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May 03, 2024
 

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THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 10, 2007
Bunroku Shishi: Finding humor in a recovering postwar Japan
SCHOOL OF FREEDOM, by Bunroku Shishi, translated and with an afterword by Lynne E. Riggs. Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan: Ann Arbor, 2006, 256 pp., $29.95 (cloth). Bunroku Shishi (1893-1969), who was born as Toyoo Iwata, had two occupations, just as he had two names. He was a theatrical director who organized the Bungakuza theatrical company and helped introduce modern foreign drama into Japan. He was also, under his pen-name, a popular humorous novelist.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 3, 2007
Oishi Seinosuke: the trial and its outcome
THE LIFE OF SEINOSUKE: Dr. Oishi and the High Treason Incident, by Joseph Cronin. Kyoto: White Tiger Press, 2007, 128 pp., with photographs and drawings, 1,800 yen (paper) The High Treason Incident (Taigyaku Jiken) was an anarchist plot to assassinate the Meiji emperor, one that led to the 1910 mass arrests of a number of socialist activists and concluded with 26 people being charged. Twelve of these were hanged.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 27, 2007
Japan's first cosmopolitan in the face of nationalism
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF YUKICHI FUKUZAWA, revised translation by Eiichi Kiyooka, preface by Kammei Ishikawa, with a foreword and afterword by Albert M. Craig. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007, (1966), 480 pp., with frontispiece photo, $30 (paper) The political scientist Masao Maruyama wrote in 1943 (at the very height of wartime nationalism) that Yukichi Fukuzawa "was a Meiji thinker, but at the same time he is a thinker of the present day."
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 20, 2007
It is in the places in between that cultures truly merge
THE PLACES IN BETWEEN by Rory Stewart. New York: Harcourt Books. 300 pp., with 26 photos and numerous drawings, 2006, $14.00 (paper) In 2002 Rory Stewart, author and former British diplomat, walked across Afghanistan. The country had been at war for 25 years, its government in place for just two weeks, there was no electricity, no TV, and nothing on the road between Herat and Kabul, Stewart's intended route.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 13, 2007
Combining East and West in dramaturgy
AN ACTOR'S TRICKS by Yoshi Oida and Lorna Marshall, foreword by Peter Brook. London: Methuen Drama, A&A Black Ltd., 2007, 102 pp., £10.99 (paper) Yoshi Oida, born in 1933, is one of Japan's most interesting actor-directors. Trained in the classical stage disciplines, particularly that of the Kyogen, Oida went to France in 1968, becoming a founding member of Peter Brook's celebrated international theater company.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 6, 2007
The different cases of Inspector Hanshichi
THE CURIOUS CASEBOOK OF INSPECTOR HANSHICHI: Detective Stories of Old Edo, by Kido Okamoto, translated by Ian MacDonald. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007, 335 pp., $24 (paper) Between 1916 and 1937 the critic and playwright Kido Okamoto (1872-1939) published the "Hanshichi Torimonocho"; stories, devoted to the activities of a fictional detective, Inspector Hanshichi. These tales the author claimed to have heard straight from the aging informant himself, born, he says, in 1823 in Nihonbashi. The various deductions were presumed to have occurred around 1850 and Hanshichi was supposed to be telling these to Okamoto in the 1890s. Ian MacDonald here translates 14 of the original 68 stories, mostly from the first year of serialization.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 29, 2007
Gorilla snot and Tokyo sauce
TABLOID TOKYO 2, by Geoff Botting, Ryann Connell, Michael Hoffman, Masuo Kamiyama, Mark Schreiber; Illustrations by Hirosuke Ueno; foreword by Mark Schreiber. Toyko: Kodansha International, 2007, 288 pp., profusely illustrated, 1,400 yen (paper) The success of the first volume of "Tabloid Tokyo" has encouraged the publisher to issue a second. Comprised of translations from those of Japan's weekly magazines devoted to sensationalism and titillation, both books aim at a foreign audience that, like its Japanese counterpart, is ready for something slightly shocking and somewhat sexually stimulating.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 22, 2007
The man behind the woman
AN AMERICAN DIARY OF A JAPANESE GIRL, by Yone Noguchi, with an introduction by Laura E. Franey, an afterword by Edward Marx and illustrations by Genjiro Yeto. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007, 202 pp., $23.95 (paper) Yonejiro Noguchi (1875-1947) adopted the pen name of Yone when he left Japan at the age of 19 to make his fortune in the United States. After he had done so, he returned, a published poet and essayist, later to become a respected professor of English at Keio University. While in America, however, he had also cultivated a persona quite different from that of a man of letters.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 15, 2007
A great naturalist, and a pretty good shot
BORNEO, CELEBES, ARU, by Alfred Russel Wallace. London: Penguin Books, 2007, 112 pp., with maps, £4.99 (paper) The great naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) traveled widely in what was then called the East Indies and which we now know as Malaysia and Indonesia. Between 1854 and 1862 he wandered from Sumatra to New Guinea, earning his living as a bird-skin collector. He was also taking notes and keeping journals, and in 1869 he published "The Malay Archipelago," one of the most delightful of travel accounts.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 8, 2007
