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Jake Adelstein is the only American journalist ever to have been admitted to the insular Tokyo Metropolitan Police Press Club, where for twelve years he covered the dark side of Japan: extortion, murder, human trafficking, fiscal corruption, and of course, the yakuza. But when his final scoop exposed a scandal that reverberated all the way from the neon soaked streets of Tokyo to the polished Halls of the FBI and resulted in a death threat for him and his family, Adelstein decided to step down. Then, he fought back. In Tokyo Vice he delivers an unprecedented look at Japanese culture and searing memoir about his rise from cub reporter to seasoned journalist with a price on his head.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Ninjutsu, the least understood of the Japanese martial arts, is an ancient fighting style emphasizing natural movement, responsiveness to adversaries, and absolute practicality. In feudal Japan, ninja were feared for their skill in espionage and, particularly, assassination. Masters of weaponry, stealth, and martial techniques, ninja were credited with supernatural powers because of the near-invincibility of their unique and deadly art.
In The Ninja and Their Secret Fighting Art, Black Belt Hall of Fame member, Stephen K. Hayes, reveals the secrets that lead to the perception of the ninja as warriors of almost sorcerous skill—the art of invisibility, special tools and weapons, and psychological training enabling the ninja to gain advantage in any situation.
Chapters include:Perspective—Origin; Organization; Training; At the Height of Power; The Decline; Ninjutsu in the Modern WorldSearch for the NinjaUnarmed Combat—The Ninja Fists; Fighting Postures; Other FactorsWeaponry—Chains and Cords; Sticks and Staffs; Canes with Concealed Weapons; The Ninja Sword; Throwing BladesThe Way of Invisibility—Sense Deception; Phantom Steps; Reconnaissance; Blending with the Night; Attacking the Eyes; The Art of DisguiseShadow Warriors—Espionage; Commando TacticsThe Realm of the Spirit—Psychological Warfare; The Force of the Killer; The Great Harmony
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.
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.”
“Here is one of the most riveting first-person accounts ever to come out of World War II. Robert Leckie enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in January 1942, shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In Helmet for My Pillow we follow his odyssey, from basic training on Parris Island, South Carolina, all the way to the raging battles in the Pacific, where some of the war’s fiercest fighting took place. Recounting his service with the 1st Marine Division and the brutal action on Guadalcanal, New Britain, and Peleliu, Leckie spares no detail of the horrors and sacrifices of war, painting an unvarnished portrait of how real warriors are made, fight, and often die in the defense of their country.
From the live-for-today rowdiness of marines on leave to the terrors of jungle warfare against an enemy determined to fight to the last man, Leckie describes what war is really like when victory can only be measured inch by bloody inch. Woven throughout are Leckie’s hard-won, eloquent, and thoroughly unsentimental meditations on the meaning of war and why we fight. Unparalleled in its immediacy and accuracy, Helmet for My Pillow will leave no reader untouched. This is a book that brings you as close to the mud, the blood, and the experience of war as it is safe to come.”-Print Ed.
The Ninja, also known as Shinobi, inspired awe and terror in equal measure. Master of espionage and assassination, stealth and concealment, the ninja's ability to move swiftly and silently gave rise to popular legends of amazing exploits, invincibility and supernatural powers.
In Ninjutsu: The Art of Invisibility, Donn Draeger draws back the veil of mystery shrouding the arcane practices of feudal Japan's shadow warriors. Stripping away myth and exaggeration, Draeger reveals the secret tactics, exotic weapons, tricks and disguises that earned the ninja a reputation as history's most feared secret agents.
Chapters include: Entering the World of the NinjaHistory and OrganizationTraining and SkillsOperating TechniquesCostumeTools and WeaponsTactics, Ruses, and FeatsFacts and Legends
AN AMERICAN BOOK AWARD FINALIST
Now in paperback, War Without Mercy has been hailed by The New York Times as “one of the most original and important books to be written about the war between Japan and the United States.” In this monumental history, Professor John Dower reveals a hidden, explosive dimension of the Pacific War—race—while writing what John Toland has called “a landmark book . . . a powerful, moving, and evenhanded history that is sorely needed in both America and Japan.”
Drawing on American and Japanese songs, slogans, cartoons, propaganda films, secret reports, and a wealth of other documents of the time, Dower opens up a whole new way of looking at that bitter struggle of four and a half decades ago and its ramifications in our lives today. As Edwin O. Reischauer, former ambassador to Japan, has pointed out, this book offers “a lesson that the postwar generations need most . . . with eloquence, crushing detail, and power.”
Comprehensive and well informed, it covers a wide array of topics in short articles accompanied by sidebars and numerous photographs, providing a lively digest of the society and culture of Japan. Designed to appeal to the generations of Westerners who grew up on Pokemon, manga and video games, A Geek in Japan reinvents the culture guide for readers in the Internet age.
