Japan Books

In 1860, 77 Japanese, all anti-foreign and opposed to opening their country to thw world were sent to Washington to spend 10 months with the people they habitually referred to as "the hairy ones" or "the barbarians", the people of the United States. They received a warm welcome. To the Americans, the two-sworded, top-knotted Japanese might easily have been creatures from another planet. This is the story of the wining and dinning of those Japanese visitors as they were paraded through San Francisco, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelpia, and New York. Fantastic happenings, but most people don't even know of them. This book is wonderfully illustrated, however I don't know by whom.

Professor Sugayama Lebra presents a fascinating analysis of modern Japan's hereditary elite. The focus of her analysis is the "kazuko" -- Japan's hereditary peerage of the 1871-1947 period. As part of their westernizing reforms, the Meiji oligarchs merged the Kyoto court nobles ("kuge") and the feudal lords ("daimyo") into a single artistocratic class, explicitly based on the British peerage. The "kazuko" or flowerly lineage served two functions: (1) to fill the non-elective upper chamber of the new parliament, and (2) to provide a social buffer between the revitalized Imperial Court and the rest of Japanese society. The American occupation reforms divested this hereditary elite of much its wealth and the 1947 Japanese constitution formally abolished the peerage. Nonetheless, the aristocratic pedigrees and family ties continue to play an important role in modern Japanese political, social and economic life.

Relying on informer interviews, and extensive archival and genealogical research, Sugiyama Lebra recreates the world of this aristocratic class. Topics include: lineage, elite socialization, gender roles, status negotiation, marriage and adoption, professions and status careers, and adjustment to postwar life as common citizens of the new Japan. The book also provides valuable insights into the modern development of the Japanese imperial institution.

Professor Sugiyama Lebra's book is a must read for anyone interest in contemporary Japan or the role of traditional elites in modern socities in general. This is an immensely readible book. Although targeted to a scholarly audience, this book is acessible to academics and non-academics alike.

Every year I recommend them to my students. The ones who buy them seem to do a little better than they might have. The cards are numbered, so it's easy to tell them which ones they need to know, and which they can set aside based on the curriculum. It's harder to accomplish that type of culling of information with a review book you'd buy at the superstore.

In yet another superb, originally conceived offering, noted military historian, Eric Hammel brings us first-person accounts from thirty-nine of the American fighter aces who blasted their way across the skies of the Pacific and East Asia from December 7, 1941, until the final air battles over Japan itself in August 1945.

Coupled with a clear view of America's far-flung air war against Japan, Hammel's detailed interviews bring out the most thrilling in-the-cockpit experiences of the air combat that the Pacific War's best Army, Navy, and Marine Pilots have chosen to tell.

Meet Frank Holmes, who defied death in an outmoded P-36 while still clad in a seersucker suit he had worn to mass earlier that morning. Fly with Scott McCuskey as, single-handed at Midway, he takes out two waves of Japanese dive-bombers that are attacking his precious aircraft carrier.

Sweat out the last precious drops of fuel in a defective Marine Wildcat fighter as Medal of Honor recipient Jeff DeBlanc bores ahead to his target to keep the faith with the bomber crews he has been assigned to protect. Experience the ecstasy of total victory as Ralph Hanks becomes the Navy's first Hellcat ace-in-a-day when he destroys five Japanese fighters over the Gilbert Islands in a single mission.

A superb interviewer, Hammel has collected some of the very best air-combat tales from America's war with Japan. Combined with the four other volumes in "The American Aces Speak" series, this work will stand as an enduring testament to the brave men who fought the first and last air war in which high-performance, piston-engine fighters held sway. These are stories of bravery and survival, of men and machines pitted against one another in heart-stopping, unforgiving high-speed aerial combat. "The American Aces Speak" is a highly-charged emotional rendering of what men felt in the now-dim days of personal combat at the very edge of our living national history. There was never a war like it, and there never will be again. These are America's eagles, and the stories are their own, in their very own words.

i like solve any problem with fuzzy thought. i like this method. i like every one think about this subject.

Frank Schwartz demonstrates a keen knowledge of Japanese policy-making and the "art" of consensus in Japan--a methodology which has led to the dismal economic environment the country now suffers. He shows that although consensus may be worthwhile, leadership is more often required to steer a nation towards growth and prosperity.

