No comments about Sushi with Style.

No comments about San Hyaku Go (305): Tales of a prison camp horsetrader, May 6, 1942-November 1, 1945 : written 1946-1948.

No comments about Fragments of Rainbows.

No comments about Vida Y Muerte De Yukio Mishima/the Life and Death of Yukio Mishima.

1 comments about Noguchi East And West.

1. This volume is one of the more comprehensive reviews of Noguchi's life and work. Having met with Noguchi a couple of times at the premises of the future Museum, I regret not having then the insight now made accessible by our new digital lifestyle resources. His cross-cultural, multi-media artistry reflects Midwestern adolescence with Pacific overtures. Ashton states "Noguchi's biography is rich in hints of the sources of his formative years, and while no single source can be isolated, some are more suggestive than others. Dr. Rumely, the progressive educator who founded the Interlaken School in Indiana where Noguchi began his American education, had placed Noguchi in the home of ... a Swedenborgian minister. The boy was thrust into a situation in which the thoughts that had helped shape the modern movement -- through such figures as Blake, Emerson, Poe, and Baudelaire -- were sacred. ...the notion of a universal rhyming scheme had attracted nineteenth-century artists who wished to see some kind of elemental unity in the universe; who relished the endless possibilities of analogy."

   Combining influences of the industrializing modernity of small cities and towns of the Midwest at this time, and seemingly inspired both by ancient Japanese "tumuli" and the Native American Mound Builders, his mnemonic response to the sights of such landscapes "got me going". With this amplified illumination into Noguchi's background and more familiarity with his abiding interests in "earth sculpturing", perhaps new educational paradigms should be considered in our thinking of art, architecture and American historic preservation.

No comments about Dear Ken-Chan: A Letter to Japan (Global Oriental).

No comments about Britain and Japan: Bioraphical Portraits.

No comments about Cha Li and the Japanese Secret Weapon.

1 comments about Other Worlds: Arishima Takeo and the Bounds of Modern Japanese Fiction (Modern Asian Literature).

1. This is an excellent translation of the "Jinsilu," the classic statement of Neo-Confucian philosophy by its chief proponent Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi) with a little help from Lu Zuqian. Before Zhu Xi's "Reflections" here, the new ideas and interpretations of the Confucian tradition then being developed by various thinkers were unsystematically contained in a scattered and vastly growing body of difficult texts. Zhu Xi, feeling that a short, comprehensive introduction to this "Neo-Confucianism" (as we call it today) was much needed, thus compiled "Reflections on Things at Hand" to get it all together, especially as an aid to the beginning student. It has remained an influential classic in East Asian cultures ever since, making this book pretty much required reading for anyone really interested in the intellectual history of China, Japan, and/or Korea.
   
   The text itself includes selections mainly from four prior Neo-Confucian thinkers: Zhou Dunyi, Cheng Hao, Cheng Yi, and Zhang Zai. Another major Neo-Confucian thinker, Shao Yong, was excluded by Zhu Xi for being in his opinion too "Daoist" in orientation. Zhu also edited out a quote from the Daoist commentator Wang Bi found in one of the passages by Cheng Yi. Otherwise Zhu is usually highly fair and objective in his presentation of the four thinkers, including their statements even when he disagreed with them or with their interpretations of passages from older texts.
   
   Wing-tsit Chan really went all out in this volume, including all kinds of useful material in addition to the translation itself (for which alone he deserves an award). The introduction puts Zhu Xi and "Reflections" in context, describes Neo-Confucian philosophy in overview, and discusses the text's later reception across East Asia. At the end there is a handy appendix detailing the sources from which the passages in "Reflections" were excerpted, a discussion of the many commentaries later written on "Reflections" and a pretty exhaustive listing of these along with quick descriptions, and a consideration of the issues involved in translating Chinese philosophical terms into English. This is good old-fashioned meticulous scholarship at its best...Zhu Xi would be proud.

No comments about To Sandakan: The Diaries of Charlie Johnstone : Prisoner of War 1942-45.