing uniforms and aircraft colour schemes. Volume two of the series is eagerly awaited.

Philip S. Jowett's Rays Of The Rising Sun: Armed Forces Of Japan's Asian Allies 1931-45, Volume 1: China And Manchukuo is also an excellent recommendation for military collections, covering a puppet government set up in China by the Japanese and the armed forces which served this government. These 'puppet' armies were large and held over a million before 1945, and influenced the course of the Japanese war effort in China and Asia. Despised by both the Chinese and the Japanese, the troops have been largely under-represented in World War II coverages, until now. Details of their organization, training, actions, and uniform and battles make for an important study.