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July 16, 2024
 

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THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 6, 2001
A guide to Yunnan, China, that brings the province alive
CHINA: YUNNAN PROVINCE, by Stephen Mansfield, with contributions by David Reynolds. Buckinghamshire, U.K.: Bradt Travel Guides, 2001, 292 pp., with maps and 20 color plates, 13.95 UK pounds. Yunnan is China's most diverse province. Not only is it geographically varied, with glaciers in the north and...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 29, 2001
Revisit the glory and the pathos of the 47 ronin
KUNIYOSHI: The Faithful Samurai, by David R. Weinberg. Translations and essay by Alfred H. Marks. Foreword by B.W. Robinson. Leiden: Hotei Publishing, 2000. 192 pp., map, pictures, color plates, 12,000 yen. In 1701, one of the feudal lords in attendance to the shogun in the Edo castle was called upon...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 22, 2001
A bird's-eye view of history
JAPAN: A Short History. Supervised by John Gillespie. New York/Tokyo: ICG Muse Inc. 2001, 80 pp., map, profusely illustrated, 950 yen. When Ralph Waldo Emerson remarked that "there is no history, only biography," he was implying that our annals are really only accounts. Like so much else, history...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 15, 2001
At long last, Tokuda Shusei
ROUGH LIVING, by Tokuda Shusei, translated by Richard Torrance. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, April 2001, 184 pp., $45 (hardcover), $21.95 (paper). This is, I think, the first translation into English of a novel by a writer that Japanese think is one of their finest. Tokuda Shusei (1871-1943)...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 7, 2001
Paper and gold yield a life
PAPER SON: One Man's Story, by Tung Pok Chin, with Winifred C. Chin, with an introduction by K. Scott Wong. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000, pp. 184, 15 b/w photos, $15.96. In this account of his tribulations and triumphs in Gold Mountain (the Chinese immigrant's euphemism for the United...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 1, 2001
Ohkura brings kabuki to life
KABUKI TODAY: The Art and Tradition. Photographs by Shunji Ohkura, text by Iwao Kamimura, translated by Kirsten McIvor. Introduction by Donald Keene. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 2001, 194 pp., profusely illustrated. 5,800 yen. This lavish volume, as extravagant as the kabuki itself, is devoted to...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 27, 2001
Farewell to the rabbit hutch
THE JAPANESE DREAM HOUSE: How Technology and Tradition are Shaping New Home Design, by Azby Brown and Joseph Cali. Tokyo/New York: Kodansha International, 2001, pp. 132, profusely illustrated with Japanese-language translation insert, 6,000 yen. This big, beautiful, well-designed book tells and shows...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 20, 2001
Drop in on Kanemura's Tokyo
SPIDER'S STRATEGY: Photographs by Osamu Kanemura, with a text by Arata Isozaki. Tokyo: Osiris Co. Ltd., 102 pp., 80 b/w plates, 3,780 yen. In his text accompanying this portfolio of photographs of Tokyo, architect Arata Isozaki writes of the difficulty of deciphering this city. Paris was finally properly...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 15, 2001
Let Tokyo Q be your guide
TOKYO 2001-2002: Annual Guide to the City, by the staff of Tokyo Q with Rick Kennedy. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2001, 160 pp., 130 b/w images, $9.95. Tokyo, the largest city in the world, cornucopia turned upside-down, has always required a guide book. Not only are there competing attractions,...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 6, 2001
Carefully controlled exoticism
THE ORIENT STRIKES BACK: A Global View of Cultural Display, by Joy Hendry. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2000, 256 pp., 40 illustrations (16 color). 42.99 British pounds (cloth), 14.99 British pounds (paper). A century ago, the West used to entertain and educate itself with random views of the East. World's...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 27, 2001
Soar with Madame Butterfly
MADAME BUTTERFLY: Japonisme, Puccini, and the Search for the Real Cho-Cho-San, by Jan van Rij. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2001, 192 pp., 24 b/w photos, drawings, map, $24.95 (casebound). Giacomo Puccini's "Madame Butterfly" has become more than just a pretty piece of music. It has turned into something...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 12, 2001
Let the spring light the fires
THE PILLOW BOOK OF SPRING AND LAUGHTER: Eroticism in Meiji, Taisho and Showa Japan, by John Stevens. Tokyo: The East Publications, Inc. 156 pp., profusely illustrated, color plates/b/w photos. 4,200 yen. We associate spring pictures ("shunga") with the Edo period, lovers usually fully dressed with...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 6, 2001
Modernism revealed
FICTIONS OF DESIRE: Narrative Form in the Novels of Nagai Kafu, by Stephen Snyder. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2000, 196 pp., $42 (cloth), $17.95 (paper). Recently, it has been argued that the 18th-century realist tradition (Balzac, Dickens and on to now) is not the only such tradition;...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 30, 2001
