No comments about Never Plan Tomorrow.

No comments about Mad Wives and Island Dreams: Shimao Toshio and the Margins of Japanese Literature.

5 comments about Sleeping on Potatoes.

1. `Sleeping on Potatoes is the metaphor for the bumpy and lumpy ride I had in my formative years,' Dr. Carl Nomura explains in the preface to his debut publication Sleeping on Potatoes: A Lumpy Adventure from Manzanar to the Corporate Tower (Erasmus Books, Washington, 2003). Nomura then extends this metaphor into a vivified mosaic of his life's experiences by bringing them to view through the eyes of a child and all the way up to a person with aspirations.
   
   Starting informally with his mother Mizuko's story, a Japanese woman who married Nomura's father because `she heard that in America everyone was tall', Dr. Nomura creates a series of true, non-fictional, real life stories that border on the line between short story and personal essay. Reliving in linguistic light the hardship of poverty, a heartless father, the humiliation of being forced to move into relocation centers during the Second World War, and the travails of disease and bereavement, Nomura throws his readers into a joyous shock with the amazing optimism of his attitude and his lively humor that arises spontaneously from the interaction of situation and language. One instance is from his school days: `we thought her name (Sister Perpetual) fitted her because she beat us perpetually'. Certainly not to overlook the fun of fishing and poker, and giving smoking up for good when an angry woman comes inches from your face and calls you a `polluting pig.'
   
   Though a doctor of philosophy in Solid State Physics, and an important figure in the corporate world of technology, it is Nomura's flair of seeing things as matter of course that lures one to appreciate his magnanimity. Not going a braggart, he opens a window to the philosophy of life-contentment, be it a doctorate in physics and excellence in management of small businesses, or using a bathroom 200 feet away from his bed in a trailer. Life is joy if you have your guts tuned to its frequency of vicissitudes.
   
   Marking Sleeping on Potatoes as a book to amuse would be a reader's pitfall. It is a book enormous in its scope, though not in its volume (250 pages). By no means is this the adventurous story of a single person, reflecting on his past. It is the story of many characters that endured and fought against social injustice and untoward circumstances-from women like Mizuko and Louise, to the sufferers in relocation centers, and the motherless litter of cats who were lucky enough to make it to Nomura's house. His heart touching memories of Mox, the neighbor's dog, harbor all the richness and beauty of life. Nomura traces the causes of discontent in marital life, discusses issues associated with terminal illness, and informs on linguistic and the cultural relativism of English and Japanese native speakers.
   
   Now in his eighties, retired and coping with prostate cancer, Nomura's lumpy ride has not come to a pause. It is bumping all along with new interest in learning and doing things and new ways of adding to the richness of his life. With his new wife, children and grandchildren, pets, garden, books, and the untamed freshness of mind, Dr. Carl Nomura lives as if he is immortal.



2. The Smell of Freedom
   Carl Nomura is an honest recorder of life. His memoir, Sleeping on Potatoes, is a frank and often revealing celebration of experiences, and hopes for more of them. He examines his childhood, education, marriage, his children's childhoods, his jobs and his seniority.
   His title refers to a life-molding time when, soon after Pearl Harbor, at 18, he and his Japanese-American family were incarcerated at Manzanar, an internment camp in a dusty high-Sierra desert of California. He detested the insult of the camp and escaped by volunteering to help worker-short Idaho farmers. It was exhausting stoop labor, thinning, weeding and topping sugar beets in the fertile crescent of the Snake river.
   When the job ended eight months later, instead of returning to Manzanar captivity, he volunteered for potato warehousing work in a huge root cellar. He sorted and bagged potatoes, and at night slept on the filled bags. He recalls wriggling the spuds into a form-fitting mattress, and the awful smell of rotting potatoes. But, he writes, "After only one day, we got used to the odor and never smelled it again."
   Well, I drove my family through southwestern Idaho, years ago. Crossing the Snake river from Oregon, we came on a "Welcome to Idaho" billboard and were at once engulfed by the stench of rotten potatoes. My kids screamed, "Phew, Idaho!"
   At Nomura's words I smelled it again myself and wondered how he could acclimate to, or ignore, that awful scent while I can still smell it. Of course, as he hints a page or two later, what he smelled was different from what I smelled.
   What he smelled was better than Manzanar.
   This honest book holds many revelations of significance in Nomura's life, and in our own lives as well.



