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CULTURE / Books / THE BOOK REPORT
Jul 1, 2004

Mystery writer Nishimura continues on winning run of great train stories

The recently released list of top taxpayers for fiscal 2003 has shown that, despite the overall slump in the book trade, the payoff can still be great for authors who strike a chord with the public.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 4, 2004

Pop Meiji romance revives tired legend of poor Okichi

BUTTERFLY IN THE WIND, by Rei Kimura. Amsterdam: Olive Press, 2003, 166 pp., with illustrations, $16.95 (paper). Poor Okichi -- carried away against her will to become concubine to the American consul in Japan, torn away from her handsome lover, stigmatized forever as "Tojin" Okichi, property of the...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 7, 2004

Much ado about Shakespeare: Reworking a Renaissance giant

SHASHIBIYA: Staging Shakespeare in China, by Li Ruru. Hong Kong University Press, 2003, 306 pp., 14 plates, £21.50 (cloth). It has been 100 years since Shakespeare was first staged in China. His name now sinicized to Shashibiya and even colloquialized, ("Old Man Sha"), productions of his plays continue...
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...
EDITORIALS
Nov 2, 2003

Long words for a short bear

'I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words Bother me," Winnie-the-Pooh once famously said. Words like "merchandising" would certainly have Bothered him, or "licensing rights" or even "royalties." Those were all buzzing around the Pooh legacy like bees around a honey pot last week, after a U.S....
JAPAN
Apr 14, 2003

Court upholds ruling on Nanjing defamation case

The Tokyo High Court has upheld a ruling ordering the author and publisher of a book on the Nanjing Massacre in China to compensate an 84-year-old Chinese woman who said it defamed her.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 8, 2002

Where West met East

A HISTORICAL GUIDE TO YOKOHAMA: Sketches of the Twice-Risen Phoenix, by Burritt Sabin. Yokohama: Yurindo, 2002, 304 pp., 176 pp. of plates, illustrations and maps, 2,500 yen (cloth) Isabella Bird, that sharp-eyed, tart-tongued early traveler to Japan, opined that Yokohama had irregularity without picturesqueness,...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Oct 27, 2002

The lesser of many possible evils

THE UNITED STATES IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC SINCE 1945, by Roger Buckley. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2002. 258 pp., $65 (cloth) This is a wide-ranging, ambitious and informative work on an immense subject. Given the vast terrain and limited space, Roger Buckley has had to resist the temptations...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Sep 22, 2002

Soseki's later years

INSIDE MY GLASS DOORS (156 pp.); THE 210TH DAY (96 pp.); SPRING MISCELLANY (184 pp.), by Soseki Natsume, translated by Sammy Tsunematsu, with introductions by Marvin Marcus. Tuttle Publishing (Boston, Rutland, Tokyo), 2002, all volumes 2,300 yen (paper) with black-and-white photos In 1915, having just...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 18, 2002

A monarchy for the masses

THE PEOPLE'S EMPEROR: Democracy and the Japanese Monarchy 1945-1995, by Kenneth J. Ruoff. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Ma., 2001, 331 pp., $45 (cloth) This intriguing and rewarding monograph examines the manner in which the Emperor system has been reinvented in postwar Japan to reflect and reinforce...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Jul 13, 2002

Ciaran Murray

"I had to come to Japan, to sit in a garden and discover something of Japanese culture, in order to write the history of my hometown," Ciaran Murray said.
CULTURE / Books
Jun 23, 2002

The courage to endure

BAD ELEMENTS: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing, by Ian Buruma. Random House: New York, 2001. 367 pp. $27.95 (cloth) Are the Chinese hard-wired for authoritarian government? Is there a cultural barrier to democracy? Ian Buruma spends more space than warranted in answering these questions with...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 23, 2002

Overcoming the tyranny of distance

TREASON BY THE BOOK: Traitors, Conspirators and Guardians of an Emperor, by Jonathan Spence. London: Penguin Books, 2002, 302 pp. 7.99 UK pounds (paper) In his short story "The Great Wall of China," Franz Kafka wonderfully evokes the enormity and complexity of imperial China by describing the travails...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / THE WRITERS' SPIN
Apr 3, 2002

Tokyo should be more wary of remarks by fickle economists

Economists always disagree on how to mend Japan's flagging economy.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / ON THE ARCHIPELA-GO
Apr 2, 2002

The birthplace of a famous novel is still inspiring visitors today

"I had spent three nights at hot springs near the center of the peninsula," Yasunari Kawabata wrote in his short novel "The Izu Dancer," published in 1925. "And now, my fourth day out of Tokyo, I was climbing toward Amagi Pass and South Izu."
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 2, 2001

