Tag Archives: Japan

In My Hands Today…

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The Rising Sun: The Decline & Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-45 – John Toland

This Pulitzer Prize–winning history of World War II chronicles the dramatic rise and fall of the Japanese empire, from the invasion of Manchuria and China to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 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.”

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Diplomats & Admirals: From Failed Negotiations and Tragic Misjudgments to Powerful Leaders and Heroic Deeds, the Untold Story of the Pacific War from Pearl Harbor to Midway – Dale A. Jenkins

It’s November 1941. Japan and the US are teetering on a knife-edge as leaders on both sides of the Pacific strive to prevent war between them. But failed diplomacy, foiled negotiations, and possible duplicity in the Roosevelt administration thwarted their attempts.

Drawing on now-declassified original documents, Diplomats & Admirals reveals the inside story of one fateful year, including:

  • How the hidden agendas of powerful civilian and military leaders pushed the two nations toward war
  • The miscommunications, misjudgments, and blunders that doomed efforts at peace
  • China’s role in the US ultimatum that triggered the attack on Pearl Harbor
  • Why the carrier-to-carrier showdown at Coral Sea proved a fatal mistake for Japan
  • How courageous US navy pilots snatched victory from defeat at the Battle of Midway

The defining events of WWII could have ended very differently. Combining perspectives from both military and civilian leaders, Diplomats & Admirals uncovers new insights into the Pacific naval battles that shaped the world—and the men behind them.

In My Hands Today…

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The Bells of Old Tokyo: Meditations on Time and a City – Anna Sherman

From 1632 until 1854, Japan’s rulers restricted contact with foreign countries, a near isolation that fostered a remarkable and unique culture that endures to this day. In hypnotic prose and sensual detail, Anna Sherman describes searching for the great bells by which the inhabitants of Edo, later called Tokyo, kept the hours in the shoguns’ city.

An exploration of Tokyo becomes a meditation not just on time but also on history, memory, and impermanence. Through Sherman’s journeys around the city and her friendship with the owner of a small, exquisite cafe, who elevates the making and drinking of coffee to an art form, The Bells of Old Tokyo follows haunting voices through the labyrinth that is the Japanese an old woman remembers escaping from the American firebombs of World War II. A scientist builds the most accurate clock in the world—a clock that will not lose a second in five billion years. The head of the Tokugawa shogunal house reflects on the destruction of his grandfathers’ “A lost thing is lost. To chase it leads to darkness.”

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Three Tigers, One Mountain: A Journey Through the Bitter History and Current Conflicts of China, Korea, and Japan – Michael Booth

There is an ancient Chinese proverb that states, “Two tigers cannot share the same mountain.” However, in East Asia, there are three tigers on that mountain: China, Japan, and Korea, and they have a long history of turmoil and tension with each other. In his latest entertaining and thought provoking narrative travelogue, Michael Booth sets out to discover how deep, really, is the enmity between these three “tiger” nations, and what prevents them from making peace. Currently China’s economic power continues to grow, Japan is becoming more militaristic, and Korea struggles to reconcile its westernized south with the dictatorial Communist north. Booth, long fascinated with the region, travels by car, ferry, train, and foot, experiencing the people and culture of these nations up close. No matter where he goes, the burden of history, and the memory of past atrocities, continues to overshadow present relationships. Ultimately, Booth seeks a way forward for these closely intertwined, neighboring nations.

An enlightening, entertaining and sometimes sobering journey through China, Japan, and Korea, Three Tigers, One Mountain is an intimate and in-depth look at some of the world’s most powerful and important countries.

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Geisha, a Life – Mineko Iwasaki, translated and contributed by Rande Brown

“No woman in the three-hundred-year history of the karyukai has ever come forward in public to tell her story. We have been constrained by unwritten rules not to do so, by the robes of tradition and by the sanctity of our exclusive calling…But I feel it is time to speak out.””

Celebrated as the most successful geisha of her generation, Mineko Iwasaki was only five years old when she left her parents’ home for the world of the geisha. For the next twenty-five years, she would live a life filled with extraordinary professional demands and rich rewards. She would learn the formal customs and language of the geisha, and study the ancient arts of Japanese dance and music. She would enchant kings and princes, captains of industry, and titans of the entertainment world, some of whom would become her dearest friends. Through great pride and determination, she would be hailed as one of the most prized geishas in Japan’s history, and one of the last great practitioners of this now fading art form.

In “Geisha, a Life,” Mineko Iwasaki tells her story, from her warm early childhood, to her intense yet privileged upbringing in the Iwasaki okiya (household), to her years as a renowned geisha, and finally, to her decision at the age of twenty-nine to retire and marry, a move that would mirror the demise of geisha culture. Mineko brings to life the beauty and wonder of Gion Kobu, a place that “existed in a world apart, a special realm whose mission and identity depended on preserving the time-honored traditions of the past.” She illustrates how it coexisted within post-World War II Japan at a time when the country was undergoing its radical transformation from apost-feudal society to a modern one.

“There is much mystery and misunderstanding about what it means to be a geisha. I hope this story will help explain what it is really like and also serve as a record of this unique component of Japan’s cultural history,” writes Mineko Iwasaki. “Geisha, a Life” is the first of its kind, as it delicately unfolds the fabric of a geisha’s development. Told with great wisdom and sensitivity, it is a true story of beauty and heroism, and of a time and culture rarely revealed to the Western world.