3. Sleeping on Potatoes:
   A Lumpy Adventure from Manzanar to the Corporate Tower
   By Carl Nomura
   
   2003 Erasmus Books
   ISBN: 0970194730
   
   Reviewed by George Katagiri
   Portland, OR
   
   
   Carl Nomura's writing style brings to life his unique perceptions of growing up and encountering his world. His descriptions are so vivid and captivating that it is often difficult to put the book down.
   Nomura tells about being born in a boxcar somewhere between Deer Lodge and Three Forks, Montana. At retirement, he is the Corporate Senior Vice-President of the Honeywell Corporation. In between these two events are numerous adventures of (1) growing up in poverty, (2) climbing the corporate ladder, (3) rearing children, (4) getting along in marriage, and (5) the joy of loving and being loved. It is the journey along the way that is captured in the book.
   Noteworthy are his memories of growing up. The descriptions of living with a domineering and abusive father makes one wonder how he survived his childhood. His drive to succeed stems from his ninth grade algebra teacher, who suggested that his mental capability was marginal and that he should not enroll in geometry but pursue courses in the manual arts. This spurred him on to teach himself mathematics, which became one of his favorite subjects.
   Later in life, he encountered problems in his marriage. After consulting with marriage counselors and trying to gain insight through group therapy, he finally gave up on external help. His children got together and conducted sessions which resulted in the most constructive advice in solving his problems.
   Carl Nomura is an exceptional person. Rather than following the footsteps of others, he blazes his own path. When he retired, his counselor advised him to wait a year before making any major decisions. Most people would heed this advice, but not Nomura. Shortly after, he held a huge garage sale in Minneapolis, sold his house and moved to the West Coast. The descriptions of how he makes decisions are consistently humorous and reflects the maverick character of a man who achieved much satisfaction and success in life.
   Besides being amusing, this is an inspirational book.



4. I've known Carl Nomura for 20 years, seen various versions of this book and watched him grow as a writer. With this book, he's really done it. Sleeping on Potatoes is humorous, touching, poignant and readable. I particularly love Carl's description of his childhood as son of Japanese immigrants. Equally facinating are the years of internment during World War II. Never bitter, often whimsical, Carl gives us a touching picture of people unfairly interned. Ultimately Carl went on to earn a PhD and a postion as executive in a large corporation -- an amazing leap from his early lumpier bed.



5. Nomura's sparse style of writing is not unlike the character of a differential equation expressing the essential. He cuts to his distilled memory and leaves the residue of honed understanding through the filter of life experience. His life is an engaging tale; to me it seems a Horatio Alger story of the Japanese American community. He was born in a boxcar in Montana, was dislocated to Japanese internment camps and made the journey to Corporate Senior Vice President for Honeywell Corporation. Now he contributes to his community in Port Townsend, Washington in very beneficial ways, besides enjoying his own interests, family and travel.
   
   His story brings greater understanding and deep appreciation of the diversity of our American culture by his unflinching exposure of his own family history. Nomura recounts with accuracy the emotional pain, isolation and dislocation from traditional Japanese culture in the struggle for the promise of a better life in America. He voices his life experience with insight and humor, which is the great expression of the commonality of the human experience seen through the filter of a kind mathematician.
   
   He tells his story, even including poetry, which supports understanding and intimacy through his selected descriptions of challenging moments about his cultural heritage, marriage, family and career. In the end the real meaning and importance of life is about relationship.
   
   But most of all I think this book, Sleeping on Potatoes is worthy of recognition for his dedicated and talented effort to build links of understanding between cultures, family, relationships and the poetic spirit of a curious mind.

No comments about Village Japan: Everyday Life in a Rural Japanese Community.

4 comments about Prisoner of the Rising Sun.

1. This is an excellent first hand account. It is rather well done, more so than several others I have read. I do wish we had more like this one. Very inspiring. I felt it gave even a greater insight to the war in the Pacific. Recommend you add this one to your collection.



2. The author of this book is my grandfather. I found this book to be inspiring as I am also a soldier. I am in the Army and found this book to give me a greater appreciation of my profession as well as bring a greater understanding of my grandfather's life and why he is so proud. I would recommend this book to anyone who wishes to understand what POWs in the Philippines went through. I have lent my copy of his book to several of my friends and they all gave it great reviews as well.



3. William Berry has written a well-detailed, although brief, look at his attempted escape and captivity after the fall of Correigdor. While not a scholarly look at these events, the author gives a good account of his capture, escape and trek through the jungle, recapture and liberation by American servicemen from Bilibid prison in Manila. He painfully recounts the agony these men went through as they were crammed, up to 13 men at one time, into a 10 by 10 cell and forced to sit, without flinching, and stare at the wall all day.

   As a recaptured prisoner, Berry and his two comrades somehow survive the war, as the usual penalty for escape is execution. They were sent to the maximum security prison in Manila for "special prisoners", and many prisoners stopped here only long enough to be sentenced and shot. Berry, who was a fledgling lawyer before enlisting in the Navy, saw these skills save his life and the lives of his friends when being sentenced, not so much his arguments, of course, but rather how he shaped it to fit his audience (A Japanese tribunal)

   This book does not take long to read, but it is an interesting tale, and well worth the time invested. But, if you want greater scope and detail of Americans in Japanese captivity, read "Prisoners of the Japanese" by Gavan Daws, an extremely informative and well-written look at the horrors these men had to endure daily.




4. One of the few true to life books written by a WWII POW. As a history buff I find the first hand accounts in this book of the authors experiances and the others he came in contact a first rate story of America's darkest time. A must for all those who want to know more about POW's of the Japanese.

   Having been stationed in the Philippines and traveled to Battan and Corrigidor it brought the meaning of those visits a little sharper in focus.

No comments about A Dictionary of Japanese Artists: Painting, Sculpture, Ceramics, Prints, Lacquer.

4 comments about Baseball's Other All-Stars: The Greatest Players from the Negro Leagues, the Japanese Leagues, the Mexican League, and the Pre-1960 Winter Leagues in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

1. Peter Bjarkman said we should set the record straight and I agree. And, for the record, it appears as if Bjarkman took comments directed at him by readers of his book 'Smoke' and recycled them to my book.
   But you be the judge. Here are some of the comments readers made about Bjarkman's book 'Smoke'.
   Reader #1 - "An Almendares Blue pitcher in red on the cover shows the kind of problems that are in this book. Lennox Pearson's picture is identified as Panchon Herrera and Jose Valdivielsos as Asdrubal Baro. Tito Fuentes an outfielder? This book can misinform the uninformed; the pictures and the paper are good".
   Reader #2 - "There are countless errors of fact in the statistics and many of the players are incorrectly identified".
   Reader #3 - "The book is plagued with mistakes about Cuban history and culture. (There are) many historical errors that detract from the book's value. I am frankly embarrassed that this book may be quoted and used to write others".
   
   Bjarkman, in replying to his critics, said, "Yes, there are a small handful of typographical flaws in this book as in every other". Apparently, typos and minor flaws are acceptable in Bjarkman's books but not in others. Actually, most books contain some typos and minor flaws, and technical books that contain thousands of names are more susceptible. But, more important is whether or not the book contains information that makes it a valuable research tool. I believe 'Baseball's Other All Stars' has important statistics that contribute to our knowledge of the game, and that can be used to predict how a player will perform from one league to another.
   
   My book contains 27 tables and statistics, and formulas that let the reader predict what a player from the Japanese Leagues might hit in the major leagues. I should point out that the conversion formulas for estimating league to league comparisons were developed one full year before Ichiro Suzuki ever played his first game for the Seattle Mariners. And the prediction was right on target. The figures below show Ichiro's actual Japanese League career statistics for every 550 at-bats, compared to the major league prediction I made for him in 2000, and his actual major league statistics through 2004.
   