New look for Japan's oldest book
THE KOJIKI, edited by Yoshinobu Hirata, illustrated by Yuko Mori. Tokyo: Kumon Shuppan (5-bancho, Chiyoda-ku), 2004, 160 pp., 951 yen (cloth) "The birth of Japan. The gods give us a story of love and violence." Thus is introduced this Japanese-language manga-illustrated edition of the "Kojiki" (Record of Ancient Matters) dating from 712 and Japan's oldest book. The publication is intended for primary-school children and all of the kanji comes with its furigana for easy reading.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 1, 2007
Buddha's fighting soldiers
THE TEETH AND CLAWS OF BUDDHISM: Monastic Warriors and Sohei in Japanese History, by Mikael S. Adolphson. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2007, 214 pp., with 32 illustrations and maps, $36 (cloth) Buddha with fangs and claws is an unexpected image, if only because religions so often express themselves as benign. Actually, however, they are also belligerent and can often be detected flexing their muscles. Among such examples are Japan's monastic warriors, Buddha's soldiers, fighting their way through the Heian (794-1185) and Kamakura (1185-1333) periods.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 25, 2007
The fanned flames of fashion
Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno: Tokyo Teen Fashion Subculture Handbook, by Patrick Macias and Izumi Evers, illustrations by Kazumi Nonaka. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2007, 148 pp., profusely illustrated, $16.95 (paper) Fashionable clothing on young women is often seen as an indication of the state of society itself, and is hence to be celebrated or deplored. In any event, it is to be emulated until the ensemble of the week successfully adorns just everyone -- at which time the outfit is no longer fashionable.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 18, 2007
From profession to prostitution
Selling Songs and Smiles: The Sex Trade in Heian and Kamakura Japan, by Janet R. Goodwin. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2007, 208 pp. with maps, $48 (cloth) Prince Genji was apparently among the few to resist the charms of those bands of young women who made a living by offering themselves. Upon seeing such a group at Sumiyoshi Shrine, the hero of the "The Tale of Genji" agreed that there were a number of courtiers who might find them interesting but that he was after bigger game and saw no advantage "to getting oneself in a casual affair with someone a bit inconstant."
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 11, 2007
What made Japan join the fast-food nations?
Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power and National Identity, by Katarzyna J. Cwiertka. London: Reaktion Books, 2006, 240 pp., 89 b/w illustrations, £22.50 (cloth) While it is true that we are what we eat, it is equally true that we eat what we are -- that is, our cuisine often mirrors our condition. Though Japan is credited with having a "native" gastronomy, what it consists of and how it is consumed depends on ideas additional to those of taste and nutrition.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 4, 2007
Shooting arrows to the end of the universe
Zen Bow, Zen Arrow: The Life and Teachings of Awa Kenzo, the Archery Master from "Zen in the Art of Archery", by John Stevens. Boston/London: Shambahala, 2007, 104 pp. with photographs, $12.95 (paper). Archery, or kyudo, "the Way of the bow," has a venerable Asian history. Confucius recommended it as one of the Six Arts, Siddhartha (later, the Buddha) was an adept who used the "bow of meditation" to draw the "arrow of wisdom," and Japan's Amaterasu, the sun goddess, was said to have carried a bow along with quivers containing a thousand arrows.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 18, 2007
Yoshu Chikanobu: the neglected master of Japanese prints
Chikanobu: Modernity and Nostalgia in Japanese Prints, by Bruce A. Coats, with essays by Allen Hockley, Kyoko Kurita and Joshua S. Mostow. Leiden: Hotei/Brill Publishing, 2006, 208 pp., 280 color illustrations, $99 (cloth) This is the first monograph in English on the Meiji Era print-maker Yoshu Chikanobu (1838-1912), an artist about whom little has been previously written. He is not listed, for example, in the most general English-language source, the nine-volume "Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan." But that's a 1983 publication and Chikanobu's rise to fame and (according to the press release for this volume) his position as "one of the most collected artists among collectors of Japanese prints" is relatively recent.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 11, 2007
On the line between East and West
Glory in a Line: A Life of Foujita--the Artist Caught Between East and West, by Phyllis Birnbaum. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006, 332 pp., with photographs. $27.50 (cloth) The line referred to in this excellent biography of the troubled artist, Tsuguharu Fujita (1886-1968), is the "thin line of amazing flexibility and grace" that "outlined cat and nudes alike." It could, the biographer tells us, "sweep around a naked woman's body with much courage, following the curves of hips and calves, seemingly without a break."
