Among the survivors was Takashi Nagai, a pioneer in radiology research and a convert to the Catholic Faith. Living in the rubble of the ruined city and suffering from leukemia caused by over-exposure to radiation, Nagai lived out the remainder of his remarkable life by bringing physical and spiritual healing to his war-weary people.A Song for Nagasaki tells the moving story of this extraordinary man, beginning with his boyhood and the heroic tales and stoic virtues of his family's Shinto religion. It reveals the inspiring story of Nagai's remarkable spiritual journey from Shintoism to atheism to Catholicism. Mixed with interesting details about Japanese history and culture, the biography traces Nagai's spiritual quest as he studied medicine at Nagasaki University, served as a medic with the Japanese army during its occupation of Manchuria, and returned to Nagasaki to dedicate himself to the science of radiology. The historic Catholic district of the city, where Nagai became a Catholic and began a family, was ground zero for the atomic bomb.After the bomb disaster that killed thousands, including Nagai's beloved wife, Nagai, then Dean of Radiology at Nagasaki University, threw himself into service to the countless victims of the bomb explosion, even though it meant deadly exposure to the radiation which eventually would cause his own death. While dying, he also wrote powerful books that became best-sellers in Japan. These included The Bells of Nagasaki, which resonated deeply with the Japanese people in their great suffering as it explores the Christian message of love and forgiveness. Nagai became a highly revered man and is considered a saint by many Japanese people. Illustrated"Christians and non-Christians alike were deeply moved by Nagai's faith in Christ that made him like Job of the Scriptures: in the midst of the nuclear wilderness he kept his heart in tranquility and peace, neither bearing resentment against any man nor cursing God." —Shusaku Endo, from the Foreword

    When Heaven and Earth Changed Places is the haunting memoir of a girl on the verge of womanhood in a world turned upside down.The youngest of six children in a close-knit Buddhist family, Le Ly Hayslip was twelve years old when U.S. helicopters landed in Ky La, her tiny village in central Vietnam. As the government and Viet Cong troops fought in and around Ky La, both sides recruited children as spies and saboteurs. Le Ly was one of those children. Before the age of sixteen, Le Ly had suffered near-starvation, imprisonment, torture, rape, and the deaths of beloved family members—but miraculously held fast to her faith in humanity. And almost twenty years after her escape to America, she was drawn inexorably back to the devastated country and family she left behind. Scenes of this joyous reunion are interwoven with the brutal war years, offering a poignant picture of Vietnam, then and now, and of a courageous woman who experienced the true horror of the Vietnam War—and survived to tell her unforgettable story.

    Through richly detailed vignettes--by turns bitter, funny, and inspiring--he offers a stunning panorama of a neglected part of American history. 16 pages of photographs.

    In addition to making formal innovations in language and structure, he extended the range of acceptable subject matter to include all aspects of public and private experience, thus becoming in the words of translator David Hinton, “the first complete poetic sensibility in Chinese literature.”This edition of The Selected Poems of Tu Fu is the only comprehensive selection of the poet's work currently available in English. While retaining a scholar's devotion to the text, Hinton has attempted “to recreate Tu Fu's poems as new systems of uncertainty." By reflecting all the ambiguity and density of the originals, he has created compelling English poems that significantly alter our conception of Chinese poetry. Included with the poems are the translator’s introduction and translation principles. as well as a biography of Tu Fu; together these provide a fascinating portrait of a uniquely sensitive spirit during one of the most tumultuous periods in Chinese history.

    To his surprise the bone, which had not yet been ground into powder, contained a number of carved inscriptions. Thus began the discovery of the 3000 year old sources of the written characters still in use in China today.In this unparalleled and beautiful book, Cecilia Lindqvist tells the fascinating story of these origins, and shows how their shapes and concepts permeate Chinese thought, architecture, art and culture. Illustrations in two-colour throughout, and a four-colour insert, make vivid each stage of the story, and the beauty of the characters themselves.

    Traces the history of the Philippines, discusses the influence of Spain and the United States, and looks at the problems facing the Philippines today.

