Best of
Japanese-History

2004

Miyamoto Musashi: His Life and Writings


Kenji Tokitsu - 2004
    He has become a martial arts icon, known not just as an undefeated dueler, but also as a master of battlefield strategy. Kenji Tokitsu turns a critical eye on Musashi's life and writings, separating fact from fiction, and giving a clear picture of the man behind the myth. Musashi's best-known work, The Book of Five Rings , provides timeless insight into the nature of conflict. Tokitsu translates and provides extensive commentary on that popular work, as well as three other short texts on strategy that were written before it, and a longer, later work entitled "The Way to Be Followed Alone." Tokitsu is a thoughtful and informed guide, putting the historical and philosophical aspects of the text into context, and illuminating the etymological nuances of particular Japanese words and phrases. As a modern martial artist and a scholar, Tokitsu provides a view of Musashi's life and ideas that is accessible and relevant to today's readers and martial arts students.

Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China


Ruth Rogaski - 2004
    Rogaski focuses on multiple manifestations across time of a single Chinese concept, weisheng—which has been rendered into English as "hygiene," "sanitary," "health," or "public health"—as it emerged in the complex treaty-port environment of Tianjin. Before the late nineteenth century, weisheng was associated with diverse regimens of diet, meditation, and self-medication. Hygienic Modernity reveals how meanings of weisheng, with the arrival of violent imperialism, shifted from Chinese cosmology to encompass such ideas as national sovereignty, laboratory knowledge, the cleanliness of bodies, and the fitness of races: categories in which the Chinese were often deemed lacking by foreign observers and Chinese elites alike.

From the Book of 1000 Tales: Stories of Armenia and Its People 1892-1922


Diana Agabeg Apcar - 2004
    Unique in the fact that the author if these tales, a directdescendant of her scattered race of her scattered race, never set foot in herbeloved homeland. She wrote them in a country far removed geographically, ethnicallyand culturally from her upbringing, from her family and from her Mother Church.Word of mouth was her sole source,gleaned from the many hundreds of displaced Armenians seeking new become and anew life away from their tormentors. This manuscript, written so many yearsago, Languished and finally came to light 67 years after the death of theauthor. It is our hope that The Book ofOne Thousand Tales will be a revelation to all.

A History of Japanese Mathematics


David Eugene Smith - 2004
    Topics include the use of the abacus; the application of sangi, or counting rods, to algebra; the yenri, or circle principle; the work of Seki Kowa, Ajima Chokuyen and Wada Nei; more. 1914 edition. Includes 74 figures.

Jazz Journeys to Japan: The Heart Within


William Minor - 2004
    And, turning conventional wisdom on its ear, he disproves the widely held notion that Japanese jazz artists don't "swing." Along the way, we experience Minor's growing appreciation of Japanese culture, which mirrors his subjects' discovery of American jazz.William Minor's previous books include Unzipped Souls: A Jazz Journey through the Soviet Union, and Monterey Jazz Festival: Forty Legendary Years. He has written for Downbeat, Jazz Times, Jazz Notes, Coda, and Swing Journal.

Japanese Aircraft Equipment: 1940-1945


Robert C. Mikesh - 2004
    There are chapters on such aircraft installed equipment as instruments, radios, cameras, machine guns and cannons, gunsights and bombsights used by the Japanese Army and Navy air forces. The opening chapter describes the history as to how much of this equipment was captured and now is in the hands of collectors and museums. The closing chapter has additional information on colors and coatings used in these interiors. This information will aid collectors to more definitively identify equipment that may not otherwise be clearly marked. Experts in these respective fields have been major contributors.

Collaboration: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in Wartime China


Timothy Brook - 2004
    This work talks about the sensitive topic of wartime collaboration between the Chinese and their Japanese occupiers.

Punishment and Power in the Making of Modern Japan


Daniel V. Botsman - 2004
    Focusing on Japan, and the dramatic revolution in punishments that occurred after the Meiji Restoration, Daniel Botsman asks how such distinctions have affected our understanding of the past and contributed, in turn, to the proliferation of new kinds of barbarity in the modern world.While there is no denying the ferocity of many of the penal practices in use during the Tokugawa period (1600-1868), this book begins by showing that these formed part of a sophisticated system of order that did have its limits. Botsman then demonstrates that although significant innovations occurred later in the period, they did not fit smoothly into the modernization process. Instead, he argues, the Western powers forced a break with the past by using the specter of Oriental barbarism to justify their own aggressive expansion into East Asia. The ensuing changes were not simply imposed from outside, however. The Meiji regime soon realized that the modern prison could serve not only as a symbol of Japan's international progress but also as a powerful domestic tool. The first English-language study of the history of punishment in Japan, the book concludes by examining how modern ideas about progress and civilization shaped penal practices in Japan's own colonial empire.