The brocaded body beautiful
PEAU DE BROCART: Le Corps Tatoue au Japon, by Philippe Pons. Paris: Seuil, 2000, 142 pp., plates (color, b/w) 60, FFr 230 (cloth). Rene Magritte has spoken of someone clad "only in the robe of her skin," and this concept of surface as substance is observed by the tattooing tradition of Japan, the...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 23, 2001
Gender, identity, plain old eros
MALE HOMOSEXUALITY IN MODERN JAPAN: Cultural Myths and Social Realities, by Mark J. McLelland. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2000, 268 pp., b/w plates 17, 15.99 British pounds (paper). Mark McLelland begins this pioneering study by quoting Alfred Kinsey to the effect that nature rarely deals with...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 16, 2001
A lesson for our swollen egos
SOUTHERN SILK ROAD: In the Footsteps of Sir Aurel Stein and Sven Haedin, by Christoph Baumer. Bangkok: Orchid Press, 2000, 152 pp., profusely illustrated with color plates, drawings, maps, $35 soft cover. This is the revised and expanded English edition of Baumer's "Geisterstaedte der Suedlichen Seidenstrasse...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 8, 2001
Tomorrow today in Tokyo
TOKYO X. Photographs by Shunji Ohkura. Afterword translated by Ralph McCarthy, captions translated by Shii Ichiba, envoi by Giles Murray. Tokyo: Kodansha Intl., 2000, 216 pp., 251 plates with endpapers, 3,800 yen. In the afterword to this remarkable collection of pictures, the photographer says that...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 1, 2001
Eye-openers for the new year
GREETINGS FROM EROS!: Hokusai and the Erotic Calendar-Print. Richard Lane, bilingual (Japanese/English) text. Tokyo: Kawade Shobo, 2000. Unpaginated, profusely illustrated -- color plates, b/w photos, 3,800 yen. Sending calendar prints as New Year salutations was one of the amenities of traditional...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 26, 2000
Music for the eyes and ears
TRADITIONAL JAPANESE MUSIC AND MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS, by William P. Malm. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 2000, 354 pp., with 89 b/w photos and CD of musical examples, 5,000 yen. This is the new, revised and updated edition of the book that has been the standard text on traditional Japanese music and...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 19, 2000
Wowed by the Lao and Siam
A DIPLOMAT IN SIAM, by Ernest Satow. Introduced and edited by Nigel Brailey. Bangkok: Orchid Press, 2000, 206 pp., with maps and line drawings, $23. In the spring of 1886, Ernest Satow wrote to his friend W.G. Aston in Japan that his recent journey to the Lao states had been "on the whole a pleasant...
Bloodied Trump survives assassination attempt at political rally
Former U.S. President Donald Trump is surrounded and evacuated by Secret Service agents at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. Trump was rushed off stage at the rally after shots rang out.
How to beat Japan’s summer heat in ways better for the planet
Tenugui towels hang up to dry at a dyeing company in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture, on May 8. The durable and versatile tenugui, which many people have in their homes, can be used in many ways to cool one’s body.
The neurological disorder that 'kills culture'
Akiko Trush says her experience with the neurological disorder dystonia left her feeling like she wanted to chop her own hand off.
Amid same-sex marriage ban, LGBTQ couples opt for 'photo weddings'
A lesbian couple, consisting of a 35-year-old woman (left) and 40-year-old woman, cover their faces with bouquets as they pose for wedding photos in Yokohama on Nov. 1.
China and Russia conduct joint Pacific military patrol
The Russian corvette Gromkiy enters the Chinese port of Zhanjiang as part of a joint China-Russia naval exercise on Saturday.
How to beat Japan’s summer heat in ways better for the planet
Tenugui towels hang up to dry at a dyeing company in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture, on May 8. The durable and versatile tenugui, which many people have in their homes, can be used in many ways to cool one’s body.
After Trump shooting, U.S. presidential race might take a violent turn
United States Secret Service Counter Snipers stand guard on a rooftop during a campaign rally for U.S. President Donald Trump in Avoca, Pennsylvania, in 2020.
No AC this summer? No problem (for me).
Think air conditioning is a requirement for a Tokyo summer? Think again.
She’s paying ¥1 million to help behind the scenes at the Paris Olympics
Mai Tarumi, who previously volunteered at the postponed Tokyo Olympics in 2021, has a travel budget of ¥1 million for her trip to volunteer at the Paris Games.
How to tweak your diet when temperatures spike
Most people think of hydration as a strictly liquid-based concept, but eating foods with high water content is an essential part of making it through a Japanese summer unscathed.

Podcast

You can often see generations of families enjoying performances together at Fuji Rock Festival.
Japan’s summer music festivals are feeling the heat in more ways than one

Longform

Akiko Trush says her experience with the neurological disorder dystonia left her feeling like she wanted to chop her own hand off.
The neurological disorder that 'kills culture'
By Tomoko Otake

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