    Some were privileged, some were innocent, some were lost. But to the Japanese they were all the enemy-Europeans and Americans living in Singapore, separated from their husbands and families and taken on a forced march through the jungles of Sumatra to an isolated prison camp. There, they would be tortured into submission and made to bow before the Emperor's war machine...HAZEL HAMPTONA timid young American, she would learn to walk the dangerous tightrope between survival and collaboration...AUDREY ST. JOHNThe Pregnant mistress of an English officer, she was appalled by the squalid camp conditions-and humiliated that she would share them with her lover's wife...GLORIA DENKAn Australian nurse who loved reckless adventure, she took risk and life-threatening risk-until she went too far...DR. MARGARET SUTHERLANDA prominent biographer and personal friend of Madame Chiang Kai-shek, she was forced to hide her identity or face death by firing squad...In a haunting novel of the horrors of war and the strength of friendship, these indomitable women never cease to believe in freedom, even though they are...GUESTS OF THE EMPEROR

    But the vacation he plans is no light-hearted student jaunt - he decides to retrace the epic journey of Marco Polo from Jerusalem to Xanadu, the ruined palace of Kubla Khan, north of Peking. For the first half of the trip he is accompanied by Laura, whom he met at a dinner party two weeks before he left; for the second half he is accompanied by Louisa, his very recently ex-girlfriend. Intelligent and funny, "In Xanadu" is travel writing at its best.

    Her knapsack holds $100 US, a slingshot, a magical Burmese puppet, and the New York City, USA address of an unknown aunt. Imprisoned with six other lost travelers by Red Chinese, she vows to escape; never dreaming who will come to her aid.

    Before Swamiji came, Hinduism was a loose confederation of many different sects. Swamiji was the first religious leader to speak about the common bases of Hinduism and he was the first person, as guided by his Master Sri Ramakrishna, to accept all Hindu doctrines and views of all Hindu philosophies one total view of Reality. In this book, his lectures on Hinduism are discussed and it will help the reader to know hinduism in a nutshell.

    Never before had a fiction writer dealt with the Cultural Revolution in such Daoist-Confucian terms, discarding Mao-speak, and mixing both traditional and vernacular elements with an aesthetic that emphasized not the hardships and miseries of those years, but the joys of close, meaningful friendships. In The King of Chess, a student’s obsession with finding worthy chess opponents symbolizes his pursuit of the dao; in The King of Children—made into an award-winning film by Chen Kaige, the director of Farewell My Concubine—an educated youth is sent to teach at an impoverished village school where one boy’s devotion to learning is so great he is ready to spend 500 days copying his teacher’s dictionary; and in the title novella a peasant’s innate connection to a giant primeval tree takes a tragic turn when a group of educated youth arrive to clear the mountain forest. The King of Trees is a masterpiece of world literature, full of passion and noble emotions that stir the inner chambers of the heart.

    The work of Can Xue (a pseudonym of Changsa writer Deng Xiao-hua) renews our consciousness of the long tradition of the irrational in our literature, where dreams and reality constitute one territory, its borders open, the passage back and forth barely discernible. She fuses lyrical purity with the darkest visions of the grotesque and the result is a unique literary experience.

    Translation of "Kon and Aki" copyright 1989. (from the copyright page)

    While one faction has argued that Tibet was, in the main, historically independent until it was conquered by the Chinese Communists in 1951 and incorporated into the new Chinese state, the other faction views Tibet as a traditional part of China that split away at the instigation of the British after the fall of the Manchu Dynasty and was later dutifully reunited with "New China" in 1951. In contrast, this comprehensive study of modern Tibetan history presents a detailed, non-partisan account of the demise of the Lamaist state.Drawing on a wealth of British, American, and Indian diplomatic records; first-hand-historical accounts written by Tibetan participants; and extensive interviews with former Tibetan officials, monastic leaders, soldiers, and traders, Goldstein meticulously examines what happened and why. He balances the traditional focus on international relations with an innovative emphasis on the intricate web of internal affairs and events that produced the fall of Tibet. Scholars and students of Asian history will find this work an invaluable resource and interested readers will appreciate the clear explanation of highly polemicized, and often confusing, historical events.

