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Jeff Kingston
Jeff Kingston lives in Tokyo, teaches history at Temple University Japan and has been contributing to The Japan Times since 1988. "Contemporary Japan" (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012) is his most recent book.
For Jeff Kingston's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
CULTURE / Books
May 11, 1999
Dazzling portrait of the Occupation
EMBRACING DEFEAT: Japan in the Wake of World War II, By John W. Dower. New York: WW Norton, 1999. 676 pp. $29.95 History does not get any better than this. The award-winning author of "War Without Mercy," (1986) an exploration of racism and the Pacific War, is in peak form in this sparkling evocation of how victor and vanquished coped with the bitter legacies of war and the daunting challenges of rebuilding a devastated Japan. Dower's prose, insights and unerring eye for the humorous, paradoxical and hypocritical animate this epic tale, making it a rewarding read and a major contribution to our understanding of contemporary Japan.
CULTURE / Books
Apr 7, 1999
Fading hopes for faltering Japan
JAPAN TODAY, by Roger Buckley. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1999, (3rd edition), 233 pp. This is a succinct and reliable introductory survey of post-World War II Japanese history. This third edition is substantially rewritten and updated by the inclusion of recent material and analysis. The latter portions of the book are in fact entirely new and, reflecting the differences in Japan in 1985 and 1999, this edition is far more pessimistic in tone.

Longform

Rows of irises resemble a rice field at the Peter Walker-designed Toyota Municipal Museum of Art.
The 'outsiders' creating some of Japan's greenest spaces