In a simple, unpretentious, and totally accessible style, Murakami tells six tales, each with a message about life and death and love and loss. Simple, straightforward stories, haunting and hypnotic in tone, belie a complexity of themes and thought-provoking observations about the importance of creating your own identity, building relationships, sharing, and avoiding the emptiness of the "bogeyman's" box, "ready for everybody...[and] waiting with the lid open."

All the main characters are single or separated, and all feel isolated and empty, naïve in matters of love and life. In "UFO in Kashiro," an abandoned husband agrees to help a friend by delivering a box to Hokkaido, learning that the box "contains the something that was inside you. You'll never get it back." In "Landscape in Flatiron," a 40-ish artist and a young girl meet and build a bonfire. "The fire itself has to be free," he remarks, while the young girl comments on the emptiness of her life. In "All God's Children Can Dance," a young man pursues the man he believes to be his father to an abandoned baseball field, "chasing the tail of the darkness inside [him]." "Thailand" features a doctor in her 40's who is told that she must get rid of the stone inside her and that "living and dying are, in a sense, of equal value."

In the last two stories, "Superfrog Saves Tokyo," and "Honey Pie," Murakami begins to offer more hope and direction to his characters. Superfrog, a 6' tall frog who needs a plodding banker to help him fight the Worm and save Tokyo from an earthquake, teaches that "the ultimate value of our lives is decided not by how we win but by how we lose." And in "Honey Pie," which brings all these themes together, a young man has an opportunity to find happiness with the only woman he's ever loved and her young daughter.

Despite the fact that Murakami states his themes overtly, the stories themselves are enigmatic and the action unpredictable, and the reader will ponder his meanings and his images long after the stories are finished. Wonderful descriptions, small details which reflect the characters' class and educational level, sympathetic and well drawn characters, and a sense that the world is absurd and illogical make this short collection memorable. pp Mary Whipple

This is a superb biography, much more than simply a translation of the author's earlier Japanese-language book on Matsuoka. Lu has drawn on much pirmary source material not exploited by others, including interviews with many people who knew or worked with (or against) Matsuoka. Because he is very aware of the broader context, he has been able to accurately assess Matsuoka's real impact. This makes the book essential for any study of the events of the period, and particularly so of Japan's road to the Pacific War. In addition, Lu draws a deeply insightful psychological portrait of this very complex man.

This book is the only English picture book that introduces Japanese that I have ever seen. John's sketches show his understanding of the Japanese language well. What also makes the book special is John's position in Japanese life. He learned Japanese as a foreigner looking at Japan.

Reading it will be a source of enjoyment for everybody whether beginner or advanced in Japanese.

Thank you John for such a wonderful expression of Ai.

Peter C. Smith is THE authority on dive bombing. His reputation is based upon books like AICHI D3A1/2 VAL, an excellent, excellent history of the Japanese dive-bomber that may be the all-time ship-killer in military history. Part of the Crowood Aviation series, Smith's book, published in 1999, is a masterpiece of research and writing, easily deserving a six star rating.

Smith packs an incredible amount of information into the book's 192 pages. After a brief history of dive bombing in Japan, he presents a history of the Aichi Aircraft Company before delving into the development and combat exploits of the Type 99 Val dive-bomber. He provides detailed -and previously unavailable - information on the Val's use over China, Pearl Harbor, Wake Island, Java, Australia, the Indian Ocean sortie, the Coral Sea Battle, Midway, Guadalcanal ops and late-war use as a kamikaze. For each of these actions Smith supplies first-hand accounts from Japanese and Allied participants along with detailed summaries of the bomb hits Vals made on various ships! Smith also profiles notable Type 99 pilots, describes unit markings, surviving Vals and so on. The author really did his homework on this one!

The book is brimming with illustrations - 190 black & white photos, maps, aircraft four-views, bomb hit diagrams, performance charts, cockpit schematics, dive-bombing attack diagrams, etc. The only thing missing is color profiles but that may have been a pricing decision on the part of Crowood Press.

In short, AICHI D3A1/2 VAL is one impressive package - top-notch research, incredible detail, exciting reading. Long out of print, it now sells for around $90.00. Yet if you are a Pacific air war buff and want to know what Aichi's graceful dive-bomber accomplished, this is the book for you. Military history doesn't get much better than this, folks!