It illuminates important aspects of Japanese literature for the general reader and places each subject within the context of the tradition as a whole.

    In this classic travel memoir, Donald Richie embarks on a quest to find Japan’s timeless heart among its mysterious waters and forgotten islands. This edition features an introduction by Pico Iyer, photographs from the award-winning PBS documentary, and a new afterword. First published in 1971, The Inland Sea is a lucid, tender voyage of discovery and self-revelation. --amazon

    Book by Hackett, Roger F.

     First used for identification on the battlefield beginning in the twelfth century, mon developed into symbols of family pride and fortune and quintessential expressions of the Japanese design sensibility—especially in their economy of means, exquisite detailing, and boldness of composition. The motifs employed in these family crests are also a fascinating window into the symbolic system of traditional Japan, which drew from a rich palette of natural phenomena, plants, animals, abstract devices, and manmade objects. This book will be a source of pleasure and inspiration to anyone interested in the basic elements of Japanese design, and of valuable information to anyone wishing to know more about the remarkable culture that produced it.

    Examples of painting, architecture, gardens, drama and ceramics probe the relationship between Zen Buddhism and the fine arts.

    Bernard Millot tries to make this argument in Divine Thunder, a historical overview of the Japanese suicide pilots.This book was originally published in French in 1970, and the English translation came out the following year. The book was also translated into Japanese. Bernard Millot is a French aviation journalist and historian and is the author of a two-volume history of the Pacific War.The first two chapters cover the historical background leading up to Japan's use of kamikaze pilots against the American fleet. The first chapter deals with Japan's ancient traditions such as the bushido code followed by the samurai, and the second one gives several examples during World War II when Japanese soldiers willingly sacrificed themselves to inflict damage on the enemy. Chapters 3 to 8 summarize the history of the kamikazes from the creation of the first kamikaze corps in October 1944 until the end of the war, with one chapter devoted to nautical kamikazes such as the kaiten torpedo steered inside by a pilot toward its target. The first half of the final chapter contains details on several suicide planes under development but never employed by the end of the war. This section has little relevance to the book's overall theme. The last half of the final chapter provides conclusions on Japan's use of the kamikaze pilot.Millot classifies the kamikaze pilots into three psychological categories. First, some pilots were spontaneous heroes who firmly embraced Japan's martial tradition and who possessed a strong sense of patriotism. Second, some men with deep religious beliefs accepted self-sacrifice as a way of elevating themselves spiritually. The third category consisted of men who thought logically that suicide attacks were the only way to deliver a damaging blow against the enemy. Although Millot's categorization of the pilots into three types may have some merit, he provides almost no evidence to support such an analysis. He briefly mentions final letters written by the pilots and includes two long letters in the book, but he does not even indicate to which category these pilots belong. He also fails to mention that the military usually censored the pilots' correspondence, so some last letters may not represent their true beliefs and feelings. Finally, the author never considers that there may have been another category of pilots who did not really support the kamikaze attacks but decided to carry them out only because of social pressure and military discipline.Much of the source material for Divine Thunder comes directly from a few well-known published sources on the kamikazes and the Pacific War. For example, the book's two letters written by kamikaze pilots were first published more than a decade earlier (1958) in The Divine Wind by Inoguchi and Nakajima. The book also lacks Japanese sources other than a few works translated into English. Although the book's descriptions of the overall history of kamikaze operations seem generally accurate, at times Millot will make statements with little or no support. For example, he mentions the "Japanese have a deeply mystical turn of mind" (p. 11), "their mystical predisposition toward self-sacrifice" (p. 65), and "the mystically patriotic fervor" behind the kamikaze attacks (p. 67). However, he never really explains this so-called mysticism and how it related to the creation of the kamikaze suicide missions.Readers who want a general history of Japanese kamikaze operations should avoid this book and try either The Divine Wind by Inoguchi and Nakajima or The Sacred Warriors by Warner and Warner. In comparison to Divine Thunder, these two books have more original material and provide better reasoning and support for their conclusions.

    James Morley's introductory chapter, Choice and Consequence, and Edwin O. Reisehauer's conclusion. What Went Wrong? define the context of the discussion.Contents: Foreword, John Whitney Hall. 1. Introduction: Choice and Consequence, James William Morley. PART ONE: Political and Military. II. The Bureaucracy as a Political Force, 1920-45, Robert M. Spaulding, Jr. III. Retrogression in Japan's Foreign Policy Decision-Making Process, Chihiro Hosoya. IV. The Failure of Military Expansionism, Akira Iriye. V. The Radical Left and the Failure of Communism, George M. Beekmann. PART TWO: Economic and Social. VI. Rural Origins of Japanese Fascism, R. P. Dore and Tsutomu Ouchi. VII. The Economic Muddle of the 192O's, Hugh I. Patrick. VIII. Big Business and Politics in Prewar Japan, Arthur E. Tiedemann. PAKT THREE: Intellectual. IX. Intellectuals as Visionaries of the New Asian Order, James B. Crowley. X. Nakano Seigo and the Spirit of the Meiji Restoration in Twentieth- Century Japan, Tetsuo Najita. XI. Oyama Ikuo and the Search for Democracy, Peter Duus. PART FOUR: Comparisons and Conclusions. XII. Japan and Germany in the Interwar Period, Kentaro Hayashi. XIII. What Went Wrong? Edwin O. Reischauer. Index.Originally published in 1972.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

    Relying first on foreign-built warships, the Japanese spared no effort to acquire the necessary knowledge to construct their own vessels and, within a few decades, the new Imperial Japanese Navy was already a highly efficient force.The acid test of fire came in 1904 when, to country the increasing Russian political interference in the Far East, the Japanese High Command decided on a surprise strike against the Russian Fleet in Port Arthur. This was followed on May 27, 1905, by the 'Japanese Trafalgar' when the numerically superior Russian Baltic Fleet was annihilated at Tsushima by Japanese naval forces under Admiral Togo.After the First World War the Imperial Japanese Navy went through a series of naval construction and modernisation programmes, first copying certain foreign design features but soon evolving an original style of their own. Although the Washington Treaty of 1922 set certain limits on the size and number of naval units, Japanese designers soon found ways and means of circumventing these restrictions. But it was not just an expansion in numbers and size: along with the US Navy the Japanese Naval High Command were the first to recognise the future offensive capabilities of aircraft carriers and the long-range striking power of carrier-borne aviation, and drew the correct conclusions.By 1941 the Imperial Japanese Navy was a modern and well-balanced force, ready to face any adversary, and its growing strength played an important part in the plans of the Japanese High Command, The Japanese naval striking power was concentrated in a group of aircraft carriers equipped with modern attack aircraft and fighters (including the then phenomenal Zero), crewed by highly trained airmen, and supported by several flotillas of fast and far-ranging cruisers, destroyers and large submarines. The nucleus consisted of a strong force of heavily armed and armoured battleships, including the world's largest units of the type.This enormous power was unleashed on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese carrier-borne aviation and midget submarines struck at the US Naval base in Pearl Harbor.For a while it seemed that there was nothing that could stop the Japanese onslaught but, despite the initial successes, the Imperial Japanese Navy did not have the necessary industrial backing for prolonged sea warfare and could not compete with the growing Allied sea and air power. Within a few short years the once powerful and proud force had been reduced to a shadow of its former self and was never given the chance to recuperate.There was much originality in the design of later Japanese warships and these vessels were as good--and in some case, even better--than their Allied counterparts. The development of Japanese naval architecture is a fascinating story, although parts of it can never be told owing to the wholesale destruction of essential original documents in 1945.The narrative is the result of 15 years of painstaking research work by A. J. Watts and B. G. Gordon and represents the first extensively detailed and accurate survey of the Imperial Japanese Navy from its inception to its destruction in 1945, spanning a period of 70 years of Japanese warship development. The authors have had access to many hitherto unpublished documents and files from Japanese, American and British sources, and their highly detailed narrative is illustrated by several hundred selected photographs and accurate line drawings.

    

    This fictionalized account of a true incident remains one of Japan’s most poignant stories about soldiers’ courage and the dangers of reckless leadership.Jiro Nitta (1912–80) was one of Japan’s most popular authors and a winner of the Naoki Prize.

    The Burakumin is an "in visible race" which, unlike the Negro and other races in America, lacks stigma of color or other physical distinctions. Not invisible is it other wise, for Burakumin are unlike the majority japanese in a variety of cultural features historically derivative from discrimination and pre judice which Burakumin have long suffered. This study of Burakumin focused on the responses of two compulso ry schools to the problems of this minority group. Other research foci were integrated into this central concern of the study so as to provide a unified cultural perspective. Attention was given to such various aspects of Burakumin culture as: historical perspective, community life, struggles for emancipation, organizational activities, nature of and discrimination, attitudes and responses of non-Buraku prejudice min towards Burakumin. Education in its broadest sense is an indigenous cultural process by means of which the culture, whether literate or non-literate, can main tain its continuity; this process is widely woven into the complex fabric of man's life and his organized activities. Education in a formal sense, however, is institutionalized schooling engaged in cultural transmission and change. One of the practical advantages of studying education in an anthropological perspective is to treat it in the matrix of culture as education and culture relate to each other. The present study focused its attention upon formal education with only minor attention given to informal aspects."

    In this volume, Gerald L. Curtis provides a detailed case study of the campaign of Sato Bunsei, who in 1967 ran for the Lower House of Japan's parliament as a nonincumbent candidate of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Sato's district consisted of a modern urban center and a tradition-bound rural hinterland and featured a dynamic dialectic between old and new patterns of electioneering, which led Sat? to innovate new strategies and techniques. Since its publication in 1971, sociologists and anthropologists as well as political scientists have considered Curtis's microanalysis of Japan's political system to be a vital historical document, offering insights into Japanese social behavior and political organization that are still relevant. The Japanese edition of Curtis's pioneering study, "Daigishi No Tanjo," a best-seller, is valued today as a classic and read and cited by journalists, politicians, and scholars alike. This edition features a new introduction in which the author reflects on the reception of his book and on the changes in Japan's election process since its publication.

    Exploring a tumultuous time in Japanese 19th-century history, when the country began to emerge from self-imposed exile, this study profiles activists such as Sakamoto Ryoma and Nakaoka Shintaro, who played an important role in the development of a unified nation state.