AP A car bomb exploded outside a mosque Sunday, killing at least 37 people and wounding another 141 in a mostly Shiite Muslim neighborhood in the southern Pakistan city of Karachi — the third mass-casualty attack on the minority sect in the country this ...
It's a dangerous, unpredictable world. Twice in January Chinese warships in the East China Sea challenged Japan's Maritime Self Defense Forces patrols in a manner deemed threatening. And on Feb. 12 came North Korea's nuclear test.
Here's an open secret: Japanese men have a bad international reputation on the romance front.
SELLING WOMEN: Prostitution, Markets and the Household in Early Modern Japan, by Amy Stanley. University of California Press, 2012, 282 pp., $49.95 (hardcover) In the vast cultural landscape, Japan fascinates the mainstream with manga and anime, the martial arts, Zen and kimono. Of course, ...
Kenta Maeda shook off worries about his form with five shutout innings as Japan beat China 5-2 in first-round Pool A of the World Baseball Classic on Sunday at Fukuoka Dome. Japan improved to 2-0 following a tough win over Brazil in Saturday evening’s ...
AN EMERGING NON-REGULAR LABOR FORCE IN JAPAN: The Dignity of Dispatched Workers, by Huiyan Fu. Routledge (U.K.), 2011, 192 pp., ￡75 (hardcover) This timely and excellent analysis of the changing employment system in Japan greatly improves our understanding of what it is like to ...
DEALING WITH DISASTER IN JAPAN: Responses to the Flight JL 123 Crash, by Christopher P. Hood. Routledge, 2011. 266 pp. $155. This is a haunting saga, brilliantly told, about the 1985 crash of a Japan Airlines flight in the mountains of remote Gunma that ...
PAN-ASIANISM: A Documentary History (2 volumes 1850-1920; 1920-present), edited by Sven Saaler and Christopher Szpilman. Rowman & Littlefield, 2011. 358 pp. and 422 pp., $133.39 (hardcover) Finally there is an excellent source book on Pan-Asianism, an ideology that has played an important role in ...
Pacific Gibraltar: U.S.-Japanese Rivalry Over the Annexation of Hawaii, 1885-1898, by William Michael Morgan. Naval Institute Press, 2011, 330 pp., $34.95 (hardcover) It is safe to say that Japanese thronging the malls in Honolulu and scooping up apartments thanks to the mighty yen probably ...
Watching the two whirling dancers’ straw skirts aflame as they kept their balance under elaborate, 4-meter-high headdresses while circumambulating the central shrine of the village to the beat of drummers amid a buzzing throng, I did not expect a nudge from the local standing ...
Everywhere around Kerala in southwest India there are signs emblazoned with the state motto: “God’s Own Country” — and certainly no supreme deity could have chosen a better place to call home. There is much to explore, incredible natural beauty, more temples than anyone ...
This is the traditional season for the Keralan festival called Onam, the one time a year when the mythical King Mahabali leaves the netherworld where he now rules and visits his people to help them celebrate the harvest and their traditions. It is a ...
MAKING JAPANESE CITIZENS: Civil Society and the Mythology of the Shimin in Postwar Japan, by Simon Andrew Avenell. University of California Press, 2010, 356 pp., $24.95 (paper) In recent years the growth of civil society in Japan has attracted considerable attention. The invaluable contributions ...
VIEWED SIDEWAYS: Writings on Culture and Style on Contemporary Japan, by Donald Richie. Stonebridge Press, 2011, 264 pp., $16.95 (paper) Viewed any which way, Japan through the eyes of Donald Richie is an interesting and rewarding place to read about. This is the third ...
ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF JAPANESE CULTURE AND SOCIETY. Edited by Victoria and Theodore Bestor with Akiko Yamagata. Routledge, 2011, 325 pp. (hardcover) This is a tremendous book and should jump the queue of all those books on contemporary Japan you have been intending to read. ...