Spotlighting the originality and creativity of the Japanese, debunking myths about them, and answering nagging questions like why they're so fond of robots, author Hector Garcia has created the perfect book for the growing ranks of Japanophiles in this inspired, insightful and highly informative guide.
The U.S.S. Wahoo was the most successful submarine in the World War II Pacific fleet. She was the first to penetrate an enemy harbor and sink a Japanese ship. She was the first to wipe out an entire enemy convoy single-handed. In her 11 short months of life she managed an incredible 21 kills.
Just 45 minutes before leaving Midway for her last—and fatal—patrol, her Chief Yeoman Forest Sterling was transferred to other duty.
The result is this book—Sterling’s fantastic yet completely authentic account of a remarkable crew and captain, and the ship they lived and died for.
“Many will remember the newspaper stories during World War II and the photo of Wahoo with a broomstick tied to her periscope signifying a clean sweep...But (here is) the full story from the yeoman who made all the patrols...except the last one.”—Medal-of-Honor winner Captain E. B. Fluckey, USN
From the Trade Paperback edition.
On April 16, 1945, the crewmen of the USS Laffey were battle hardened and prepared. They had engaged in combat off the Normandy coast in June 1944. They had been involved in three prior assaults of enemy positions in the Pacific-at Leyte and Lingayen in the Philippines and at Iwo Jima. They had seen kamikazes purposely crash into other destroyers and cruisers in their unit and had seen firsthand the bloody results of those crazed tactics. But nothing could have prepared the crew for this moment-an eighty-minute ordeal in which the single small ship was targeted by no fewer than twenty-two Japanese suicide aircraft.
By the time the unprecedented attack on the Laffey was finished, thirty-two sailors lay dead, more than seventy were wounded, and the ship was grievously damaged. Although she lay shrouded in smoke and fire for hours, the Laffey somehow survived, and the gutted American warship limped from Okinawa's shore for home, where the ship and crew would be feted as heroes.
Using scores of personal interviews with survivors, the memoirs of crew members, and the sailors' wartime correspondence, historian and author John Wukovits breathes life into the story of this nearly forgotten historic event. The US Navy described the kamikaze attack on the Laffey "as one of the great sea epics of the war." In Hell from the Heavens, the author makes the ordeal of the Laffey and her crew a story for the ages.
In November 1943, the men of the 2d Marine Division were instructed to clear out any token Japanese resistance on the Pacific island of Betio and return to their waiting ships. But when the Marines landed, the surviving Japanese poured out of their protective subterranean bunkers—and began one of the most brutal and bloody battles of World War II.
For three straight days, attackers and defenders fought over every square inch of sand in a battle with no defined frontlines, and where there was no possibility of retreat—because there was nowhere to retreat to. It was a clash that would leave both sides stunned and exhausted, and prove both the fighting mettle of the Americans and the fanatical devotion of the Japanese.
Drawn from new sources, such as participants’ letters and diaries and exclusive firsthand interviews with survivors, One Square Mile of Hell is the true story of a battle between two determined foes, neither of whom would ever look at the other in the same way again.
On November 20, 1943 the 2nd Marine Division launched the first amphibious assault of the Pacific War, directly into the teeth of powerful Japanese defenses on Tarawa. In that blood-soaked invasion, a single company of Sherman tanks, of which only two survived, played a pivotal role in turning the tide from looming disaster to legendary victory. In this unique study, Oscar E. Gilbert and Romain V. Cansiere use official documents, memoirs, and interviews with veterans, as well as personal and aerial photographs, to follow Charlie Company from its formation, and trace the movement, action—and loss—of individual tanks in this horrific 4-day struggle.
The authors follow the company from training through the brutal 76-hour struggle for Tarawa. Survivor accounts and air-photo analyses document the movements—and destruction—of the company’s individual tanks. It is a story of escapes from drowning tanks, and even more harrowing extrications from tanks knocked out behind Japanese lines. It is a story of men doing whatever needed to be done, from burying the dead to hand-carrying heavy cannon ammunition forward under fire. It is the story of how the two surviving tanks and their crews expanded a perilously thin beachhead and cleared the way for critical reinforcements to come ashore. But most of all, it is a story of how a few unsung Marines helped turn near disaster into epic victory.
On a clear spring day in 1995, five members of a religious cult unleashed poison gas on the Tokyo subway system. In attempt to discover why, Haruki Murakmi talks to the people who lived through the catastrophe, and in so doing lays bare the Japanese psyche. As he discerns the fundamental issues that led to the attack, Murakami paints a clear vision of an event that could occur anytime, anywhere.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
The events that culminated in the fall of Japan - which forever changed the course of diplomacy, geopolitics, and warfare in the twentieth century - are vividly recreated through dramatic first-hand accounts of the major participants on both sides of the Pacific.
