No comments about A Reader's Guide To Amy Tan's the Joy Luck Club (Multicultural Literature).

2 comments about I.M. Pei: Mandarin of Modernism.

1. A brilliant and well-thought out look at one of this centuries most prolific architects. All of the stories behind his greatest achievements are here, including the scandal the erupted around the building of the Louvre pyramid. Pei is shown to be an practical innovator with his own particular philosophy; his elegant lines and deceptively simple ideas set him apart from the complicated ideology of the Bauhaus movement and architects like Le Corbusier. A very good read.



2. You know the work of I.M Pei even if you don't know that he was the architect behind them. You have seen the glass Pyramid at the Lourvre (although there was much more to his design than that visible and memorable landmark), the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the East Wing of the National Gallery in Washington D. C. , the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library, Hancock Place in Boston, the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong and many others.
   
   Like a great many important architects, he caused strenuous debate, derisive rejection by some, loud praise from others. Many link him as a disciple of Walter Gropious and others reject the very idea that such an original thinker would be derivative of another.
   
   This very fine book will help you understand more about his work, how the projects were selected, the requirements and desires behind the designs, and what the vision was that resulted in all those buildings with the sharp geometric lines. The man himself is also quite interesting. The firm he founded continues (though he retired from it in 1990), however, in an interview in 2004 he said that he stopped taking new projects in 2001. He was born in 1917, so he has had a very active and long career.
   
   If you think you hate his work, I encourage you to step back and read this book. It will help you better understand his designs. They do make a great deal of sense and I think they are beautiful. Certainly, while they still challenge some, they do seem less outrageous compared to the designs one sees going up around the world today.

No comments about Junzi, A Man of Virtue, The Biography of Yuan-li Wu.

4 comments about Sanshiro: A Novel (Michigan Classics in Japanese Studies).

1. Many of Soseki's other novels are still in print, but this one is not. Odd.

   Sanshiro is probably not a good book to head in to unless you are familiar with Meiji period Japan. However, the message(s) in the book are without a doubt easily discovered even if you haven't studied the history of the time.

   The main focus is on a boy becoming a man, going to school in Tokyo, far from his home village in Kumamoto. The sort of things he encounters during college life are no doubt the same sort of things Soseki met with (even though soseki is from Tokyo), but they illustrait many discoveries and observations many of us may have made and just forgetten about, without realizing how important they may have been.

   Taking place just after the Russo-Japan war the picture painted of society is frought with confusion and excitement.Rapid change and new discoveries are shown from both sides of the mirror. Perhaps there is something here for us in the age of rapid globalization and digitalization as well.

   This will await reprinting, hopefully forthcoming.




2. Soseki's first attempt at a serious (as opposed to Botchan), full-length novel is a wonderful story of a country boy, Sanshiro, in his first year at Tokyo University studying literature. During the year he falls in love and unwittingly gets involved in university politics.
   Set in the early 1900's, the book examines Japanese society moving into the modern world. Sanshiro is trapped between the traditional Japan of his home, the modern world of Tokyo, and the academic world of the University. He falls in love with a modern woman, but has difficulty relating to her because he has little experience with woman and because of his traditional upbringing.
   My droll description by no means does the novel justice. As a coming-of-age story, it is superior to Western classics such as This Side of Paradise and The Catcher in the Rye. It is an utterly charming novel that shows Soseki's fine sense of humor as well as his skill and insight in critiquing Japanese society and man entering a modern world. Soseki's simple, elegant writing style survives even through translation. It serves well as an introduction to Soseki's works, which later are darker psychological analyses.



3. "Sanshiro" is a coming-of-age novel, Meiji Japan style. This is definitely not one of Soseki's better known novels, especially in the United States, but it still has an appeal and sharpness that transcends time and cultural barriers.

   "Sanshiro" is in many ways both different and yet similar to Soseki's most famous work, "Kokoro." Both include tales of heartbreak and tragedy, along with social commentary on Japanese society. For whatever reason, Sanshiro struck me as a much more "modern" book than Kokoro. Using the word modern on a book written 100 years ago may seem odd, but reading Soseki's comments on Japanese society at the time (end of the 19th/beginning of 20th century Japan), then considering the ultimate result of the Meiji cultural "revolution" (the emphasis on Western science and Eastern philosophy which led to militaristic ultranationalism), and then again the state of Japan today and it is clear that Soseki's comments are not outdated.