   Ichiro's actual Japanese League stats 550AB, 18HR, .359BA
   My major league prediction for Ichiro 550AB 8HR .337BA
   Ichiro's actual ML statistics thru 2004 550AB 7HR .339BA
   I think that's uncany predicting. Bjarkman doesn't like my methodology, but all I can say is, what works, works. And Bjarkman certainly doesn't have anything better. My conversion formula has since been confirmed by other Japanese League players in the major leagues, including Hideki Matsui, Kazuo Matsui, and Tadahito Iguchi.
   If you would like to read a book with empty rhetoric, there are several I can recommend. But if you are interested in learning more facts about the most important baseball leagues around the world, and if you would like to be able to estimate how Japanese League players, or former Negro league players like Josh Gibson, might hit in the major leagues, then 'Baseball's Other All-Stars' is the book you need. Peter Bjarkman has a copy, and I am sure he will use it many times for research over the years.



2. Someone needs to set the record straight on this book. One can argue endlessly over whether or not the book's premise (that stars from the Negro leagues, Latin leagues and Japanese League can be more properly evaluated simply by converting their actual career stats in those leagues to a major league standard of 162 games or 550 at-bats per annum) is valid or even at all insightful. Such a premise does apparently "beg the question" about the clearly different standards of play existing between these various leagues and major league baseball. It would seem far more valuable to promote a Josh Gibson or Martin Dihigo or Omar Linares by calling up detailed accounts of what their own leagues were actually like, or what their true talents actually were, from the accounts of those who actually saw them play.
   
   It is in this later area that this book falls apart, since its creditability is totally undercut by numerous (dozens and dozens!) of historical errors, typographical errors, and editorial sloppiness. I only offer a small sample here. Player names are regularly given incorrectly, including major leaguers (Ed Rommell, Ed Roush, Juan Pizzaro, Rafael Palmero, Ricky Henderson, Mickey Owens, Earl Combs, etc.) and Latin leaguers (again Pizzaro for Pizarro, Mexican league boss Jorge Pascual, Pedro Formenthal, Bienvenido Jiminez, Raphael Almeida, Andres Gallaraga, Adolpho Luque, Eusatquio Pedroso, etc.). Names of Latin teams and locales are badly mangled (Estraelles Orientals for Estrellas Orientales, Remidios for Remedios, Vera Cruz for Veracruz and Almedares for Almendares, to cite but a handful). There are incorrect descriptions of ballplayers that suggest this author is unfamiliar with their actual careers and talents. Cuban legend Alejando Oms was in fact a lefty and not a righthanded slugger, Orestes Destrada is a Cuban and not American native, 1970s-80s Cuban slugger Lazaro Junco was a lefty and not righty, as was Cuban pitching ace Jorge Luis Valdes of the same era. And most regrettably, there are inexuseable errors in the facts about Latin American baseball history. Jud Wilson was an American and not a Cuban ballplayer; it is NOT true that Bombin Pedroso's Cuban League career stats are not available; the pre-1959 Cuban League went by various names over the years, but it was never called the Cuban Winter League; baseball was NOT first introduced to Cuba in 1866 by US sailors in Matanzas; Mike Gonzalez broke into the big leagues with the Boston Braves and not the Red Sox; Mickey Mahler was a US and not a Dominican pitcher; Pop Lloyd did NOT play 27 seasons in Cuba; the first recorded game in Havana was not in 1866; Fidel Castro rose to power in 1959 not 1960, and more importantly he did not end pro ball on the island until after the 1961 season, not in 1960; the Detroit Tigers team visiting Cuba in 1909 were not world champions; the 1908 Cincinnati Reds were not the first major leaguers to visit Cuba. And Cuba is certainly not "a tiny island nation" but one of the largest islands in the world!
   
   To top it all off, the area of Latin America where baseball thrives is the Caribbean and not the CARRIBEAN. With such careless attention to details by both the book's editors and author, how can we take very seriously the rest of the detailed evaluations of ballplayers presented. The concept of this book may have been admirable, but the execution seems to harm as much as it helps the case for the lost leagues and stars the book features.



3. Another vote for a book that accurately predicts what the greatest baseball players from around the world would have hit if they had had a chance to play in the major leagues. How accurate is the prediction? Well, at least one of these baseball legends is still active. Ichiro, the Seattle Mariner's Japanese sensation, was predicted to hit .335, with 31 doubles, 10 triples, and 8 home runs. His actual numbers for his first 550 at-bats, were .342, 31-8-6. That's uncanny predicting. So, if you would like to know what Josh Gibson, Shigeo Nagashima, or Cristobal Torriente would have hit in the major leagues, and how many home runs they would have hit, this book will tell you. Outstanding.



4. This book is a landmark. It is the first book that discusses the greatest baseball players who never played in the major leagues. They played out their careers in the Negro Leagues, and in many other leagues around the world. One of the most intriguing things about the book is the statistical analysis that allows the reader to see how a player from Japan or Cuba might perform in the major leagues. The book predicted, more than one year ago, how Ichiro would do in the major leagues - and its right on the money! It also predicts how the other great professional baseball players around the world would have performed in the major leagues had they had the opportunity, players like Francisco Coimbre, Sadaharu Oh, Martin Dihigo, Josh Gibson, and dozens more. It's a fascinating educational experience, one that will surprise and shock you. If you want to become a true baseball expert, you have to read this book.

1 comments about The Prison Memoirs of a Japanese Woman ((Foremother Legacies Ser.)).

1. I originally had to read this book for a Japanese History class, and found it incredible. In the 1930's it was standard practice to take a written confession from prisoners before execution, but this one stood out and has survived to the present day for its insight and honesty. This is a person who, after unthinkable suffering acheived not only complete self-realization but the ability to communicate it to others. It's also facinating because, despite so much spilt ink about understanding the conservative Japanese psyche, this is one of the only non-fiction works which effectively and honestly tackles communal mentality and social hierarcy without over-complicating the issue. But beyond that, it is an incredible story not unlike a true-to-life Japanese version of Ellison's Invisible Man. It is a crime that this book is not well known.

5 comments about The Dream of Water.

1. Whine, whine, whine. Get a life woman, and stop detailing every boring thing your father ever did to you.



2. In this intensely personal memoir Kyoko Mori visits her home town of Kobe, Japan, in an attempt to come to terms with her mother's suicide and her estrangement from her father.
   
   She came to America at 20, seven years after her mother's suicide, and even then knew she would never return for more than a visit. Her memoir begins with an account of the immediate aftermath of her mother's death - the shrouded atmosphere of shock and grief, her maternal grandparents gentle consideration, her father's jarring insensitivity.
   
   It then jumps to 1990, as Mori, now an American, readies for departure from Green Bay, Wisconsin, where she teaches creative writing at the university. She has always been ambivalent about the country of her birth. When people ask her if she 'goes back,' she winces at their terminology and replies, ' 'I'd like to visit sometime, but there are other places I'd rather travel to if I had the money.' '
   
   The trip is a sabbatical, justified as research for her stories and poems. She will spend four weeks sightseeing. Letters to her family are only sent from the airport: 'I could never get on the plane this morning if I had to see my family first thing upon arrival.' The people she has arranged to meet on arrival are, instead, Americans living in Japan and it is an American family she stays with.
   
   Mori skims over her four weeks traveling. She remains an outsider, treated as a foreigner. The Japanese she meets don't even expect her to speak Japanese. The reader pictures her in her American running shoes and sports clothes, a contrast to the Japanese women in dresses and lipstick, aloof in her tourist personna. But Mori begins to think she would feel alien anyway, even if she had not become so determinedly American. Kobe, where she grew up, is a modern, westernized city with little of Japanese tradition about it. The private school she went to, run by westerners, encouraged her non-conformist creativity. Even Japanese art does not move her.
   