They include: Harry Truman, the inexperienced American president who made the decision that would lead to unprecedented death and destruction; the war-mongering, but mysterious, Japanese Emperor Hirohito, who ultimately presided over his country's surrender; General Leslie Groves, the no-nonsense director of the Manhattan Project; and Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the plane, the Enola Gay, which dropped the very first nuclear bomb on Hiroshima in August 1945.
When Japan launched hostilities against the United States in 1941, argues Eri Hotta, its leaders, in large part, understood they were entering a war they were almost certain to lose. Drawing on material little known to Western readers, and barely explored in depth in Japan itself, Hotta poses an essential question: Why did these men—military men, civilian politicians, diplomats, the emperor—put their country and its citizens so unnecessarily in harm’s way? Introducing us to the doubters, schemers, and would-be patriots who led their nation into this conflagration, Hotta brilliantly shows us a Japan rarely glimpsed—eager to avoid war but fraught with tensions with the West, blinded by reckless militarism couched in traditional notions of pride and honor, tempted by the gambler’s dream of scoring the biggest win against impossible odds and nearly escaping disaster before it finally proved inevitable.
In an intimate account of the increasingly heated debates and doomed diplomatic overtures preceding Pearl Harbor, Hotta reveals just how divided Japan’s leaders were, right up to (and, in fact, beyond) their eleventh-hour decision to attack. We see a ruling cadre rich in regional ambition and hubris: many of the same leaders seeking to avoid war with the United States continued to adamantly advocate Asian expansionism, hoping to advance, or at least maintain, the occupation of China that began in 1931, unable to end the second Sino-Japanese War and unwilling to acknowledge Washington’s hardening disapproval of their continental incursions. Even as Japanese diplomats continued to negotiate with the Roosevelt administration, Matsuoka Yosuke, the egomaniacal foreign minister who relished paying court to both Stalin and Hitler, and his facile supporters cemented Japan’s place in the fascist alliance with Germany and Italy—unaware (or unconcerned) that in so doing they destroyed the nation’s bona fides with the West.
We see a dysfunctional political system in which military leaders reported to both the civilian government and the emperor, creating a structure that facilitated intrigues and stoked a jingoistic rivalry between Japan’s army and navy. Roles are recast and blame reexamined as Hotta analyzes the actions and motivations of the hawks and skeptics among Japan’s elite. Emperor Hirohito and General Hideki Tojo are newly appraised as we discover how the two men fumbled for a way to avoid war before finally acceding to it.
Hotta peels back seventy years of historical mythologizing—both Japanese and Western—to expose all-too-human Japanese leaders torn by doubt in the months preceding the attack, more concerned with saving face than saving lives, finally drawn into war as much by incompetence and lack of political will as by bellicosity. An essential book for any student of the Second World War, this compelling reassessment will forever change the way we remember those days of infamy.
The only book in English about the Shinsengumi, it focuses on the corps' two charismatic leaders, Kondo Isami and Hijikata Toshizo, both impeccable swordsmen. It is a history–in–brief of the final years of the Bakufu, which collapsed in 1867 with the restoration of Imperial rule. In writing Shinsengumi, Hillsborough referred mostly to Japanese–language primary sources, including letters, memoirs, journals, interviews, and eyewitness accounts, as well as definitive biographies and histories of the era.
The fall of the shogun's government (Tokugawa Bakufu, or simply Bakufu) in 1868, which had ruled Japan for over two and a half centuries, was the greatest event in modern Japanese history.
The revolution, known as the Meiji Restoration, began with the violent reaction of samurai to the Bakufu's decision in 1854 to open the theretofore isolated country to "Western barbarians." Though opening the country was unavoidable, it was seen as a sign of weakness by the samurai who clamored to "expel the barbarians."
Those samurai plotted to overthrow the shogun and restore the holy emperor to his ancient seat of power. Screaming "heaven's revenge," they wielded their swords with a vengeance upon those loyal to the shogun.
They unleashed a wave of terror at the center of the revolution—the emperor's capital of Kyoto. Murder and assassination were rampant. By the end of 1862, hordes of renegade samurai, called ronin, had transformed the streets of the Imperial Capital into a "sea of blood."
The shogun's administrators were desperate to stop the terror. A band of expert swordsmen was formed. It was given the name Shinsengumi ("Newly Selected Corps")—and commissioned to eliminate the ronin and other enemies of the Bakufu. With unrestrained brutality bolstered by an official sanction to kill, the Shinsengumi soon became the shogun's most dreaded security force.
In this vivid historical narrative of the Shinsengumi, the only one in the English language, author Romulus Hillsborough paints a provocative and thrilling picture of this fascinating period in Japanese history.
By midsummer 1945, Japan had long since lost the war in the Pacific. The people were not told the truth, and neither was the emperor. Japanese generals, admirals, and statesmen knew, but only a handful of leaders were willing to accept defeat. Most were bent on fighting the Allies until the last Japanese soldier died and the last city burned to the ground.