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 4, 2007
Thoughts behind the picture book
Ehon: The Artist And the Book in Japan, by Roger S. Keyes, foreword by Paul LeClerc. The New York Public Library in association with the University of Washington Press, 2006, 320 pp., 250 color illustrations, $50 (cloth) "Ehon" means "picture book," that is, a volume comprising pictures along with some text, or the text of a book with some illustrations. Hokusai's "One Hundred Views of Mt. Fuji" is a picture book composed mainly of prints, but so is the first printed edition of the "Tales of Ise," which has some illustrations amid the text.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 28, 2007
Why apologize profusely as a woman, when you can insult like a man?
A CULTURAL HISTORY OF JAPANESE WOMEN'S LANGUAGE by Endo Orie. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan, Center for Japanese Studies, 2006, 140 pp., $38 (cloth) When I was first studying Japanese back in 1947, I went to a local language school where the teachers were mostly older ladies, born in the Meiji Era (1868-1912). They taught the language of that period -- in the form that they knew it. As a result, we students spoke some anomalous Japanese.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 21, 2007
Sex in the Forbidden City
Rene Leys, by Victor Segalen, translated and with an introduction by J.A. Underwood, preface by Ian Buruma. New York: New York Review of Books, 2003, 210 pp. $14 (paper) "Who is this lad, this Belgian youth, who forbids Manchu princes possession of their future concubines? . . . . Who . . . has attained the heart of the center of the Within -- nay, better than the heart: the bed!" Thus rhetorically asks the author.
Weak yen fattens tourist wallets in Japan
People visit the Ameya Yokocho market in Tokyo's Ueno district during the Golden Week holiday on Tuesday.
Biden calls ally Japan ‘xenophobic’ along with rivals China and Russia
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks in Syracuse, New York, on April 25.
Number of vacant homes in Japan hits record high of 9 million
A vacant house in Tokyo is seen demolished in January 2020.
Harajuku strives to reclaim its former glory — and surpass it
Laforet Harajuku, which celebrated its 45th anniversary last year, has been a witness to the district's evolution over the years.
Saudi Arabia steps up Gaza-related arrests as Israel ties edge closer
The arrests for Gaza-related posts indicate Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s regime will take a hard line against citizens not toeing the line when it comes to normalizing ties with Israel.
Kishida sets sights on energy and climate in South America trip
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will use a policy speech in Sao Paulo to set out his vision for ties between Japan and South America, almost 10 years after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe advocated for stronger ties between the two in the same city.
Yellow sand allergy: A health issue made worse by climate change
A screenshot of the Meteorological Agency's satellite image of clouds and yellow sand (in pink) on Sunday.
Climate change, chalky grains and the risks for Japan’s rice farmers
A farmer plants seedlings in Satsumasendai, Kagoshima Prefecture. Japan’s self sufficiency rate for rice is nearly 100%, compared with 38% for food overall, on a calorie basis.
Japan wants you to spend more with ‘luxury tourism’
Performers play a traditional drum unique to Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, in the prefectural capital of Kanazawa on March 16 to mark the extension of the Hokuriku Shinkansen line to Tsuruga Station in Fukui Prefecture.
Theaster Gates’ ambitious ‘Afro-Mingei’ brings Black Chicago to Tokyo
Theaster Gates' “A Heavenly Chord” lines up church pews before seven speakers and a Hammond B3 organ, a type of electric organ prevalent in Black American churches.

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