   Upon her return to Kobe she agonizes over calling her father. She longs to see her other relatives - the maternal grandmother, aunts and cousins her father had forbidden contact with at the age of 13. Her paternal aunt and cousin who gave her so much sympathy and love in the difficult years after her father remarried. But she is Japanese enough to know that she must call her father first otherwise the others will feel awkward.
   
   The narrative is haunted by the guilt and grief she still feels over her mother's suicide, the bitterness she carries for her father. Until we meet him, it's easy to feel impatient with Mori as well as sympathetic. Sure, he was a cold, even viscious parent - depriving her of family, threatening to take her out of the school she loved, beating her for speaking her mind, full of psychological cruelties - but she also provoked him with her rash impetuosity. Perhaps Mori should be an adult about it and reconcile. How can he hurt her now?
   
   Then we meet her father and his callous behavior is as breathtaking as it is sad. The stepmother really is like something out of Grimm's fairytales. In their presence Mori becomes like a child again but the years have taught her restraint. Reuniting with her other relatives, she finds it frustrating that Japanese language and custom makes emotional expression difficult. But in the end she also finds a delicacy, even a liberation, in this. Breathing room.
   
   Mori's language is simple, unadorned, affectingly graceful. Her narrative engages the emotions as it struggles with big questions of coming of age and coming to terms with anguish that will never be resolved. In the end she remains an alien in her birthplace and the reader understands a little more about what that means.



3. The main watered down version of this book to save people the trouble of reading it: My past was traumatic, and I hate Japan. GO UNITED STATES!
   In other words? Stupid, biased, and well... BAD

   This is just like her book "Polite Lies", Ms. Mori just wants to display Japan in the lowest level doesn't she? All right, your past was traumatic. Thank you. Now either get OVER it, or just LEAVE JAPAN ALONE! I'm Japanese, just like this author but lived in the United States for seven years (from when I was 3-10) and have been living in Japan since. Now, as I am living in Japan NOW and not what? 25895039 million years ago (that's the impression I get from her book) I can tell you that the information is WRONG. Her writing style is well, beautiful and imaginitive, but her information? CATCH UP BEFORE WRITING A BOOK AND ACTING PERSUASIVE! If she's trying to lower a foreigner's view of Japan, she's probably done a fine job of it. So as a warning to all foreigners readning this book: IT'S A BUNCH OF LIES!

   She also has a load of stuff on the Japanese school system that is so wrong. It's a perfectly fine system okay? Quit bashing on it! It seems she didn't even go through it because she spent half the book boohooing about how bad it was and how EXCELLENT her AMERICAN influenced private school was.




4. This is a book I relish so much, I limit myself to a chapter a day just to stretch out the enjoyment and savor each sentence. I am an American who has lived in Japan for seven years, and it is so interesting to see the view through her eyes -- she really does capture aspects of Japanese culture that are below the surface, not normally visible, but nonetheless palpable. This girl definitely has a way with words!



5. I don't like giving a synopsis or summary of the book. Thats what reading it is for. What I do like to discuss in reviews is what kind of effect the book had on me. The mood and atmosphere of the book was on the depressing side, but that's okay. Because life is like that sometimes. Like Kyoko Mori, if you don't confront a problem correctly, it will fester in your soul until you come to terms with it. The book was realistic. I like putting down a book and knowing it isn't "too good to be true" because it is true, and I don't end up in a fantasy land.

   The book does deal with alot Kyoko's negative experiences and views of the Japanese culture. I love Japanese culture, and I think her views are totally valid. I can accept the good and bad. Why be closed minded? Kyoko even comes to appreciate and understand some of the seemingly "rude" behaviors of her Japanese friends, and can enlighten us outsiders to what might seem to be odd behavior.

   Good book. It was nice for Kyoko to let go of some of her personal demons and share this very personal and painful story. Maybe we can all be as brave as her and launch head on into what we've been dreading and fearing.

No comments about Shapers of Japanese Buddhism.