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August 15, 2024
 

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THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Sep 23, 2001
Arcane lore as taught by the masters
BUDO SECRETS: Teaching of the Martial Arts Masters, by John Stevens. Boston/London: Shambhala, 2001, 116 pp., with illustrations, $19.95 The term "budo" is relatively recent one. After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the martial arts were no longer to be used in combat, but rather to be considered...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Sep 16, 2001
A theory in need of updating
THE ANATOMY OF SELF: The Individual Versus Society, by Takeo Doi. Translated by Mark A. Harbison. Forward by Edward Hall. Tokyo: Kodansha, Int., 2001 (1986), 168 pp., 1,800 yen. Takeo Doi, the man who made "amae" a household word, later wrote this book about "omote" and "ura" and their extensions,...
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 / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Sep 2, 2001
More than words can say
WORDS IN CONTENT: A Japanese Perspective on Language and Culture, by Takao Suzuki, translated by Akira Miura Our eyes, says Takao Suzuki, author of this sociolinguistic text, "do not see things objectively and impartially like cameras. Our perceptions are always subject to cultural selection." Indeed,...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 26, 2001
Showing, not telling: the birth of pure film
WRITING IN LIGHT: The Silent Scenario and the Japanese Pure Film Movement, by Joanne Bernardi. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001, 355 pp., 100 illustrations. $39.95 (cloth); $19.95 (paperback) Film evolved differently in different cultures. In the West the cinema was perceived as a new form...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 19, 2001
Way of a puppet dramatist
CHIKAMATSU: FIVE LATE PLAYS, translated and annotated by C. Andrew Gerstle. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001, 234 pp., 60 line drawings, maps and photographs. $39.50. Though the playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1724) has been inaptly called "The Shakespeare of Japan," he remains the single...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 12, 2001
To know us is to love us
ONE HUNDRED AND FIVE KEY WORDS FOR UNDERSTANDING JAPAN (Nippon o Shiru Hyakugosho). Tokyo: Corona Books/Heibonsha, 2001, bilingual (Japanese/English) edition. 328 pp. 205 plates, color, b/w. 2000 yen. This country has an abiding faith in the power of understanding. If we just understood each other,...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 12, 2001
Book bites
LETTERS FROM THE END OF THE WORLD: A FIRSTHAND ACCOUNT OF THE BOMBING OF HIROSHIMA, by Toyofumi Ogura. Kodansha, 198 pp., 2,000 yen. The first eyewitness account ever published of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, "The End of the World" is a devastating record of the horrors history professor Toyofumi...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 29, 2001
A lively, authentic Edo view
JAPAN THROUGH AMERICAN EYES: The Journal of Francis Hall -- 1859-1866. Edited, annotated and abridged by F.G. Notehelfer. Boulder: Westview Press, 2001, 466 pp., 33 plates. $30. When Francis Hall arrived in Yokohama in 1859 he found that the place had "all of the newness of a Western town" and that...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 22, 2001
The kimono celebrated
KIMONO. Text and photos by Paul van Riel, introduction and comments by Liza Dalby. Leiden: Hotel Publishing, 144 pp., color photos, $49.95. Folklorist Kunio Yanagita long ago said that "clothing is the most direct indication of a people's general frame of mind." If this is so, what then is one to...
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...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 8, 2001
Wright the dealer, not the builder
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT AND THE ART OF JAPAN, by Julia Meech. New York: Japan Society/Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2001, 304 pp., 229 illustrations, including 89 color plates. $49.50. Toward the end of his long and successful career as an architect, Frank Lloyd Wright remembered Japan, the scene of so much of...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 1, 2001
1910 Exhibition remembered
THE BRITISH PRESS AND THE JAPAN-BRITISH EXHIBITION OF 1910. Edited by Hirokichi Mutsu. With a preface by Yonosuke Ian Mutsu and an introduction by William H. Coaldrake. Production: The University of Melbourne: Curzon Press, London. 212 pp., with b/w illustration. Unpriced. This is an enlarged and...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 24, 2001
Finding nature by design
JAPANESE DESIGN: A Collection. Photographs and text by Kenneth Straiton. Forward by Peter Grilli. Tokyo: Tuttle Shokai, 1999, 160 pp., copiously illustrated, 3,800 yen. Traditionally the Japanese are a patterned people who live in a patterned country, a land where the exemplar still exists, where there...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 17, 2001
The bright side of bamboo