Exhaustively researched and vividly told, The Fall of Japan masterfully chronicles the dramatic events that brought an end to the Pacific War and forced a once-mighty military nation to surrender unconditionally.
From the ferocious fighting on Okinawa to the all-but-impossible mission to drop the 2nd atom bomb, and from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s White House to the Tokyo bunker where tearful Japanese leaders first told the emperor the truth, William Craig captures the pivotal events of the war with spellbinding authority. The Fall of Japan brings to life both celebrated and lesser-known historical figures, including Admiral Takijiro Onishi, the brash commander who drew up the Yamamoto plan for the attack on Pearl Harbor and inspired the death cult of kamikaze pilots., This astonishing account ranks alongside Cornelius Ryan’s The Longest Day and John Toland’s The Rising Sun as a masterpiece of World War II history.
“A devastating read that highlights man’s capacity to wreak destruction, but in which one also catches a glimpse of all that is best about people.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“A poignant and complex picture of the second atomic bomb’s enduring physical and psychological tolls. Eyewitness accounts are visceral and haunting. . . . But the book’s biggest achievement is its treatment of the aftershocks in the decades since 1945.” —The New Yorker
The enduring impact of a nuclear bomb, told through the stories of those who survived: necessary reading as the threat of nuclear war emerges again.
On August 9, 1945, three days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, a small port city on Japan’s southernmost island. An estimated 74,000 people died within the first five months, and another 75,000 were injured.
Nagasaki takes readers from the morning of the bombing to the city today, telling the first-hand experiences of five survivors, all of whom were teenagers at the time of the devastation. Susan Southard has spent years interviewing hibakusha (“bomb-affected people”) and researching the physical, emotional, and social challenges of post-atomic life. She weaves together dramatic eyewitness accounts with searing analysis of the policies of censorship and denial that colored much of what was reported about the bombing both in the United States and Japan.
A gripping narrative of human resilience, Nagasaki will help shape public discussion and debate over one of the most controversial wartime acts in history.
WINNER of the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize
FINALIST for the Ridenhour Book Prize • Chautauqua Prize • William Saroyan International Prize for Writing • PEN Center USA Literary Award
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
The Economist • The Washington Post • American Library Association • Kirkus Reviews
Spies, assassins, saboteurs, and secret agents, Ninja have become the subject of countless legends that continue to enthrall us in modern movies, video games, and comics—and their arts are still practiced in our time by dedicated acolytes who study the ancient techniques.
Ninja: 1,000 Years of the Shadow Warrior, by British historian John Man, is as colorful and intriguing as the warriors it so vividly brings to life.
On the sea the Japanese rained down a deadly hail of kamikazes. On land the entrenched defenders had nowhere to retreat, and the US Army and Marines had nowhere to go but onward, into the thick of some of the of the most bloody close-quarters fighting in World War II.
This was Okinawa, the savage pitched battle waged just months before the US nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. Operation Iceberg, as it was known, saw the fiercest attack of kamikazes in the entire Pacific Theater of War. And here Gerald Astor lets the soldiers tell their stories firsthand: of flame-thrower attacks and hand-to-hand confrontations, of atrocities, deadly ambushes and brutal hilltop sieges that left entire companies decimated. Operation Iceberg is the raw, hard-edged account of war at its most brutal—and the last great battle of World War II.
Barak Kushner has written a first-rate study of propaganda in Japan during the Second World War. In a work of painstaking research, he takes his readers into the heart of wartime Japan, building a compelling argument that Japanese propaganda was sophisticated and effective in rallying the population and, after the war, seamlessly redirecting it to aid the transformation of Imperial Japan into the post-war democracy of today. The Thought War is a superbly competent piece of research that floods light into a place where only generalization, supposition, and stereotype had existed before. Nicholas J. Cull, University of Southern California, editor, Propaganda and Mass Persuasion: A Historical Encyclopedia, 1500 present
The Thought War is a unique and remarkable study. Barak Kushner reveals that Japanese propaganda during World War II was astonishingly sophisticated, diverse, and effective. What s more, the methods, messages, and makers of wartime propaganda proved just as successful at shaping public opinion in the wake of Japan s defeat as they earlier had been in mobilizing the nation for war. Kushner s insights on Japan s path from empire, through war, and into postwar reconstruction are provocative, compelling, and thoroughly convincing. William M. Tsutsui, chair of the Department of Asian Studies, University of Kansas
The Thought War is the first book in English to examine the full extent of Japan s wartime propaganda. Based on a wide range of archival material and sources in Japanese, Chinese, and English, it explores the propaganda programs of the Japanese government from 1931 to 1945, demonstrating the true scope of imperial propaganda and its pervasive influence, an influence that is still felt today. Contrary to popular postwar rhetoric, it was not emperor worship or military authoritarianism that led an entire nation to war. Rather, it was the creation of a powerful image of Japan as the leader of modern Asia and the belief that the Japanese could and would guide Asia to a new, glorious period of reform that appealed to imperial subjects.