   Similarly, Sanshiro's Mineko is a much more modern, "Western" young lady than her counterpart in Kokoro. Unlike Kokoro's Ojosan, who didn't seem to have a thought of her own, Mineko is beautiful, intelligent, slightly haughty, and has a mysterious appeal about her. She is not some trophy to be captured, but a person to be respected in her own right. I found myself verbally assaulting the annoyingly clumsy Sanshiro when he missed opportunity after opportunity to get to know Mineko better. Of course, when he finally develops some guts it's too late. The blame for this unhappy end falls on Mineko as well, as she is one of Sanshiro and Yojiro's generation's "unconscious hypocrites" in the words of Soseki. Mineko knows that she has found a fellow stray sheep in Sanshiro, yet she ultimately abandons him.

   Soseki's writing is again a joy to read. Every time you encounter a passage that seems to start getting a little monotonous, he throws in a paragraph that seems absolutely brilliant. The characters are similarly memorable. I liked Kokoro a bit better, but Sanshiro is still an excellent book that has aged well.




4. I rate this irony laden story on par with Soseki's most important novel, 'Kokoro.' Joseph Conrad's novels had to travel to Africa and the East Indies to establish the parameters within which the Japanese lived their daily lives as they grappled with the effects of Western Rationalism upon a nonindustrial society. Fortunately for world literature, Soseki Natsume was up to the task of documenting this transitional period with grace, wit, and sensitivity. Soseki's books generally are either serious ('Kokoro') or satiric ('Botchan,' 'I Am A Cat'), 'Sanshiro' is both and it is the better for it.
   After graduating from a provincial school Sanshiro enters Japan's greatest university and encounters a number of Tokyo sophisticates, among them westernized girls, famed artists and writers, jaded academicians, dedicated scientists and his best friend Yojiro a lovable, well-meaning scoundrel who constantly throws his shy and self-effacing compatriot into the thick of things. Because there are so many elements that make up this heady mix, the reader has the choice of processing the story on many different levels. At the very simplest level it is about first love and disappointment, but it is also a commentary upon the effects of the new on the old, East meets West, the city vs. the countryside, the traditional and untraditional, youthful idealism and middle-aged disappointment. This probably sounds as though it might be tedious or pedantic, but really Soseki's treatment of the themes is gentle and a delight to read. For instance, when one of Sanshiro's heroes is disgraced by a well-meaning plan that goes awry, Soseki blunts the pain by riffng on the inscrutability of the 'philosophical smoke' streaming through his victim-hero's nostrils as he puffs on his pipe. A stream of smoke by which Sanshiro's roguish friend claims to read emotions. Also, when Soseki lampoons the intellectual conceits of his characters, he does it in a way that the reader must seriously consider each proposition before the joke becomes apparent. As to the pain of disappointment in love, this is always sad and heartfelt yet Soseki is able to ameliorate it by leaving the subject and the object of the heartbreak ambiguous as if either side may have been responsible.
   This is imagined, but one begins to suspect that Haruki Murakami was influenced by this novel and even appropriates some of the themes found in it for his own: mysterious and alluring women who flit in and out of the story, odd scientific and philosophical theories as props, central character as passive witness. It is fun to imagine this and one begins to find other coincidences too. Anyway, it is just a thought, perhaps brought on by the coincidence that Jay Rubin, the translator who does an excellent job of bringing this text to life, also translates for Haruki Murakami.
   Readers, this is one of the finer Japanese novels that I have encountered. The author often had me smiling, laughing, cringing, sighing and rooting for the various characters in this well told story.

No comments about Portraits of Chinese Women in Revolution.

No comments about Friend of China - The Myth of Rewi Alley (Chinese Worlds).

No comments about Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women: The Qing Period, 1644-1911 (Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women).

No comments about Chinese Women Through Chinese Eyes (East Gate Books).

1 comments about Red in Tooth and Claw: Twenty-Six Years in Communist Chinese Prisons.

1. I thought the book looked interesting, and it was. Many of the parts in the book show the hardships of many Chinese that did not agree with the communist views. Han, although a spy, was also a teacher by occupation. My theory is that the political unrest that took place in China was a holocaust, very much like the holocaust during WWII, where the slaying of millions of Jews took place. Many of you don't agree with me, but that is my personal opinion. I don't think that what Han did was wrong, at any point in time, especially when it said he was standing up for his own political views. I recommend this book to anyone studying CHina's cultural revolution and political history.

No comments about Who Am I?: An Autobiography of Emotion, Mind, and Spirit (Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography).