22 posts tagged “japan”

Synopsis: "Yoder is an American-trained sociologist who has taught at various American and Japanese universities for 30 years; he currently lectures at a number of universities in the Tokyo metropolitan area. This text builds on a study begun 20 years ago on Japanese youth deviance and class conflict, and follow-up studies four and 15 years after the original fieldwork. This latest work investigates why Japanese youths rebel against adult social controls and describes the consequences of this rebellion when they enter young adulthood. The research is unique in that most studies of Japanese crime focus on adult criminals, and because the text views the problem through the eyes and experiences of the youths themselves." (from BN.com)

Impressions: Okay. Access it here with Google Books.

Rating: 3 of 5 stars.

Synopsis: "This book offers a balanced introduction to and examination of contemporary Japanese education. The postwar system of schooling has led to some unfavorable developments such as excessively competitive exams, stifling uniformity and an undervaluing of non-Japanese ethnicity. This book examines the main developments of modern schooling in Japan and includes analysis of the most recent reforms, presenting a new picture of the role of schooling for individuals and the wider society. Essential reading for students and educators alike." (from back of book)

Impressions: Outdated but interesting.

Rating: 4 of 5 stars.

Synopsis: "Assembled in Japan investigates one of the great success stories of the twentieth century: the rise of the Japanese electronics industry. Contrary to mainstream interpretation, Simon Partner discovers that behind the meteoric rise of Sony, Matsushita, Toshiba, and other electrical goods companies was neither the iron hand of Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry nor a government-sponsored export-led growth policy, but rather an explosion of domestic consumer demand that began in the 1950s.
This powerful consumer boom differed fundamentally from the one under way at the same time in the United States in that it began from widespread poverty and comparatively miserable living conditions. Beginning with a discussion of the prewar origins of the consumer engine that was to take off under the American Occupation, Partner quickly turns his sights on the business leaders, inventors, laborers, and ordinary citizens who participated in the broadly successful effort to create new markets for expensive, unfamiliar new products.
Throughout, the author relates these pressure-cooker years in Japan to the key themes of twentieth-century experience worldwide: the role of technology in promoting social change, the rise of mass consumer societies, and the construction of gender in advanced industrial economies." (from back of book)

Rating: 4 of 5 stars.

Synopsis: "Yukichi Fukuzawa (1835-1901) was a leading figure in the cultural revolution that transformed Japan from an isolated feudal nation into a full-fledged player in the modern world. He translated a wide range of Western works and adapted them to Japanese needs, inventing a colorful prose style close to the vernacular. He also authored many books, which were critical in introducing the powerful but alien culture of the West to the Japanese. Only by adopting the strengths and virtues of the West, he argued, could Japan maintain its independence despite the "disease" of foreign relations.

Dictated by Fukuzawa in 1897, this autobiography offers a vivid portrait of the intellectual's life story and a rare look inside the formation of a new Japan. Starting with his childhood in a small castle town as a member of the lower samurai class, Fukuzawa recounts in great detail his adventures as a student learning Dutch, as a traveler bound for America, and as a participant in the tumultuous politics of the pre-Restoration era. Particularly notable is Fukuzawa's ability to view the new Japan from both the perspective of the West and that of the old Japan in which he had been raised. While a strong advocate for the new civilization, he was always aware of its roots in the old." (from back of book)

Rating: 2 of 5 stars.

Synopsis: "Oe, who won the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature, was just 23 in 1958, when he published this wrenching first novel in Japan. From the opening paragraph's description of a river "bearing away at tremendous speed the corpses of dogs, rats, and cats," it is clear that this is a story of innocents?or at least relative innocents?carried violently by forces beyond their control. In the waning days of WWII, a group of Japanese reform-school boys are evacuated to a remote village in a densely wooded valley. The villagers treat the teenagers horribly, making them bury a mountain of animal corpses, locking them into a shed for the night and feeding them raw potatoes. The unnamed narrator?one of the group's leaders?discovers that a plague is ravaging the valley. When a couple of people are infected by the disease, the villagers panic. Believing the boys to be infected, the villagers remove themselves to the other side of the valley and block the only road out of town. At first, the boys can think only of escape, but then, like the boys in Lord of the Flies, they start to make the village their own: they bury the dead humans and perform a sort of sacrament; they care for an abandoned, infirm girl; they hold a hunting festival to ensure continued abundance. The narrator becomes the girl's lover; his younger brother adopts a stray pup; an unexpected snowfall sparks a midwinter celebration. But each pleasant turn, every apparently liberating step away from unremitting brutality, serves to make the characters' inevitable future suffering even more painful. The end arrives with the suddenness and fury of a tornado, as disease and war catch up to the boys. Oe is considered by many to be Japan's greatest postwar novelist. It's easy to see why. Here, his writing is crisp and lovely and gruesomely perfect." (from Publishers Weekly)