Kushner analyzes the role of the police and military in defining socially acceptable belief and behavior by using their influence to root out malcontents. His research is the first of its kind to treat propaganda as a profession in wartime Japan. He shows that the leadership was not confined to the crude tools of sloganeering and government-sponsored demonstrations but was able instead to appropriate the expertise of the nation s advertising firms to sell the image of Japan as Asia s leader and modernizer. In his exploration of the propaganda war in popular culture and the entertainment industry, Kushner discloses how entertainers sought to bolster their careers by adopting as their own pro-war messages that then filtered down into society and took hold. Japanese propaganda frequently conflicted with Chinese and American visions of empire, and Kushner reveals the reactions of these two nations to Japan s efforts and the meaning of their responses.
"From the Hardcover edition.
To Hell and Back offers readers a stunning, “you are there” time capsule, wrapped in elegant prose. Charles Pellegrino’s scientific authority and close relationship with the A-bomb survivors make his account the most gripping and authoritative ever written.
At the narrative’s core are eyewitness accounts of those who experienced the atomic explosions firsthand—the Japanese civilians on the ground. As the first city targeted, Hiroshima is the focus of most histories. Pellegrino gives equal weight to the bombing of Nagasaki, symbolized by the thirty people who are known to have fled Hiroshima for Nagasaki—where they arrived just in time to survive the second bomb. One of them, Tsutomu Yamaguchi, is the only person who experienced the full effects of both cataclysms within Ground Zero. The second time, the blast effects were diverted around the stairwell behind which Yamaguchi’s office conference was convened—placing him and few others in a shock cocoon that offered protection while the entire building disappeared around them.
Pellegrino weaves spellbinding stories together within an illustrated narrative that challenges the “official report,” showing exactly what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki—and why.
Also available from compatible vendors is an enhanced e-book version containing never-before-seen video clips of the survivors, their descendants, and the cities as they are today. Filmed by the author during his research in Japan, these 18 videos are placed throughout the text, taking readers beyond the page and offering an eye-opening and personal way to understand how the effects of the atomic bombs are still felt 70 years after detonation.
One generation ago, sushi’s narrow reach ensured that sports fishermen who caught tuna in most of parts of the world sold the meat for pennies as cat food. Today, the fatty cuts of tuna known as toro are among the planet’s most coveted luxury foods, worth hundreds of dollars a pound and capable of losing value more quickly than any other product on earth. So how did one of the world’s most popular foods go from being practically unknown in the United States to being served in towns all across America, and in such a short span of time?
A riveting combination of culinary biography, behind-the- scenes restaurant detail, and a unique exploration of globalization’s dynamics, the book traces sushi’s journey from Japanese street snack to global delicacy. After traversing the pages of The Sushi Economy, you’ll never see the food on your plate—or the world around you—quite the same way again.
Richard Lloyd Parry, an award-winning foreign correspondent, covered Lucie's disappearance and followed the massive search for her, the long investigation, and the even longer trial. Over ten years, he earned the trust of her family and friends, won unique access to the Japanese detectives and Japan's convoluted legal system, and delved deep into the mind of the man accused of the crime, Joji Obara, described by the judge as "unprecedented and extremely evil."
The result is a book at once thrilling and revelatory, "In Cold Blood for our times" (Chris Cleave, author of Incendiary and Little Bee).
The People Who Eat Darkness is one of Publishers Weekly's Top 10 Best Books of 2012
From early on, Guthrie-Shimizu argues, baseball carried American values to Japan, and by the mid-twentieth century, the sport had become emblematic of Japan's modernization and of America's growing influence in the Pacific world. Guthrie-Shimizu contends that baseball provides unique insight into U.S.-Japanese relations during times of war and peace and, in fact, is central to understanding postwar reconciliation. In telling this often surprising history, Transpacific Field of Dreams shines a light on globalization's unlikely, and at times accidental, participants.
For all readers wanting to better understand this dynamic country, this popular and accessible introduction offers an authoritative yet concise overview of two thousand years of Japanese history. Now fully updated to the present, this edition also includes an array of photographs and illustrations. The first half of the book explores the pre-Meiji era up to 1868. The second half traces domestic changes and relevant foreign issues in the modernizing era launched by the Meiji Restoration. Highlighting key historical events, Milton W. Meyer also includes cultural, artistic, and religious milestones. Summaries and datelines at the end of each chapter, as well as a glossary, offer additional essential reference points. With its clear explanations of Japanese traditions, religion, history, economics, politics, and relations with the West, this book provides an invaluable guide for understanding contemporary Japan.
