Neophytes to Japan studies will find Warriors of Legend an accessible way to learn about this fascinating country. Those who know quite a lot about Japan already will find their understanding enhanced by the way the book analyzes the nuances of Tokyo's history and Japanese society. The book also argues that Sailor Moon is a unique series in that it was both internationally popular and strongly structured by the culture of the city of Tokyo and post-Economic Bubble Japan.

    A portrayal of how and why Japan waged war from 1931-1945 and what life was like for the Japanese people in a society engaged in total war.

    One day an invitation arrives. Peyton has been selected to attend a luxurious all-expense-paid seminar in Iceland, where participants, billed as some of the greatest thinkers in the world, will be charged with answering one perplexing question. Meeting her diverse teammates--two neuroscientists, a philosopher, a dance teacher, a collage artist, and a farmer--Peyton wonders what she could ever have to contribute. The ensuing journey of discovery will transform the characters' work, their biases, and themselves. This suspenseful novel shows that the answers you seek can be found in the most unlikely places. It can be read for pleasure, is a great choice for book clubs, and can be used as unique and inspiring reading in qualitative research and other courses in education, sociology, social work, psychology, and communication.

    The large scale imprisonment and rape of thousands of women, who were euphemistically called "comfort women" by the Japanese military, first seized public attention in 1991 when three Korean women filed suit in a Toyko District Court stating that they had been forced into sexual servitude and demanding compensation. Since then the comfort stations and their significance have been the subject of ongoing debate and intense activism in Japan, much if it inspired by Yoshimi's investigations. How large a role did the military, and by extension the government, play in setting up and administering these camps? What type of compensation, if any, are the victimized women due? These issues figure prominently in the current Japanese focus on public memory and arguments about the teaching and writing of history and are central to efforts to transform Japanese ways of remembering the war.Yoshimi Yoshiaki provides a wealth of documentation and testimony to prove the existence of some 2,000 centers where as many as 200,000 Korean, Filipina, Taiwanese, Indonesian, Burmese, Dutch, Australian, and some Japanese women were restrained for months and forced to engage in sexual activity with Japanese military personnel. Many of the women were teenagers, some as young as fourteen. To date, the Japanese government has neither admitted responsibility for creating the comfort station system nor given compensation directly to former comfort women.This English edition updates the Japanese edition originally published in 1995 and includes introductions by both the author and the translator placing the story in context for American readers.

    In these pages, Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn and Sergeant Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police are investigating perplexing and mystifying crimes. Leaphorn, Chee, and More is a must for all mystery fans.The Fallen Man reunites newly retired Navajo Tribal Policeman Joe Leaphorn with Acting Lieutenant Jim Chee to finally close a case involving a sniper, a skeleton, and eleven years of unanswered questions. In this evocative mystery, the past and the present join forces in a most unholy union.In The First Eagle, Jim Chee catches a Hopi poacher huddled over a butchered Navajo Tribal Police officer. Chee seems to have an open-and-shut case -- until Joe Leaphorn blows it wide open.Hunting Badger balances politics, outsiders, and fugitive armed bandits. After the Ute tribe's gambling casino is raided, FBI agents swarm the maze of canyons on the Utah-Arizona border. But Chee and Leaphorn find fatal flaws in the federal theory that accuses a wounded deputy sheriff as a suspect, and they are soon caught in the most deadly hunt of their lives.

    Authentic samurai, farmers, craftsmen, merchants, courtiers, priests, entertainers and outcasts come to life in this magnificently illustrated portrait of a colorful society.

    

    Paul Wilson’s powerful World War II novel is an unforgettable saga of passion and terror, the ravages of war, the pain of betrayal, and the glory of love.At the heart of the story are four people torn between love and honor: Matsuo Okumo, born in Japan, raised in America, and hated in both lands; Hiroki Okumo, his brother, a modern samurai sworn to serve a secret cult and the almighty Emperor; Meiko Satsuma, the woman they both love; and Frank Slater, the American who turned away when Matsuo needed him, and who now struggles to repay his debt of honor.

