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

No comments about Double Vision: Asian Accounts Of Australia.

No comments about Japanese Business Pioneers.

2 comments about Parade of the Dead: A U.S. Army Physician's Memoir of Imprisonment by the Japanese, 1942-1945.

1. An interesting book although a little short on pages. He tends to repeat himself rather a lot and there is little character building of people he talks of. One was not left with the real feel of camp life.



2. Just finished the book, and it's pretty hard to put into words what I feel. If I were Japanese, I would be ashamed, humiliated, and very concerned that my culture could/?can reach the depths of depravity that Dr. Bumgarner so matter-of-factly describes. The treatment of their POWs is almost beyond belief, as is the fact that any of the prisoners survived at all. The book is well-written and engrossing, with a physician's eye for detail. No exaggeration nor hyperbole creeps in -- none are needed -- the story speaks for itself. You'll read the book and wonder "Could I have lived through this?" I'm sure it was not pleasant for the author to dredge up these remarkably clear memories and write about them, but we owe him a debt of gratitude for doing so.

No comments about Kid from Kauai: A Memoir.

2 comments about Mishima's Sword: Travels in Search of a Samurai Legend.

1. I found this book by accident while waiting for someone, and I was enthralled by it. Ross uses the sensational circumstances of Mishima's very public and gruesome suicide to explore Japanese martial culture in general and tries to explain his own fascination with it along the way.
   While he keeps tracking Mishima's life and death as a guide to his narrative, it becomes clearer and clearer that Mishima is conceivably of no importance outside his role as a popular author of nationalist appeal, and that his very theatrical life and death actually stand for very little. His careful reconstruction of himself and his image is not so uncommon, and in the end there is just another guy coming to terms with the very big chips on his shoulder, although he does so in a spectacular way.
   But along this way Ross manages by description of his travels and interviews to highlight and clarify Japanese history and fascination with death in a highly insightful way.
   Sometimes this book is just about Christopher Ross: For instance there is a whole section, where he describes feeling unwell and having to interrupt his stay in Japan to return to the UK. One can't help wondering if his editor slept through that part, since it seems to have very little to do with the rest of the story.
   Fortunately these deviations are relatively brief, as is the whole book, and you have basically read past them before they really trouble you. The rest of the ride is wonderful for people who share Ross' fascination with the martial aspects of Japan.



2. Christopher Ross goes on a quest for the sword used to assist in the suicide of Yushio Mishima, one of Japan's most famous authors. Along the way, the reader is treated to a history of Japan, lessons on Kendo, and insight into Mishima himself, and icon (or iconoclast?) of Japanese literature. In essence, the quest for the physical sword takes secondary importance, behind Ross's quest to understand the man, the times, and the context of his suicide.
   
   For those that read Twigger's Angry White Pajamas, this book is a more serious, and more culturally detailed view of the same genre. Perhaps the connection comes as Christopher Ross was the uber-guru that Twigger wrote about...
   
   If there's one issue I have with the book, it's that the writer at times talks down to the reader. For example, most anyone reading this has experienced international travel - the audience is a cosmopolitan set. Explaining the details of an inflight entertainment system detracts from the overall story.
   
   That said, the book is still concise and well written, and worthy of a read from any afficianado of Japan. It certainly earns a prominent place on my bookshelf!

2 comments about Forbidden Family: A Wartime Memoir of the Philippines, 1941-1945 (Wisconsin Studies in American Autobiography).

1. Whether you're interested in WWII or not you'll love this book. Wonderfully written, this emotional tale of love under the most dire circumstances is sure to make you laugh, cry, feel. Margaret and Jerry Sams are an inspiration to all. And even at 90 their love is still as strong as ever.



2. This very interesting autobiography is the story of a conventional young American housewife who becomes separated from her husband in the chaos of the Philippines of 1942 and is imprisoned with her young son in a brutal Japanese internment camp. In her struggle for survival she meets and falls in love with a fellow prisoner, whose child she bears, at great risk, and in the face of opposition from fellow inmates and captors alike.
   Sams' story, expertly and sensitively edited, is a frank and touching love story as well as an epic of survival, and will be of interest to students of 20th-century American culture and mores as well as WWII readers.

   (The "score" rating is an unfortunately ineradicable feature of the page. This reviewer does not "score" books.)

No comments about Samurai Trails: A Chronicle Of Wanderings On The Japanese High Road (1918).

No comments about SEA WAS KIND: THE STORY OF AN INCREDIBLE WAR-TIME ESCAPE FROM THE PHILIPPINES TO AUSTRALIA IN AN OPEN BOAT, BESET BY THE PERILS OF THE SEA, THE JAPANESE AND MUTINY.

No comments about Reform in China: Juang Tsun-hsien and the Japanese Model (Harvard East Asian Monographs).