Impressions: Humanity infects its children.

Rating: 4 of 5 stars.

Synopsis: "Seventeen is a novella in size. Its seventy-three pages may not be tedious to read, but the concepts are overwhelming. Simply, the narrative consists of a first person narrator taking the reader with him through a few months of his life. The events can be broken into two phases: phase one is before he enters the right wing party, and phase two consists of his life after he joins. Phase one begins (and thus the entire narrative begins) with the narrator announcing, "Today is my birthday." (1) And in this empty statement, the entire novel is hashed out. "Seventeen," as is the only name for the speaker throughout, has little interaction with anyone on an emotional level except for the reader. We become a type of confidant as we witness his ritual masturbations, his anger against his indifferent family and the alienation he feels from his peers. His most intimate externally generated experience is with a cat named Gangster who comes to visit him in the "ship" he has made in the shed, a place where Seventeen can sleep, think and experience fear in private. Gangster licks saliva from Seventeen's lips, but once he is done taking what he needs, he'll dart off.

The second day of the narrative begins as Seventeen is late for school. When he arrives, he finds that he is late for exams. He feels he has done poorly on the morning ones and winds up feeling defeated for the afternoon physical exam portion as well. He is required to run eight hundred meters and upon completion, urinates all over himself.The second phase of the narrative begins when a classmate, Shintoho, invites him to go to a right wing rally. He agrees to go, and winds up standing up to dissenting party opinions vocalized by some bystanders. This throws him into the world of the right and thus begins a new course of his life. Seventeen takes on the party identity, and while at first we see him as being fairly similar to his original characterization, over time a metamorphosis takes place. Seventeen becomes a confident, yet brutally violent young man. One decisive event in this transformation is his outing to a bathhouse where a young woman masturbates him, he ejaculates in her face and thereby feels power over her. From here, he beats down party antagonists without shame, guilt or weakness. To him, he has become a strong individual. The narrator finally tells us that he is, "...the one and only blissful Seventeen." (from http://www.willamette.edu/~rloftus/OePage.htm)

Impressions: I had had a different impression of what Oe's Seventeen & J would be about going into the book. I started reading it a long time ago and had actually only finished it just recently given enough free time. I didn't like Seventeen or J as much as Oe's later works after A Personal Matter. Even though Oe's use of the dark erotic-grotesque literature genre appeals to me, his much more confessional and mythical works later on rotating around mental dysfunction (vis a vis his son) and sexual perversion from a married life, or an adulterer, seems more... sincere(?)... than the confessions of Seventeen. I can understand the death threats that  Oe received during the time of this publication, phew! I sure wouldn't have liked to have been in his situation at such a time. 

In A Silent Cry it is the townsfolk and the grassroots community that provide the mysticism and history behind the character. In A Persoanl Matter, the mature protagonist must battle himself but he relies upon another woman to comfort him during the birth of his defected son. His weaknesses, when shared with another human being, strike me as more human than the approach that Seventeen had. Although I can't say that I liked the dramatic conclusion of A Personal Matter, in truth what other realistic (or rational, I should say) alternative is there? In Seventeen, I just don't see the ending as making sense. Either Seventeen will die very young or... I don't know..that sort of life just can't be lived, I imagine.