    Told from the Japanese perspective, The Rising Sun is, in the author’s words, “a factual saga of people caught up in the flood of the most overwhelming war of mankind, told as it happened—muddled, ennobling, disgraceful, frustrating, full of paradox.”In weaving together the historical facts and human drama leading up to and culminating in the war in the Pacific, Toland crafts a riveting and unbiased narrative history. In his Foreword, Toland says that if we are to draw any conclusion from The Rising Sun, it is “that there are no simple lessons in history, that it is human nature that repeats itself, not history.”

    Samurai. Legend.The life of history’s first foreign-born samurai, and his journey from Northeast Africa to the heights of Japanese society.When Yasuke arrived in Japan in the late 1500s, he had already traveled much of the known world. Kidnapped as a child, he had ended up a servant and bodyguard to the head of the Jesuits in Asia, with whom he traversed India and China learning multiple languages as he went. His arrival in Kyoto, however, literally caused a riot. Most Japanese people had never seen an African man before, and many of them saw him as the embodiment of the black-skinned (in local tradition) Buddha. Among those who were drawn to his presence was Lord Nobunaga, head of the most powerful clan in Japan, who made Yasuke a samurai in his court. Soon, he was learning the traditions of Japan’s martial arts and ascending the upper echelons of Japanese society.

    It is without question one of the most famous battles in history. Now, for the first time since Gordon W. Prange’s bestselling Miracle at Midway, Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully offer a new interpretation of this great naval engagement. Unlike previous accounts, Shattered Sword makes extensive use of Japanese primary sources. It also corrects the many errors of Mitsuo Fuchida’s Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan, an uncritical reliance upon which has tainted every previous Western account. It thus forces a major, potentially controversial reevaluation of the great battle. Parshall and Tully examine the battle in detail and effortlessly place it within the context of the Imperial Navy’s doctrine and technology. With a foreword by leading World War II naval historian John Lundstrom, Shattered Sword is an indispensable part of any military buff’s library.Shattered Sword is the winner of the 2005 John Lyman Book Award for the "Best Book in U.S. Naval History" and was cited by Proceedings as one of its "Notable Naval Books" for 2005.

    Michihiko Hachiya was director of the Hiroshima Communications Hospital when the world's first atomic bomb was dropped on the city. Though his responsibilities in the appalling chaos of a devastated city were awesome, he found time to record the story daily, with compassion and tenderness. His compelling diary was originally published by the UNC Press in 1955, with the help of Dr. Warner Wells of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who was a surgical consultant to the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission and who became a friend of Dr. Hachiya. In a new foreword, John Dower reflects on the enduring importance of the diary fifty years after the bombing.

    Nakane deals with his own society as a social anthropologist using some of the methods which he was accustomed to applying in examining any other society. However, its form is not that of a scientific thesis (as may be seen at once from the absence of a bibliography; the author also refrains from quoting any statistical figures or precise data directly obtained from field surveys). Nakane has tried to construct a structural image of Japanese society, synthesizing the major distinguishing features to be found in Japanese life. He has drawn evidence almost at random from a number of different types of community to be found in Japan today--industrial enterprises, government organizations, educational institutions, intellectual groups, religious communities, political parties, village communities, individual household and so on. Throughout this investigation of groups in such varied fields, Nakane has concentrated my analysis on individual behavior and interpersonal relations which provide the base of both the group organization and the structural tendencies dominating in the development of a group.

    In 1970 he startled the world by stepping out onto a balcony in Tokyo before an assembly of troops and plunging a sword into his abdomen; a disciple then beheaded him, completing the ritual of hara-kiri. John Nathan's riveting biography traces the life of this tortured, nearly superhuman personality. Mishima survived a grotesque childhood, and subsequently his sadomasochistic impulses became manifest -- as did an increasing obsession with death as the supreme beauty. Nathan, who knew Mishima professionally and personally, interviewed family, colleagues, and friends to unmask the various -- often seemingly contradictory -- personae of the genius who felt called by "a glittering destiny no ordinary man would be permitted."

    It was originally published in Japan in 1997. Several works from this collection have been officially released in English.Collected Works:Blood-Bubble BushesUnbearable MazeSword of the ReanimatorThe WillThe BridgeThe Devil's LogicSharing Rooms (The Conversation Room)