1 comments about Zen Haiku: Poems and Letters of Natsume Soseki.

1. We really get to see a different side of the great novelist Natsume Soseki in this compact little volume. The haiku are refreshing, often whimsical with a light touch of humor. A few thematize Zen ("Emptiness, no holiness, Bodhidharma's statue: Daffodils in the water" p. 107), some thematize Buddhism more generally ("Buddha Nature, if compared, Must be this White bell-flower" p.96), but most, while good, do kind of leave you wondering what is specifically "Zen" about them, but no matter. A real surprise though were the examples of Soseki's paintings and calligraphy; I knew he dabbled with watercolor painting but had little idea he was this accomplished in traditional East Asian art forms in this manner. These add a real nice touch to an artistically arranged book that can still fit in your pocket and travel along wherever you happen to go.

2 comments about A Doctor's War.

1. This book has been re-printed.
   
   New ISBN is 1903464706



2. This short autobiographical account of an Irish doctor's World War II experiences is so riveting that I stayed up way too late to finish it. Dr. MacCarthy served in Europe and was then shipped out to the Asian theatre where he endured the unthinkable. The most striking things I took away from this book is how strong human beings can be in the face of terrible events and how good can triumph within each of us. As the preface said, if you went to a movie and saw all the things portrayed which Dr. McCarthy lived through, you'd think it too far-fetched to be true.

No comments about Moonlight Critical Biography Is Shwa Turbulent River To The Sheen Of Water To Life Scientists LowerHazime Akira Japanese Language Book.

1 comments about Under the Dragon Flag:: My Experiences in Chino-Japanese War.

1. James Allan recounts his misadventures in Northeast Asia during the 1894-95. After gambling away his fortune in Monte Carlo Allan signs up as a sailor and sets out for the seas. He eventually finds himself aboard "Columbia" smuggling military cargos to China at the time of the latter's ill-fated conflict with the Japanese. Miraculously avoiding detention by the Japanese , the smugglers deliver their cargo but sign on to a perilous task of ferrying Chinese soldiers to a war theater. Eventually the ship ends up in Port Arthur, where Allan is left by accident. After a brief sojourn in Port Arthur he tries to catch up with "Columbia" aboard a Chinese ship, only to be detailed by a Japanese cruiser, where, on suspicion of being an instructor for the Chinese military, he is detained for more than a month. Finally, nearing Port Arthur, he makes a desperate escape for the shore only to find himself in a besieged city, which soon falls to the Japanese. Allan barely voids the fate of hundreds of massacred civilians in the ensuing bloodbath and flees the hostile shores aboard a Chinese junk. The narrative is full of marvelous detail, including that of the Japanese massacre in Port Arthur. Brilliantly written. Excellent for use as additional reading material in classes on Northeast Asian history, but a great read under any circumstances. Of course, project Gutengerg has long made available an electronic version of this book, but I can see why someone might want to own this excellent narrative in a traditional book form.

No comments about Takigawa - Thy Way To(Minerva Critical Biography Election In Japan) Japanese Language Book.

No comments about Tomoshibi: Lucille M. Nixon's Japanese poem, tanka collection and biography with her study of Japanese tanka poetry.

No comments about The Will to Survive: A Private's View As a P.O.W..

2 comments about I Came Back from Bataan.

1. This book was one that out of all of the books about the Death March of Bataan, was the most vived.This man came to my school and old us how real that this war that most people just talk about, was so real! This man went through so much and survived it and then went through it again, just to tell people about it. I think that it was a very honorable thing to do.



2. Sgt. Gautier was given some unusual assignments while a prisoner of the Japanese, and he was fortunate to have survived the Death March, prison camp and the voyage to Japan. He gives a gripping account of his experiences, and also provides us insight into the lives of the PoWs after their returned to the States.

   This is a good book. Anyone interested in learning what it was like to be a prisoner of war under the Japanese will find it intriguing.

No comments about East Meets West: Life Story.

2 comments about Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life.

1. "Kokoro" is a difficult word to translate from Japanese to English. Heart, Spirit, Way of Being...it is all of these things. Rather than attempt a direct translation, Lafcadio Hearn offers a selection of stories focusing on Japanese inner life, so that by the end you will understand kokoro.

   The stories follow Hearn's particular interests of Japanese folklore and the vanishing culture of which he found himself a part in post-Meji Japan. Each story is a slice of life focusing on Japanese character, morals and feelings. This is what the Japanese people care about, what they think is important, what is inside.

   The selected tales are non-judgmental and non-orientalist. This is no attempt to explain or highlight the "strange" Japanese, but merely a record and an illumination, in the best sense of the term.

   The collected stories:

   "At a Railway Station"
   "The Genius of Japanese Civilization"
   "A Street Singer"
   "From a Traveling Diary"
   "The Nun of the Temple of Amida"
   "After the War"
   "Haru"
   "A Glimpse of Tendencies"
   "By Force of Karma"
   "A Conservative"
   "In the Twilight of the Gods"
   "The Idea of Pre-Exsistance"
   "In Cholera Time"
   "Some Thoughts about Ancestor Worship"
   "Kimiko"




2. Not to be confused with Natsume Soseki's novel by the same title, Lafcadio Hearn's "Kokoro" is a magnificent collection of essays, vignettes, memoirs, and meditations on Japan in the 1890's. Very much a product of the mid-Meiji period, these masterfully-written little literary pieces are nonetheless timeless. Each piece is quite different from the rest, and yet almost all of them manage to start from everyday incidents or obvious observations and gradually spiral inwards to some deeply moving and startling insight into Japanese attitudes, values, and worldviews; more than once this seemingly methodless method allows Hearn to share with the reader certain common opinions and normal spiritual orientations held by average Japanese folks--the kinds of things usually taken for granted and so unarticulated, hence least amenable to documentation and scholarship (especially of the time, but even today). And Hearn does all this with an unpretentious erudition and an understated and balanced sympathy for his subject that, along with his literary flair for wonderfully clear and flowing prose, places his writings here in a category far above the rest. With him we can find none of the unintentional strains of condescension and orientalism so typical of folklore and religious anthropology, for while he's looking with the surprised gaze of the outsider with one eye, his other eye is that of the insider feeling very much at home where he is. The resulting view is visionary--but in subdued and shadowy tones.
   
   Appendix on an Appendix: in addition to the fifteen excellent essays forming the main body of "Kokoro", there's an extensive appendix featuring Hearn's translations of three popular folk ballads: "The Ballad of Shuntoku-Maru", "The Ballad of Oguri Hangwan" and "The Ballad of O-Shichi, the Daughter of the Yaoya". These are fascinating on a number of levels. They provide a tantalizingly fleeting glimpse of plebian drama, remarkable in its very lack of remarkableness. There's a certain sociological angle, as the versions of these oral ballads collected and translated by Hearn are those recited by mountain outcastes in the area of today's Shimane Prefecture. Religiously the first two ballads are key in understanding popular attitudes concerning pilgrimage in Japan--the first demonstrating a creepy (almost voodoo) edge in Kannon faith at Kiyomizudera Temple, the second delightfully exaggerating the rejuvenating benefits of Kumano and its sacred hot springs. Meanwhile, the third ballad is a straightforwardly melodramatic retelling of a true story better known to us today in a more refined and literary version as found in the novelist Saikaku's "Five Women Who Loved Love" of 1686.