Morris then turns his attention to the kamikaze pilots of World War II, who gave their lives in defense of their nation in the full realization that their deaths would have little effect on the course of the war. Through detail, crystal-clear prose and unmatched narrative sweep and brilliance, Professor Morris takes you into the innermost hearts of the Japanese people.

    Oka's books? The eminent American designers George Nelson suggested one answer when he wrote as follows in his foreword to the earlier book: "We have come a long, long way from the kind of thing so beautifully presented in this book. To suit the needs of super mass production, the traditional natural materials are too obstreperous...and one by one we have replaced them with the docile, predictable synthetics....What we have gained from these [new] materials and wonderfully complicated processes to make up for the general pollution, rush, crowding, noise, sickness, and slickness is a subject for other forums. But what we have lost for sure is what this book is all about: a once-common sense of fitness in the relationships between hand, material, use, and shape, and above all, a sense of delight in the look and feel of very ordinary, humble things. This book is thus...a totally unexpected monument to a culture, a way of life, a universal sensibility carried through all objects down to the smallest, most inconsequential, and ephemeral things."Another question, implicit throughout the book, has been put thus by Mr. Oka: "If the craftsmen and 'designers' of old Japan could create beauty with their materials, are we today to accept defeat when faced with ours?"But beyond all questions and words and theories there always remains the sheer visual appeal of the book's 244 photographs in matte gravure and full color. The book is indeed a feast for the eyes.

    Herbert Norman had established himself as the pre-eminent Western interpreter of early modern and modern Japan. This present edition includes the classic Japan’s Emergence as a Modern State. It also introduces materials by Norman never before made widely available in the West, including an essay on the role of the historian and chapters from an unpublished book, Feudal Background of Japanese Politics.—from the back coverIncludes John W. Dower’s introductory essay, “E.H. Norman, Japan and the Uses of History”The Pantheon Asia LibraryNew Approaches to the New Asia