    Arriving in 1934, he found a city imbued with the atmosphere of the recent imperial past and haunted by the powerful spirit of the late Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi. He entered a world of magnificent palaces and temples of the Forbidden City, of lotus-covered lakes and lush pleasure-gardens, of bustling bazaars and peaceful bathhouses, and of "flower houses" with their beautiful young courtesans versed in the arts of pleasing men. With a novelists' command of detail and dialogue, Blofeld vividly re-creates the magic of these years and conveys to the reader his appreciation and nostalgia for a way of life long vanished.

    Why and how they did so and to what effect are the themes of this history of the nomadic tribes of Inner Asia - the Mongols, Turks, Uighurs and others, collectively dubbed the Barbarians by the Chinese and the Europeans. This two-thousand year history of the nomadic tribes is drawn from a wide range of sources and told with unprecedented clarity and pace. The author shows that to describe the tribes as barbaric is seriously to underestimate their complexity and underlying social stability. He argues that their relationship with the Chinese was as much symbiotic as parasitic and that they understood their dependence on a strong and settled Chinese state. He makes sense of the apparently random rise and fall of these mysterious, obscure and fascinating nomad confederacies.

    "An original fairy tale that draws extensively on Japanese culture....An exciting, well-told story....The cut-paper illustrations are outstanding....A beautiful first book from a highly accomplished artist."--Kirkus Reviews.

    With beguiling humor and humility, Dr. Hale recounts his often amazing (and sometimes almost unbelievable) experiences in bringing western medicine to people who distrust -- even fear -- the introduction of ideas different from their own. He and his family work as a team to dispel that distrust and fear, and in the process have experienced incredible adventures. On the Far Side of Liglig Mountain is a book about - faith and courage - laughter and loving your neighbor - the hardships and the blessings of self-denial -- a book that you will not easily lay aside. Just as he has gained the trust and affection of his Nepalese patients and neighbors by his love for people and his eagerness to share his love of Christ, Thomas Hale will captivate the reader with his intriguing account of the joys and realities of ministering to the human condition.

    Along with 150 traditional recipes, the book offers a glossary of ingredients, equipment, techniques, and a list of mail-order sources to provide all the background necessary to prepare these dishes.

    Traces the life of the revolutionary who led the struggle to make China a Communist nation in 1949 and unleashed the horror of the Cultural Revolution in the mid-1960's.

    This book discusses the art of Persia in all its variety, relating it to the political and economic issues of the time.

    45 color photos.

    It is only after losing the fan that Yoshi discovers he can depend on his own imagination after all. "Fan-shaped cutout pages are splendid enhancements to this well-designed, stylish tale."--Publishers Weekly

    It is also a story of love and high adventure that provides a fascinating, affecting profile of a people inhabiting one of the most isolated and inhospitable regions in the world—the Kanjiroba Himal of western Nepal.

    Sealed from the outside world by Indonesian forces, it was home to tribes who were unchanged and unseen for centuries and, along with their forest land, being systematically obliterated.

    For the first time translated into English. Bangladesh, 1971: the war of independence from Pakistan has torn through peaceful villages and turned life upside down. In the midst of war, one young girl holds on as she discovers the world’s unpredictability. During her father’s prolonged absence, she reminisces about the essence of her abbu, an esteemed professor, loving community leader, and now unexpected warrior.She is moved by his quiet determination to preserve Bengali language and culture in a struggle for autonomy. In his diaries, her abbu describes the painful decisions he must make because of the threat of war, from embracing the brutality of taking up arms to the struggle of moving his family from the embattled city of Dhaka.Amid the tragedy is the unbroken bond between a father and daughter, which makes this powerful and historically faithful portrait of a family surviving the worst in the fight for independence all the more stirring.

    Each member has a section with his biography and photographs of his childhood; the heading for each section includes original artwork by guitarist Hisashi Imai. There is also a lengthy section about the band's formation and early history, with many old pictures, and a "schedule" section that includes TV performances and concerts.

    His memoir is a story of extraordinary challenges met for honor, freedom, and the Corps.

