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The head of an official inquiry into the deadly collapse of a Bangladesh factory complex said the building’s owner was the “main culprit” for the disaster because he violated construction codes. The cave-in of the eight-story Rana Plaza outside the capital last month killed ...
Throughout most of Japan, June is the rainy season. While all that rainfall is great for rice paddies so that we can have delicious new harvest rice in the fall, it makes it a rather dull month for seasonal produce: The summer’s bounty of ...
“I was stopped by two men in a government-registered vehicle, blindfolded and dragged off the street. They took me away to a house in a place I did not know. I was forced into a room with blood all over the walls and floor, ...
Claude Regy says the team at the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC) threw him the “best birthday party ever” when he arrived in Japan just days after the actual May 1 occasion. The 90-year-old French director is hoping for an even better birthday gift, ...
As far as debuts go, Shohei Otani's delivered. The celebrated rookie pitched fairly well on Thursday night, and though he finished outside the decision, he left the mound with the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters well within striking distance of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows.
SO LOVELY A COUNTRY WILL NEVER PERISH: Wartime Diaries of Japanese Writers, by Donald Keene. Columbia University, 2010, 192 pp., $24.95 (hardcover) Donald Keene, the foremost scholar of Japanese literature, mines the wartime diaries kept by some of the most prominent writers and intellectuals ...
POSTWAR HISTORY EDUCATION IN JAPAN AND THE GERMANYS: Guilty Lessons, by Julian Dierkes. Routledge, 2010, 240 pp. (hardcover) Putting the fox in charge of guarding the hen coop is asking for trouble. In relying on Japan’s Ministry of Education to implement education reforms during ...
FREETHINKER: The Autobiography of Nishimura Isaku. Translated by Joseph Cronin. White Tiger Press, 2010, 301 pp., ¥3,000. (First published in Japanese in 1960.) This meandering tale of an interesting man’s life spanning the Meiji, Taisho and Showa eras helps readers understand the ferment of ...
Edwin O. Reischauer and the American Discovery of Japan, by George R. Packard. Columbia University Press, 2010, 368 pp., $32.50 (hardcover) Edwin O. Reischauer, U.S. ambassador to Japan (1961-66), set the bar very high for all of his successors. Born and raised in Japan ...
EMPIRES AT WAR: A Short History of Modern Asia Since WWII, by Francis Pike. I.B. Taurus, 2009, 860 pp., $45 (hardcover) This doorstopper of a book focuses on American and Soviet rivalry in post-World War II Asia while providing an overview of dramatic developments ...
WHALING IN JAPAN: Power, Politics and Diplomacy, by Jun Morikawa. Hurst and Company, 2009, 169 pp., £15.99 (paper) Ever wonder why landlocked nations such as Mali, Mongolia and Laos with no tradition of whaling are members of the International Whaling Commission (IWC)? According to ...
SOCIAL CLASS IN CONTEMPORARY JAPAN: Structures, Sorting and Strategies. Edited by Hiroshi Ishida and David Slater. Routledge, 2009, 264 pp., $150 (hardcover) This is a great collection of essays by sociologists and anthropologists who have convincingly brought class back into our understanding of contemporary ...
TRAVELS IN ATOMIC SUNSHINE: Australia and the Occupation of Japan, by Robin Gerster. Scribe, 2008, 327 pp., $49.95 (hardcover) The presence of Australian servicemen in the U.S.-dominated occupation of Japan (1945-52) is little known, an oversight that is overcome in this vivid and entertaining ...
Minamata disease was named after a fishing port on the island of Kyushu where it was discovered in 1956. Chisso Corp. had been dumping methyl mercury directly into the bay since before World War II, but sharp increases in production in the early 1950s ...
THE TRAGEDY OF DEMOCRACY: Japanese Confinement in North America, by Greg Robinson. Columbia University Press, 2009, 408 pp., $29.95 (hardcover) This is a superb history about one of the more shameful chapters in U.S. history. Given all the books and articles about the internment ...
THE CHANGING JAPANESE FAMILY, edited by Marcus Rebick and Ayumi Takenaka. Routledge, 2009, 224 pp., £20 (paperback) The notion of family in Japan conjures up images of stability that are increasingly out of step with emerging realities. Certainly, compared to most other advanced industrialized ...
After generations of rule, the Liberal Democratic Party was trounced by the Democratic Party of Japan in last month’s Lower House elections. Jeff Kingston weighs what went wrong, what went right — and what now for a nation whose voters are sick of ‘politics ...