Not for those looking for a cozy fireside New Year read. The fiendish methods used by the Kempeitai, Japan's military police, are known in outline, but now we have the chilling details. Felton focuses not only on the unit's systematic physical and sexual torture of Allied soldiers and Asian civilians but also on the broader activities of the group concerning prison camp management, biological and chemical warfare, and experimentation on prisoners. Felton's grasp of historical facts is compromised, though, when he asserts that their doings reveal a "truly bizarre and sadistic streak rooted in the Japanese character."
XANADU, BY JOHN MAN. BANTAM PRESS, 352 PP., $29.95 (HARDCOVER)
Gene Kelly was dragged out of retirement in 1980 to sing with Olivia Newton-John in the movie of the same name, and Coleridge wrote a verse about an imperial "pleasure dome." This "Xanadu" is John Man's account of retracing Marco Polo's journey to Shangdu, and his audience with the legendary Khan. Following the footsteps of explorers has become a convention in travel writing, and there is something to be said for substituting musty archives for what Man calls "ground truth." Traveling in the company of a Chinese archaeologist, he makes an admirable job of re-creating the past from the dust and decay of the centuries.