    

    A New York Times notable book for 1989. "Rockland...scores a hit with this smoothly written first novel, which has a serious message about the virtues of selfishness. This reviewer hasn't laughed so hard since Josh Greenfield and Paul Mazursky's Harry and Tonto."--Booklist

    TREASURES OF CHINA offers a rare and intimate glimpse into the beautiful landscape and richly diverse cultures that have shaped one of the world's oldest civilizations.

    The stories people made up about their deeds helped to explain the mysteries of the real world – the rising and setting of the sun, the changing seasons, the dumb beasts.They fought with giants and dragons. They were loved by princesses, outwitted by witches and saved by their friends. They took on impossible tasks, accepted every challenge and unwittingly undertook any honourable mission. Their adventures took them to every corner of the known world.They were the bravest and most chivalrous men – Lancelot and the knights of the round table, who paid allegiance to King Arthur, and Roland and the knights at the court of Charlemagne. Their deeds are legendary, but there is little doubt that they are based on historical fact.

    American Indians and ancient Greeks called it a bear, the Vikings called it a wagon, and many English people call it the plough. Egyptians blessed their mummies with its likeness, and runaway slaves followed it north to freedom -- the Big Dipper.

    This story was written to let you know how one very young, very scared marine saw his very first war and how he reacted to the killing and the mayhem of it. The stories are my view of that war, a war gone to ground in the trench lines. Dig into the stories and you may find something you were not expecting.I am well aware that my view of the Korean War has no historical importance. Still, it is my view, and I want to share it with you. I do not have a cause to plead or an ax to grind, and that alone ought to count for something. My memoirs are selective and most certainly tainted with time. My recollections are a lot like boot mines, and ought to be approached with caution. I was a grunt, a Four Deuce forward observer, assigned to duty with a marine infantry company every time the 1st Marine Regiment went back up on line. During the time I was in Korea my boondockers were firmly planted in trench-line mud. When I came home in September 1952, I was proud that I had helped in the attempt to stop Communism in Korea. I was proud of all the men I served, and served with, and I was a little bit proud of myself, too.

    The author, one of Japan' s leading journalists, demonstrates how Asian women are confronting rapid economic development which is accompanied by widespread infringement of human rights. Analysing the lives of women in Japan, Thailand, the Phillipinnes, Taiwan, China, Nepal and Korea, Yayori Matsui explores the impact of globalization - including the feminization of migration and an increase in the trafficking of women sexual violence - from the ' comfort' women to child prostitution development projects - the cause of mass deforestation and displacement of communities However she also describes women' s credit co-ops, democratization movements and unionization of women workers. She meets women who have organized anti-logging blockades, literacy classes and campaigns against trafficking. She finds women across Asia resisting the dictatorship of development, the feminization of poverty and patriarchal values. Throughout the continent, she finds the seeds of hope for a new Asia.

    Subsequent sections include chapters by leading contemporary scholars in Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and Buddhist thought that explore the Western perception of Asian traditions--the perception that Asian philosophy is a rich conceptual resource for contemporary environmental thinkers.

    Based on three decades of travel throughout Japan, collects the author's recollections and views on life in the Land of the Rising Sun.

    Nowhere else in modern history do we find so pronounced an example of government sponsorship of a religion as in Japan's support of shinto. How did that sponsorship come about and how was it maintained? How was it dismantled after World War II? What attempts are being made today to reconstruct it? In answering these questions, Hardacre shows why State shinto symbols, such as the Yasukuni Shrine and its prefectural branches, are still the focus for bitter struggles over who will have the right to articulate their significance.Where previous studies have emphasized the state bureaucracy responsible for the administration of shinto, Hardacre goes to the periphery of Japanese society. She demonstrates that leaders and adherents of popular religious movements, independent religious entrepreneurs, women seeking to raise the prestige of their households, and men with political ambitions all found an association with shinto useful for self-promotion; local-level civil administrations and parish organizations have consistently patronized shinto as a way to raise the prospects of provincial communities. A conduit for access to the prestige of the state, shinto has increased not only the power of the center of society over the periphery but also the power of the periphery over the center.