BAMBOO IN JAPAN, by Nancy Moore Bess, with Bibi Wein. Tokyo and New York: Kodansha International, 2001, 224 pp., 160 color prints and duo-tone photographs, 5,800 yen. Bamboo, the ancient, ubiquitous grass, is everywhere in Japan. Of the over 1,500 species worldwide, nearly half are found here. It...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 10, 2001
Tanizaki captured in full flow
THE GOURMET CLUB: A Sextet, By Jun'ichiro Tanizaki. Translated by Paul McCarthy and Anthony Chambers. Tokyo/New York: Kodansha International, 2001, 204 pp., 2,800 yen. This is the long-awaited collection of six of Jun'ichiro Tanizaki's shorter works, given us by two of the most eminent of Tanizaki's...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 3, 2001
Housing for human beings
THE JAPANESE HOUSE: Architecture and Interiors. Photographs by Noboru Murata, text by Alexandra Black. Boston/Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, 2000, 216 pp., copiously illustrated, 4,500 yen. Though the architect Le Corbusier learned a lot from Japan, he could not have been thinking of this country when he...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 27, 2001
Bibliophiles rejoice
A COLLECTOR'S GUIDE TO BOOKS ON JAPAN IN ENGLISH: An Annotated List of over 2,500 Titles with Subject Index, by Joseph Rogala. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, Ltd., 2001. 292 pp., 15.99 UK pounds. The book's title says precisely what it is. It is not a listing of 'best' books on Japan, nor a catalog...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 20, 2001
Amid a whirlwind of change, an elegant history of Japan
JAPAN IN TRANSFORMATION: 1952-2000, by Jeffrey Kingston. Harlow, Essex, U.K.: Pearson Education/Longman, 2001; 230 pp., b/w plates XII, $12. As the British historian, the late A.J.P. Taylor, remarked: "History gets thicker as it approaches recent times." The broad outlines, the major themes, have...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 13, 2001
A passion for Japan
SIEBOLD AND JAPAN: His Life and Work, by Arlette Kouwenhouven, with Matthi Forrer. Leiden: Hotei Publishing, 2000, 112 pp., with 87 plates, 3,200 yen. Shortly after arriving in Japan in 1823, Philipp Franz von Siebold wrote to a relative back in Holland, "I do not intend to leave Japan until I have...
Japan to revise consumption tax exemption for overseas tourists
Tourists walk through Nakamise shopping street near Sensoji Temple in Tokyo in April
Japan's tourism industry hit by cancellations after megaquake alert
A beach closed due to a megaquake alert in Hiratsuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, from Friday to Thursday.
Focus shifts to incoming typhoon as Tropical Storm Maria dissipates
Newly formed Tropical Storm Ampil, which is forecast to approach eastern Japan this weekend, is seen on the left side of this satellite image.
Kishida to step down in September in bid to show ‘LDP has changed’
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida speaks during a news conference Wednesday at the Prime Minister's Office in Tokyo.
Publisher finds surprise audience after translating history textbooks
Yamakawa Shuppansha president Takeshi Nozawa holds the publisher's textbook on Japanese history — used in high schools across Japan — alongside the new English version in Tokyo on May 23.
Economic security is about strengthening and sustaining growth, former minister says
Former economic security minister Takayuki Kobayashi says changes in the international balance of power, along with deepening economic interdependence, have led some countries to attempt to use their economic power to impose their will on others.
Ice bandanas, convenience store breaks: Running under Japan’s summer sun
Blistering heat is becoming a fixture of summer in Japan, but a few tweaks to your routine can make your outdoor runs bearable — if not enjoyable — until cooler temperatures return.
Japan issued its first-ever megaquake alert. What does that mean?
Naoshi Hirata (center), chairman of a committee tasked with evaluating the risk of a Nankai Trough earthquake, speaks at a news conference in Tokyo on Friday.
France brings down the curtain on its Olympic party with Tom Cruise and Leon Marchand
Fireworks are set off during the closing ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics at Stade de France in Saint-Denis on Sunday.
Japan fuels U.S. LNG boom even as climate targets and impacts loom
Flaring at the Cameron LNG export terminal in Hackberry, Louisiana. Flaring, a common sight at LNG plants, is a controlled burning of gas for reasons ranging from depressurizing equipment to disposing of gas that can’t be used. The practice is a "waste of money" and negatively impacts climate change and human health, says the International Energy Agency.

Podcast

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

Longform

Sociologist Gracia Liu-Farrer argues that even though immigration doesn't figure into Japan's autobiography, it is more of a self-perception than a reality.
In search of the ‘Japanese dream’
By Thu-Huong Ha

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

mission sustainability vol.11 : Sekisui House Ltd.World’s top homebuilder acts on its responsibility
mission sustainability vol.11 : Sekisui House Ltd.World’s top homebuilder acts on its responsibility

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