In The Great Wave, Benfey tells the story of the tightly knit group of nineteenth-century travelers—connoisseurs, collectors, and scientists—who dedicated themselves to exploring and preserving Old Japan. As Benfey writes, “A sense of urgency impelled them, for they were convinced—Darwinians that they were—that their quarry was on the verge of extinction.”
These travelers include Herman Melville, whose Pequod is “shadowed by hostile and mysterious Japan”; the historian Henry Adams and the artist John La Farge, who go to Japan on an art-collecting trip and find exotic adventures; Lafcadio Hearn, who marries a samurai’s daughter and becomes Japan’s preeminent spokesman in the West; Mabel Loomis Todd, the first woman to climb Mt. Fuji; Edward Sylvester Morse, who becomes the world’s leading expert on both Japanese marine life and Japanese architecture; the astronomer Percival Lowell, who spends ten years in the East and writes seminal works on Japanese culture before turning his restless attention to life on Mars; and President (and judo enthusiast) Theodore Roosevelt. As well, we learn of famous Easterners come West, including Kakuzo Okakura, whose The Book of Tea became a cult favorite, and Shuzo Kuki, a leading philosopher of his time, who studied with Heidegger and tutored Sartre.
Finally, as Benfey writes, his meditation on cultural identity “seeks to capture a shared mood in both the Gilded Age and the Meiji Era, amid superficial promise and prosperity, of an overmastering sense of precariousness and impending peril.”
From the Hardcover edition.
Then There Was One is a story of men—like Admiral “Bill” Halsey, who rode the Big E as his flagship; Air Group Cmdr. McClusky who, in what was officially termed “the most important decision of the entire action, helped win the Battle of Midway; Cmdr. Turner Caldwell whose decision to take eleven Enterprise planes to Guadalcanal helped determine the fate of the Solomons; young Lt. “Birney” Strong who fulfilled a life’s ambition and scratched one Jap flattop; Ensign Neal Scott whose dying letter to his parents is one of the most moving documents of the war—of these men and many others.
It is a story of battles—from that first Sunday morning when the Enterprise was returning to Pearl Harbor as the Japs were attacking it, right down through every major carrier action, save one, with the Big E writing one of the grandest record-breaking pages in naval history: 29 Jap ships sunk and 185 Jap planes destroyed. It is a story of courage and heroism in the face of two of the heaviest air attacks ever launched against any American ship by the enemy.
This is the carrier story long awaited by those who have followed our progress in the Pacific. For those who have not, it will be an exciting and inspiring eye-opener. This is it—the grand, glorious, and victorious first year of the U.S.S. Enterprise.
This book was the basis for the 1965 Otto Preminger film IN HARM’S WAY featuring John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Dana Andrews, Patricia Neal, Henry Fonda and others. Bassett served on the staff of Rear Admiral “Bull” Halsey, and later managed three of Richard Nixon’s political campaigns. The book examines critically and at close quarters the U.S. Navy he knew well from his own experiences - having achieved captain’s rank and been awarded a Bronze Star for his services.
The Human Tradition in Modern Japan offers a human-scale perspective that focuses on individuals, reconstitutes the meaning of people's experiences as they lived through them, and puts a human face on history. It skillfully bridges the divides between the sexes, between the local and the national, and between rural and urban, as well as spanning crucial moments in the history of modern Japan.
The Human Tradition in Modern Japan is an excellent resource for courses on Japanese history, East Asian history, and peoples and cultures of Japan.Budo is one of the least understood forms of art in the world. Even more than skills or techniques, the teachings of budo require faith to learn and courage to understand. One of the fundamental teachings of budo is ninjutsu, the art of perseverance that forms the basis of the Japanese martial arts.
The lessons in this book come directly from experiencing the living vitality of the world's foremost master of the ninja arts, Masaaki Hatsumi. Through the use of stories, poetry, art, and earned wisdom, the authors move beyond the common image of the martial arts and reveal the nature of the unexpected changes in themselves as they struggled to come to terms with what being a martial artist in the ninja tradition meant.
The Art of Life and Death is a reflection of the discipline, the aesthetics, and the philosophy that lies hidden within the martial way. It is a glimpse at the hidden potential of the martial arts, one where the practitioner can embrace transcendence and transformation in order to face all the fears that litter life and also life's most fearsome opponent: Death.
The work begins with a panoramic survey of the tumultuous early struggles of warlords contending for political ascendancy and then outlines the relentless progression of the military class toward absolute power. In addition to illustrating actual methods of combat, the authors discuss in detail the crucial training necessary to develop a warrior's inner power and to concentrate all his energies into a single force.