J was perhaps the more interesting read. I was amused by the idea of a chikan club. The old man and J and the young man presented a sort of perverse trio of deviants. I didn't quite understand how the young man's death, the series of events leading to it, came about. When he coerced the young girl to follow him to the train tracks, did he change his mind at the last minute and try to save her and kill himself or did he fully intend to molest her and die the ultimate sinner/chikan along with her on the train rails. I wasn't quite sure. The old man, a politician, was a great addition to the troupe. Way to go Oe for putting in Japanese politics into such a scandalous area of society. J was much more a self-concious being than Seventeen, and pragmatic (or rational?), that for this reason his choice of being who he was and how he managed such a life was much more agreeable and understandable. Of course no life for any one person can be understood by any other one person in all instances, but for me this was the case.

Unfortunately I have almost exhausted all of what has yet been translated into English of Oe's works but I did just begin Somersault, and so far it is very interesting.

Rating: 3 of 5 stars.

Synopsis: "Part exuberant celebrator, part human Murakami encyclopedia, Rubin, a Harvard professor of Japanese Literature and a Murakami translator, puts about the author's life and writing under a microscope in this homage to all things Murakami. The internationally bestselling Murakami began publishing at age 30, while he and his wife ran Peter Cat, a Tokyo jazz club, and, as the title of this volume suggests, Murakami's writing is filled with musical references. Rubin starts by introducing the reader to "The 1963/1982 Girl from Ipanema," "one of Murakami's most musical stories." Rubin delves into Murakami's obsessions, from animals (particularly cats) to detachment, sex and hunger, by breaking down many of Murakami's stories and all of his novels. Rubin's plot summaries can go on too long before he gets to his critique, but his analyses are colorful and heartfelt, opening new ways of understanding the coolly surreal Murakami. Only in a few instances does Rubin point out a misstep, such as in Sputnik Sweetheart. Quips Rubin: "In one of the worst lines of the book, the narrator actually thinks to himself: 'Sumire went over to the other side. That would explain a lot.' Indeed it would, just as the existence of gremlins would explain how my glasses moved from my desk to the dining-room table." While Rubin states this book is for other Murakami fans, casual Murakami readers and those baffled by the writer's works could gain something from this volume." (from Publishers Weekly)

Impressions: Good book. Good insight. Much of the information I already knew or had picked up. Not much added to my knowledge of Murakami. To other readers, though, probably lots of new info. Not really an autobiography. More a bunch of info about the author and various quotes from interviews. A little bit about his wife who keeps even more private than himself. Interesting.

Rating: 4 of 5 stars.

Synopsis: "The Book of Tea is something of a curiosity: written in English by a Japanese scholar (and issued here in bilingual form), it was first published in 1906, in the wake of the naval victory over Russia with which Japan asserted its rapidly acquired status as a world-class military power. It was a peak moment of Westernization within Japan. Clearly, behind the publication was an agenda, or at least a mission to explain. Around its account of the ceremony, The Book of Tea folds an explication of the philosophy, first Taoist, later Zen Buddhist, that informs its oblique celebration of simplicity and directness--what Okakura calls, in a telling phrase, "moral geometry." And the ceremony itself? Its greatest practitioners have always been philosophers, but also artists, connoisseurs, collectors, gardeners, calligraphers, gourmets, flower arrangers." (from Amazon.com)

Impressions: Very interesting. You can tell it was written back then. Pretty assertive and up-front. Kind of perpetuates and emphasizes differences between East/West. Beautiful and articulate. I was in a garden when I read this part, (and it resonated rather ironically):

"Tell me, gentle flowers, teardrops of the stars, standing in the garden, nodding your heads to the bees as they sing of the dews and the sunbeams, are you aware of the fearful doom that awaits you? Dream on, sway and frolic while you may in the gentle breezes of summer. To-morrow a ruthless hand will close around your throats. You will be wrenched, torn asunder limb by limb, and borne away from your quiet homes. The wretch, she may be passing fair. She may say how lovely you are while her fingers are still moist with your blood. Tell me, will this be kindness? It may be your fate to be imprisoned in the hair of one whom you know to be heartless or to be thrust into the buttonhole of one who would not dare to look you in the face were you a man. It may even be your lot to be confined in some narrow vessel with only stagnant water to quench the maddening thirst that warns of ebbing life."

Rating: 4 of 5 stars.

The Washington Arboretum: