Best of
Japan

1974

Gateless Barrier: Zen Comments on the Mumonkan


Zenkei Shibayama - 1974
    It contains forty- eight koans, or spiritual riddles, that must be explored during the course of Zen training. Shibayama Zenkei (1894-1974), an influential Japanese Zen teacher and calligrapher who traveled and lectured throughout the United States in the 60s and 70s, offers his own commentary alongside the classic text. The Gateless Barrier remains an essential text for all serious students of Buddhism.

No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War


Hiroo Onoda - 1974
    Hunted in turn by American troops, the Philippine police, hostile islanders, and successive Japanese search parties, Onoda had skillfully outmaneuvered all his pursuers, convinced that World War II was still being fought and that one day his fellow soldiers would return victorious. This account of those years is an epic tale of the will to survive that offers a rare glimpse of man's invincible spirit, resourcefulness, and ingenuity. A hero to his people, Onoda wrote down his experiences soon after his return to civilization. This book was translated into English the following year and has enjoyed an approving audience ever since.

Ozu: His Life and Films


Donald Richie - 1974
    The Japanese family in dissolution figures in every one of his fifty-three films. In his later pictures, the whole world exists in one family, the characters are family members rather than members of a society, and the ends of the earth seem no more distant than the outside of the house.

A Rabbit's Eyes


Kenjirō Haitani - 1974
    At the core, the challenges of teaching are the same the world over. Kenjiro Haitani's charming and profoundly moving reminder to keep faith with the kids is finally out in English.It's a typical day at the elementary school when a beautiful young newlywed named Ms. Kotani, the new teacher, eagerly goes into class and leaves before the final bell sobbing. Her students include the silent boy Tetsuzo, whose hobby is collecting flies, and a girl, Minako, who could keep Ritalin in business all alone. Most of the school's teachers have never given these kids a chance, but Ms. Kotani will not give up so easily--even when her single-minded efforts start hurting her marriage.

Modern Bujutsu & Budo Volume III: Martial Arts and Ways of Japan


Donn F. Draeger - 1974
    This text is an analysis of modern bujutsu and budo.

The Modern Reader's Japanese-English Character Dictionary


Andrew N. Nelson - 1974
    By scholarly consensus - 'the first really practical, completely up-to-date, and authoritative dictionary in its field...a genuine boon to all English-speaking students of written Japanese...'

The Kabuki Theatre


Earle Ernst - 1974
    If you can keep paying attention you will find at the end that you seem to have been living in Japan for quite a while.' --Edwin Denby, 'Art News'

The Institute Of Pacific Relations: Asian Scholars And American Politics


John N. Thomas - 1974
    

Marx: Towards the Centre of Possibility


Kōjin Karatani - 1974
    Written at a time when the political sequences of the New Left had collapsed into crisis and violence, with widespread political exhaustion for the competing sectarian visions of Marxism from 1968, Karatani's Marx laid the groundwork for a new reading, unfamiliar to the existing Marxist discourse in Japan at the time. Karatani's Marx takes on insights from semiotics, deconstruction, and the reading of Marx as a literary thinker, treating Capital as an intervention in philosophy that could be read as itself a theory of signs. Marx is unique in this sense, not only because of its importance in post-68 Japanese thought, but also because the heterodox reading of Marx that Karatani debuts in this text, centered on his theory of the value-form, will go on to form the basis of his globally-influential work.

Accomplices of Silence: Modern Japanese Novel


Masao Miyoshi - 1974
    16 The Japanese novel, lately so widely translated, is finding a broader and better informed readership than ever before. Until now, however, no comprehensive critical discussion of the form has been available in a Western language. Masao Miyoshi offers an intensive reading of several outstanding novels of the past hundred years. He explains that the Japanese novel, usually regarded as basically Western in style, retains native elements that utterly resist Western influence. Citing Western, especially English, novels for comparison, he demonstrates how the Japanese novel differs in important formal aspects.

The Christian Century in Japan, 1549-1650


Charles Ralph Boxer - 1974
    Thus by chance they discovered the fabled country reported by Marco Polo. In 1549 St Francis Xavier started a Jesuit mission in Japan. Christianity flourished; by the end of the "Christian Century" there were some 300,000 converts. Then the Shoguns rose to absolute power, the missionaries were expelled and Christians persecuted. Two centuries later, when Commodore Perry forced Japan to open its ports, thousands of Christians declared themselves. This classic study of a remarkable but little-known period of Japanese history was first published in 1951. This edition is illustrated with the works of art produced in that fruitful century of cultural cross-fertilisation.

Ancestor Worship in Contemporary Japan


Robert J. Smith - 1974
    

Race to Pearl Harbor: The Failure of the Second London Naval Conference and the Onset of World War II


Stephen E. Pelz - 1974
    They make careful distinctions between attitudes toward principles of racial equality and attitudes toward government action to implement those principles. The wide research base and methodological sophistication of their analysis yield conclusions quite different from those of earlier, more narrowly drawn studies. For example, they find that while there has been a striking increase in support for principles of equality and fairness, support for some kinds of implementation of these ideals lags far behind or has even declined among both blacks and whites. The implementation measures considered range from busing to achieve integration of schools to laws requiring equal opportunity in employment. In addition to reanalyzing survey data, the authors have also performed several innovative experiments on the wording and context of survey questions to help them interpret the data more accurately.

A Study of Samurai Income and Entrepreneurship: Quantitative Analyses of Economic and Social Aspects of the Samurai in Tokugawa and Meiji, Japan


Kozo Yamamura - 1974