Secrets of the Samurai is an essential text for anyone with an interest in Japanese combat techniques, weaponry, or military history. This edition also contains a new foreword by Adele Westbrook and numerous previously unpublished illustrations by Oscar Ratti. Chapters include: The BushiThe HeiminThe Centers of Martial InstructionArmed BujutsuUnarmed BujutsuControl and PowerStrategic PrinciplesMorality of Bujutsu
Japanese Music and Musical Instruments has three main orientations: The history of Japanese music Construction of the instruments Analysis of the music itself.The book covers in a lucidly written text and a wealth of fascinating photographs and drawings the main forms of musical expression. Many readers will find the useful hints on purchasing instruments, records, and books especially valuable, and for those who wish to pursue the matter further there is a selected bibliography and a guide to Tokyo's somewhat hidden world of Japanese music. It will be found an invaluable aid to the understanding and appreciation of an important, but little-known, and fascinating aspect of Japanese culture.
Yet American leaders claimed the bombs were "our least abhorrent choice"—and still today most people believe they ended the Pacific War and saved millions of American and Japanese lives. In this gripping narrative, Ham demonstrates convincingly that misunderstandings and nationalist fury on both sides led to the use of the bombs. Ham also gives powerful witness to its destruction through the eyes of eighty survivors, from twelve-year-olds forced to work in war factories to wives and children who faced the holocaust alone.
Hiroshima Nagasaki presents the grisly unadorned truth about the bombings, blurred for so long by postwar propaganda, and transforms our understanding of one of the defining events of the twentieth century.
Okinawa: The History of an Island People is the definitive book available in English on the history of Okinawa and the Ryukyu Islands, and an influential scholarly work in the field of Japanese studies. The histories of Japan, Okinawa, and the entire Pacific region are crucially intertwined; therefore the review of this fascinating chain of islands is crucial to understanding all of East Asia.
Few people can point to Okinawa on a map, yet this tiny island sitting between China and Japan was and continues to be one of the most crucial Asian nerve centers in all U.S. strategic defense. Ninety percent of all U.S. military forces in Japan are located on Okinawa, and more than 500,000 military personnel and their families have lived there.
In Okinawa: The History of an Island People, noted Eastern affairs specialist George Kerr recounts the fascinating history of the island and its environs, from 1314 A.D. to the late twentieth century. First published in 1958, this edition features an introduction and appendix by Okinawa history scholar Mitsugu Sakihara, making this the most comprehensive resource on the intriguing island of Okinawa.
The varied accounts in Under the Black Umbrella reveal a truth that is both more ambiguous and more human—the small-scale, mundane realities of life in colonial Korea. Accessible and attractive narratives, linked by brief historical overviews, provide a large and fully textured view of Korea under Japanese rule. Looking past racial hatred and repression, Kang reveals small acts of resistance carried out by Koreans, as well as gestures of fairness by Japanese colonizers. Impressive for the history it recovers and preserves, Under the Black Umbrella is a candid, human account of a complicated time in a contested place.
In The Ninja Defense, the classic art of the ninja is updated for maximum effectiveness in modern day situations. Stephen K. Hayes is a Black Belt Hall of Fame member, founder of To-Shin Do, and acknowledged "Father of American Ninjutsu." He has distilled and refined the knowledge he has built studying and teaching ninjutsu for decades into a comprehensive self-defense system that can defuse the worst situations the modern world has to offer.
The result is a realistic martial arts training system that includes instruction in techniques and strategies for dealing with:Grappling, Throwing, Choking, and Joint-lockingStriking, Kicking, and PunchingStick, Blade, Cord, and Projectile weaponsHandling multiple assailants and Surprise attacksOvercoming psychological intimidation or BullyingThis ninja book, which includes a bonus DVD, focuses on Hayes' revised take on the classical martial arts styles of Japan's famed shinobi. He provides his readers with all the key ingredients—both physical and mental—to emerge safely from unexpected danger. The chapter on mental discipline will allow readers to feel more confident in whatever situation everyday life brings.
The Ninja Defense contains extremely practical techniques that the author honed while serving as a bodyguard for His Holiness the Dalai Lama and fine-tuned through years of teaching. It is the ultimate self-defense book from a true martial art master.
She was credited with sinking twenty Japanese ships, eight of them destroyers. Her captain, Sam Dealey, devoted son and loving husband and father, was a product of peace. Sam Dealey, deadly torpedo marksman and destroyer killer, was a product of war.
Aboard the Harder there was no time for gloating over, her victories. Dealey himself never gloated. As we have said, his attack manners were calm. He indulged in no shouting, no fanfare of destruction. After his torpedoes hit, he went about the business of bringing his ship into a position of safety as rapidly as possible. He did not linger to rejoice at the sight of an enemy going down. In his veins ran the milk of human kindness, in his heart was a feeling of humility and humanity that could not find pleasure in the destruction of a beautiful ship and a hundred odd human beings—deadly enemies though they were.
