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November 24, 2024
 

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Jeff Kingston
Jeff Kingston lives in Tokyo, teaches history at Temple University Japan and has been contributing to The Japan Times since 1988. "Contemporary Japan" (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012) is his most recent book.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 26, 2002
Wartime suffering that didn't count
JAPAN'S COMFORT WOMEN: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution During World War Two and the U.S. Occupation. By Yuki Tanaka. Routledge, London, 2002, 212 pp. $24.95 This is by far the best book available on this sordid chapter in Japan's history. Yuki Tanaka's sophisticated and textured assessment of Japan's...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 5, 2002
When the people put pen to paper
DEAR GENERAL MACARTHUR: Letters From the Japanese During the American Occupation, by Sodei Rinjiro. Rowman & Littlefield; Lanham, Maryland, 2001, 306 pp., $29.95 (cloth) It boggles the mind that Gen. Douglas MacArthur received some 500,000 letters from Japanese from all walks of life during his tenure...
CULTURE / Books
Apr 7, 2002
Images that shocked a nation
VIETNAM INC., by Philip Jones Griffiths. London: Phaidon, 2001. 223 pp. $28 (cloth) This is a superb collection of photos that depicts the ironies and inanities that resonated throughout the United States' misguided war in Vietnam. Here are haunting images of casual and mindless brutality, thought-provoking...
LIFE / Travel
Mar 19, 2002
On the road in Sri Lanka
While security concerns deter many visitors, traveling in Sri Lanka can be very rewarding because there is so much on offer and few other tourists to crowd the experience. Flights from Japan arrive in the middle of the night, ensuring that one's first impression is not a traffic jam.
LIFE / Travel
Mar 19, 2002
A rendezvous with the master
During a recent interview at his home in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Arthur C. Clarke displayed a youthful enthusiasm that belied his 84 years. Clad in a batik sarong and pastel shirt with a dolphin motif, the wheelchair-bound author of "2001: A Space Odyssey" was short of breath and complained that he was tired...
LIFE / Travel
Mar 19, 2002
On the road in Sri Lanka
While security concerns deter many visitors, traveling in Sri Lanka can be very rewarding because there is so much on offer and few other tourists to crowd the experience. Flights from Japan arrive in the middle of the night, ensuring that one's first impression is not a traffic jam.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Mar 19, 2002
Will peace ever return to paradise?
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka -- Foreign visitors to Sri Lanka have been singing its praises since the days of Marco Polo. From sacred Buddhist ruins and magnificent sculptures to gorgeous beaches and the verdant hills of the tea estates, this is an island that has much to offer in a relatively small area. Wandering...
LIFE / Travel
Mar 19, 2002
Will peace ever return to paradise?
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka -- Foreign visitors to Sri Lanka have been singing its praises since the days of Marco Polo. From sacred Buddhist ruins and magnificent sculptures to gorgeous beaches and the verdant hills of the tea estates, this is an island that has much to offer in a relatively small area. Wandering...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 24, 2002
Images of a common brutality
HELL IN THE PACIFIC: From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima and Beyond, by Jonathan Lewis and Ben Steele. London: Channel 4 Books, 2001, 288 pp. $30 (cloth) TALES BY JAPANESE SOLDIERS OF THE BURMA CAMPAIGN. Edited by Kazuo Tamayama and John Nunneley. London: Cassell, 2000, 252 pp., $24 (paper) If you've ever...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 27, 2002
The British perspective on Japan
JAPAN EXPERIENCES -- FIFTY YEARS, ONE HUNDRED VIEWS: Post-War Japan Through British Eyes, compiled and edited by Hugh Cortazzi. Japan Library: Richmond, UK, 2001, 633 pp., $65 (cloth) This doorstopper of a tome is a weighty, often insightful and quirky view of post-World War II Japan through the eyes...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 13, 2002
Why North Korea's people starved
THE GREAT NORTH KOREAN FAMINE: Famine, Politics and Foreign Policy, by Andrew S. Natsios. United States Institute of Peace Press, 2002, $19.95 (paper) This is a grim and troubling account of the 20th century's fifth great famine, a calamity that swept through North Korea during the 1990s, claiming an...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 2, 2001
Making the polluter pay
MINAMATA: Pollution and the Struggle For Democracy in Postwar Japan, by Timothy S. George. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001, 385 pp., $45 (cloth) The story of mercury poisoning suffered by residents near the port of Minamata in Kyushu is a well-known tale of knavery on a grand scale. A telling...
CULTURE / Books
Oct 7, 2001
A lonely struggle for recognition
LEGACIES OF THE COMFORT WOMEN OF WORLD WAR II, edited by Margaret Stetz and Bonnie B.C. Oh. M.E. Sharpe: Armonk, NY, 2001, 230 pp., $55 (cloth) More than 50 years after the end of World War II, the question of whether or not the Japanese government bears responsibility for forcing tens of thousands...