Yosano's poetry in motion

TRAVELS IN MANCHURIA AND MONGOLIA, by Akiko Yosano, translated by Joshua A. Fogel. New York: Columbia University Press, 164 pp., with a map, $39.50 (cloth), $16 (paper) In 1928, the celebrated poet Akiko Yosano was invited to travel through Northeast Asia by the South Manchurian Railway Company.
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 / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Nov 18, 2001

Too much of a good thing

YAKUZA PERFUME, by Akahige Namban. New York: Blue Moon Books, 2001, 206 pp., $7.95 (paper). This curious book is an American-published pornographic novel that purports to be written by a Japanese. Though its main aim is to excite, its interest lies in the cultural assumptions it makes, these rendered...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Oct 28, 2001

Provocative as she wants to be

SHANGHAI BABY, by Wei Hui, translated by Bruce Humes. Simon and Schuster, 2001, 259 pp., $10 (paper) Sometimes context is everything. A sexually frank novel that reeks of thinly disguised autobiography told in a confessional style would hardly cause a ripple in the West these days. In China, however,...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Sep 9, 2001

New Sensationalism in the city

SHANGHAI, by Riichi Yokomitsu. Translated with a postscript by Dennis Washburn. Center for Japanese Studies, Ann Arbor; University of Michigan Press, 2001. 242 pp., $45 (cloth), $18.95 (paper). Riichi Yokomitsu's first novel, "Shanghai," was published in magazine installments between 1928 and 1931....
CULTURE / Books
Aug 26, 2001

Engine of a nation's modernization

A HISTORY OF JAPANESE RAILWAYS: 1872-1999, by Eiichi Aoki, Mitsuhide Imashiro, Shinichi Kato and Yasuo Wakuda. Tokyo: East Japan Railway Culture Foundation, 2000, 256 pp., 5,000 yen (cloth). Few industries have a more illustrious history than that of the railroad. From its birth in the 19th century...
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 / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 15, 2001

Ghosts and goblins

SPIRITS OF ANOTHER SORT: The Plays of Izumi Kyoka, by M. Cody Poulton. Center for Japanese Studies, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2001, 348 pp., b/w photos, xvi. $60. Izumi Kyoka (1873-1938) was much admired by Tanizaki, with whom he shared an esteem for Edo culture, by Mishima, who cherished...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 5, 2001

The trial of Unit 731

KHABAROVSK, Russia -- Late in December 1949, Soviet Communist Party leaders began distributing tickets in factories and institutes for an upcoming trial. Twelve Japanese physicians and military officers -- former researchers at a secret facility near Harbin, China known as Unit 731 -- stood accused of...
CULTURE / Books
Nov 28, 2000

When writing Asia-Pacific history, the rhetoric is the reality

JAPAN AND PACIFIC INTEGRATION: Pacific Romances 1968-1996, by Pekka Korhonen. London/New York: Routledge, 1998, 246 pp., $50 (cloth). The title of this book suggests that it is about the integration of the Asia-Pacific area, about regionalism, and about the role Japan plays in this process.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Nov 21, 2000

Glimpses of long-lost Tokyo

MY ASAKUSA: Coming of Age in Prewar Tokyo. A Memoir, by Sadako Sawamura, translated by Norman E. Stafford and Yasuhiro Kawamura, with an author's note and a foreword by Taichi Yamada. Boston/Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, 2000, 270 pp., $16.95 Sadako Sawamura was one of Japan's leading character actresses....
CULTURE / Books
Nov 7, 2000

From great fiction, more fiction still

THE TALE OF MURASAKI: A Novel, by Liza Dalby. Doubleday, 2000, 424 pp., $25.95. What if the author of "The Tale of Genji" had written an autobiography and it had remained undiscovered until now? What would it be like?
CULTURE / Books
Nov 3, 2000

Throwing out complication to embrace simple life

Reflecting the downbeat mood in Japan, book sales continue to be sluggish, especially of hardcover books and serious fiction.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Oct 31, 2000

Speechless, but never silent

JAPANESE BEYOND WORDS: How to Walk and Talk like a Native Speaker, by Andrew Horvat. Foreword by Jan Walls. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2000, 176 pp., $14.95. As Jan Walls says in his foreword to this instructive and entertaining book, Andrew Horvat provides "a new way of looking at language . ....
CULTURE / Books
Aug 29, 2000

End this dysfunctional relationship

LEAVING JAPAN: Observations on the Dysfunctional U.S.-Japan Relationship. By Mike Millard. M.E. Sharpe: Armonk, NY, 2000, 200 pp., $37.95. The $79-billion question is why does the United States continue to tolerate the lopsided economic relationship with Japan that led to a such a massive trade imbalance...

Longform

Visitors to Kyoto walk along a street near Kiyomizu Temple in April. A popular tourist spot, Kyoto has seen what locals feel to be an overwhelming amount of tourists in 2024.
Is Japan ready for 60 million tourists?