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Florian Coulmas
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 31, 2013
Glacial change slow to heat up Japan's economy
The Japanese manager was once portrayed as a fearless samurai ready to take on the world. This was when Western companies and management scholars woke up to the presence of a potent competitor outside the Western world.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 10, 2013
Providing lessons on nuclear policy
FALLOUT FROM FUKUSHIMA, by Richard Broinowski. Scribe Publications, 2012, 273 pp., A$27.95 (paperback)
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jan 19, 2013
Meiji Japanese who sought to improve China
ASIA FOR THE ASIANS: China in the Lives of Five Meiji Japanese, by Paula S. Harrell. Merwin Asia, 2012, 407 pp., $35 (paperback)
CULTURE / Books
Aug 29, 2010
New look at old Edo's window to the West
Japan's seclusion policy (sakoku) from the early 17th to the mid-19th century is commonly studied from the point of view of the bakufu, the Tokugawa government in Edo that exercised central control over the other domains of the realm.
CULTURE / Books
Dec 21, 2008
Japan threatened by social divide
POVERTY AND SOCIAL WELFARE IN JAPAN, edited by Masami Iwata and Akihiko Nishizawa. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2008, 323 pp., A$54.95 (paper) Recent commotions on financial markets have underscored the fact that neoliberal reforms and destatization have not brought us the advantages of competition,...
CULTURE / Books
Aug 3, 2008
Japan politics in the 'short 20th century'
MARUYAMA MASAO and THE FATE OF LIBERALISM IN TWENTIETH- CENTURY JAPAN by Karube Tadashi, translated by David Noble. I-House Press, 2008, 212 pp., ¥2,500 (cloth) Masao Maruyama was one of the most influential contemporary Japanese intellectuals. Tadashi Karube is his heir in the sense that he is a professor...
CULTURE / Books
May 4, 2008
Japan as a land of many religions
PROPHET MOTIVE: Deguchi Onisaburo, Oomoto, and the Rise of New Religions in Imperial Japan, by Nancy K. Stalker. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2007, 265 pp., $49 (cloth) Reviewed by Florian Coulmas Japan has sometimes been called an irreligious country, but students of religion know that this...
CULTURE / Books
Dec 2, 2007
Japanese intellectual crosscurrents
The Scars of War: Tokyo during World War II: Writings of Takeyama Michio, edited and translated by Richard H. Minear. Lanham, M.D.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 207 pp., 2007, $24.95. (cloth) Michio Takeyama (1903-1984) was one of many 20th-century intellectuals who in the course of their life...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 9, 2007
Act of missionary hypocrisy
The ordeal of the women who were coerced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Armed Forces during the 1930s and 1940s is beyond dispute, as is the responsibility of the Japanese state for these deeds.
CULTURE / Books
Dec 24, 2006
Word power: 'The way' and the way you say it
OGYU SORAI'S PHILOSOPHICAL MASTERWORKS: The Bendo and Benmei, edited and translated by John A. Tucker. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2006, 478 pp., $56 (cloth). One of the foremost thinkers of our time, Noam Chomsky, has argued that the United States is a rogue state. To arrive at this conclusion,...
CULTURE / Books
Nov 5, 2006
Following the paper trail to a modern Japan
JAPAN IN PRINT: Information and Nation in the Early Modern Period, by Mary Elizabeth Berry. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 2006, 325 pp., $45.95 (cloth). The title of this book is to be taken literally. "Japan in Print" is not about Japanese prints or printing in Japan,...
CULTURE / Books
Aug 13, 2006
Shifting relations with China
JAPAN'S RELATIONS WITH CHINA: Facing a Rising Power, edited by Lam Peng Er. London: Routledge, 2006, 242 pp., £65 (cloth). Sino-Japanese relations are of critical importance to the future development of the two countries as well as wider East Asia. At the present time these relations are characterized...
CULTURE / Books
May 14, 2006
A force yet to be reckoned with
CHINA'S NEW NATIONALISM: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy, by Peter Hays Gries. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005, 224 pp., $19.95 (paper). In East Asia, nationalism never acquired quite as bad a name as it did in Europe, and it is not uncommon to hear politicians go on record with nationalistic...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 12, 2006
Fathoming the depths and heights of Japan's intercultural encounters
JAPAN'S LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH THE WEST by Sukehiro Hirakawa. Folkstone: Global Oriental, 2005, 557 pp., £50 (cloth). Rudyard Kipling, one of the most popular writers in the English tongue of his generation, addressed his poem "The White Man's Burden" to the American people in 1899 -- when the...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 15, 2005
When law and justice won't mix
JAPAN'S COLONIZATION OF KOREA: Discourse and Power, by Alexis Dudden. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2005, 215 pp. $45 (cloth). Lawful and just are two separate things that may be irreconcilable. A good example that offers plenty of material to fathom this out was the annexation of Korea by Japan....
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 20, 2005
The undeniable legacy left after Japan wreaked havoc
RACE WAR! White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire, by Gerald Horne. New York and London: New York University Press, 2004, 407 pp., 4,478 yen (cloth). Racism is a particularly dirty issue of World War II in Asia that is often swept under the carpet. Tokyo's claim that Japan stood...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 23, 2005
As Japan goes through a transformation, so too might those who do the observing
JAPAN'S QUIET TRANSFORMATION: Social Change and Civil Society in the Twenty-first Century, by Jeff Kingston. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004, 358 pp., 3,657 yen (paper). Nothing is permanent but change. The idea of transience has a long tradition in Japan, coming to the fore at times and receding...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Nov 7, 2004
And you thought doing deals in today's Japan was tough
THE DESHIMA DIARIES MARGINALIA 1740-1800, edited by Leonard Blusse, Cynthia Vialle, Willem Remmelink and Isabel van Daalen. Tokyo: The Japan-Netherlands Institute, 898 pp., 2004, 13,000 yen (cloth). It has been 12 years since I had occasion to review on this page the first volume of the Deshima Diaries...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 8, 2004
Which way for Japanese capitalism?
THE END OF DIVERSITY?: Prospects for German and Japanese Capitalism, edited by Kozo Yamamura and Wolfgang Streeck. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003, 401 pp., $24.95 (paper), $49.95 (cloth). This book is about the future of capitalism and its national varieties. "Free market capitalism...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 29, 2004
To improve the East, must we move West?
JAPAN: The Burden of Success, by Jean-Marie Bouissou. London: Hurst & Co., 2002, 374 pp., £35.00 (cloth), £14.95 (paper). Jean-Marie Bouissou, who lived in Japan in the 1980s, is a political scientist at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris and the Centre Franco-Japonais de Management. "The Burden...
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.
Tokyo Metro’s overseas efforts begin in earnest with London deal
Tokyo Metro will soon have a role in the running of London's Elizabeth Line, a major train route serving the U.K.’s capital city and environs.
Saitama court bans demonstrations over anti-Kurd hate speech
Kurdish people in Japan in 2015. A court injunction has banned acts that defame the Japan Kurdish Cultural Association and are disrespectful, such as putting up banner flags or handing out fliers with hate speech like “Refugees should go back to their home countries.”
China reinstates visa-free travel for Japanese nationals
Beijing Daxing International Airport
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.
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.
'Tokyo Swindlers': Get deep into the minds of real estate con artists
In Ko Shinjo's "Tokyo Swindlers," a group of con artists manipulates real estate giants into falsified deals within the highly competitive, quick market.
Japan, U.K. and Italy discuss inviting more countries to joint fighter project
A new concept model of a next-generation fighter jet to be jointly developed by Japan, Britain and Italy is on display in Farnborough, Hampshire, in July.

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