CULTURE / Books
Sep 16, 2001
The ideology of Japanese identity
MULTIETHNIC JAPAN, by John Lie. Harvard University Press, Cambridge University Press, 2001, 248 pp. $35 Japan and many of its observers have avoided the confusion and contention associated with diversity by assuming, asserting and elaborating a monolithic, monoethnic Japan that jostles uncomfortably...
CULTURE / Books
Aug 19, 2001
Politico battled clans, bureaucrats
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF OZAKI YUKIO: The Struggle For Constitutional Government in Japan. Translated by Fumiko Hara. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2001, 455 pp., $35 (hardback) Well into this fascinating account of Japanese politics, which spans the period from the beginning of the Meiji Era...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 22, 2001
Thanks to 'doken kokka,' are Japan's best decades behind it?
THE EMPTINESS OF JAPANESE AFFLUENCE, by Gavan McCormack. Armonk, NY: ME Sharpe, 2001 (2nd edition), 311 pp., $27.95 (paperback). What went wrong? A decade ago few would have predicted the sustained malaise that has gripped Japan since the early 1990s.
CULTURE / Books
Jun 24, 2001
When reason became treason in China
JAPAN'S IMPERIAL DIPLOMACY: Consuls, Treaty Ports and War in China 1895-1938, by Barbara Brooks. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 2000, 272 pp., $55. Why did Japan suddenly lurch from being a good international citizen in the 1920s to becoming a regional rogue in the 1930s? Usually Japan's Asian...
CULTURE / Books
Apr 29, 2001
Oral history exposes Japan's wartime enslavement of POWs
UNJUST ENRICHMENT: How Japan's Companies Built Postwar Fortunes Using American POWs, by Linda Goetz Holmes. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2001, 202 pp., $24.95. During World War II, nearly 50,000 U.S. soldiers and civilians became prisoners of the Japanese. Approximately half of this total "were...
CULTURE / Books
Apr 7, 2001
Historian battles to redeem the past
JAPAN'S PAST, JAPAN'S FUTURE: One Historian's Odyssey, by Saburo Ienaga. Translated by Richard H. Minear. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001, pp. 202, $19.95. For the past four decades, Saburo Ienaga has crusaded as the conscience of Japan, fighting to protect intellectual freedom and challenge...
CULTURE / Books
Mar 6, 2001
Two perspectives on a gray tomorrow
CARING FOR THE ELDERLY IN JAPAN AND THE U.S.: Practices and Policies, edited by Susan Orpett Long. Routledge: London, 2000. 358 pp., $100. By the year 2025, some 26 percent of Japan's population will be over 65 years old, meaning that society and families will need to cope with the various needs of...
U.S. aircraft carrier returns to Japan carrying navy’s ‘most capable fighter’
U.S. 7th Fleet Commander Vice Adm. Fred Kacher speaks to reporters shortly after the arrival of aircraft carrier USS George Washington at Yokosuka naval base in Kanagawa Prefecture on Friday.
After Shohei Ohtani bump, Iwate ironware maker sees brighter future
Kaito Kikuchi's decision to send superstar Shohei Ohtani one of his company's traditional ironware tea kettles has paid off with a surge of interest from general consumers.
Japan approves ¥21.9 trillion stimulus plan
The policy chiefs of the Democratic Party for the People, Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito — Makoto Hamaguchi (left), Itsunori Onodera (center) and Mitsunari Okamoto — shake hands after reaching an agreement on an economic stimulus package on Wednesday.
Woman dies after train collides with car in Tochigi
A Moka Railway train car
Japan will spend ¥325 million in government funds on Princess Yuriko's funeral
Princess Yuriko waves during the New Year's public greeting at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo in January 2019.
133-year-old Kyushu railway station remains to be partially preserved
The remains of the original Moji Station in Kitakyushu
After Shohei Ohtani bump, Iwate ironware maker sees brighter future
Kaito Kikuchi's decision to send superstar Shohei Ohtani one of his company's traditional ironware tea kettles has paid off with a surge of interest from general consumers.
Shohei Ohtani wins National League MVP award
Shohei Ohtani celebrates after hitting a three-run home run against the Padres during the National League Division Series at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles last month.
The slow-burn success of ‘A Samurai in Time’
A 19th-century warrior gets struck by lightning and wakes to find himself in 21st-century Kyoto in Junichi Yasuda’s surprise hit “A Samurai in Time.”
Around a quarter of Japan married couples in their 20s met through dating apps
A survey released by an organization promoting “Good Couples Day” shows that 24% of couples in their 20s met their marriage partner through a dating app.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?
By Kathryn Wortley

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