Perhaps he remembered the worlds of Captain Philip of the old battleship Texas at the Battle of Santiago, who called to his cheering crew as their Spanish adversary sank: “Don’t cheer, boys; those poor devils are dying.” While Dealey never said so, in so many words, one could conclude that he hated the job of killing but knew it had to be done and did his best to carry out his duty.
“HIT ‘EM HARDER!”...was the ship’s motto, and she most certainly did. On April 13 1944, open season was declared by our Submarines against the destroyers of the Imperial Japanese Navy, and Comdr. Sam Dealey was at the forefront of the attack. The hunters had become the hunted and Dealey’s “down the throat torpedo attacks helped to sink the Rising Sun. He showed great courage, too, when rescuing Australian coast watchers from Borneo’s shores, and again, with no reading left on the Fathometer and surf breaking twenty yards ahead, holding Harder against a reef and under fire of snipers to save an American pilot.—Print Ed.
With detailed descriptions and over 100 illustrations, authentic samurai, farmers, craftsmen, merchants, courtiers, priests, entertainers and outcasts come to life in this magnificently illustrated portrait of a colorful society. Most works of Japanese history fail to provide enough details about the lives of the people who lived during the time. The level of detail in Everyday Life in Traditional Japan allows for a nearly complete picture of the history of Japan.
In fascinating detail, Charles J. Dunn describes how each class lived: their food, clothing, and houses; their beliefs and their fears. At the same time, he takes account of certain important groups that fell outside the formal class structure, such as the courtiers in the emperor's palace at Kyoto, the Shinto and Buddhist priests, and the other extreme, the actors and the outcasts. he concludes with a lively account of everyday life in the capital city of Edo, the present–day Tokyo.
Historically, Japanese warriors considered their swords to be far greater than simple weaponry. Their swords were both lethal tools and divine companions — social and religious icons. Traditionally worn by the samurai as a sign of social status, the Japanese sword represented the junction between the reigning military class and those whom they ruled. Moreover, the samurai sword was a technological and artistic marvel. Many scholars consider it to be the finest sword ever constructed.
In terms of symbolism and historical importance, no other blade comes close to the Japanese sword. With a historical, iconographical, and technological perspective, author Cohn M. Roach provides an in-depth study of these magnificent weapons in Japanese Swords. This richly illustrated sword book weaves the blade's primary influences together, tracking its history and illuminating its progress from infancy to grandeur. By studying the evolution of the Japanese sword from this perspective, we better understand Japan and its warrior archetype.
Combining research materials from multiple disciplines, Roach uses his expertise as an educator to guide readers through the sword's rise to greatness in a unique way. This book discusses the history, development, and spiritual symbolism of the sword, as well as the esoteric metallurgical techniques used in making it. It also covers the difficult training practices used by skilled swordsmen.
Japanese Swords also includes a companion DVD featuring a beautifully-filmed documentary that explores the traditional swordmaker's craft. The DVD also contains an introduction to the Japanese sword at a sword shop in Kyoto and a visit to a dojo for a beginner's class in the medieval sword-drawing art called iaido.
(Sun Tzu, "The Art of War")
In medieval Japan there were a few dozen families of Iga and Koga provinces specializing in Ninjutsu. Most of them belonged to the category of "goshi" - inferior level of the samurai class with its own hereditary estates. In Koga goshi clans were 53. In Iga dominated three Ninja clans - Hattori, Momoti and Fudzhibayashi.
They were not only cold-blooded assassins and spies as well as trying to present them some authors. Not accidental their art was preserved more than 1,300 years.
The key to this art is their device: "Patience above all else."
This visual history of the ninja introduces us to their ideology, lifestyle, training and weapons. It is interesting for both children and adults.
Commander Frederick Bell recounts his wartime experiences on the USS G (Grayson) during the Pacific War.
“CONDITION RED” was an expression that we used to indicate the imminence of any type of engagement. Aboard the G it was a colloquialism that served to express the conviction that the next few hours or days or weeks were going to be packed with action. We first heard it soon after we arrived in the Solomons, where the term was used on Guadalcanal and Tulagi to indicate the approach of the enemy, and when our voice radio blared out the words we went to General Quarters and prepared to greet the Tokyo Express or the Zeros and Mitsubishis when they came within view.
Little has been written of the part that our destroyers are playing in the Pacific War, where they are called upon to fulfil such a variety of missions that they have become multipurpose ships, engaging in any form of combat. Because we lacked suitable escort ships we used destroyers to protect convoys as well as to guard our combatant Task Forces. We used them to bombard enemy shore positions and to carry bombs and aviation gasoline and stores to Guadalcanal during the lean weeks early in our campaign in those far-distant seas.
By nature as well as by name, the purpose of the destroyer is wholly offensive. Bantamweights in comparison with the great battlewagons, they pack a punch out of all proportion to their size. They are triple-threat weapons, built to strike at any enemy on or over or under the sea. In the words of Rear Admiral Tisdale, “They are the fightingest thing afloat.”