The History Book Club discussion

I like that - I am a keeper too so your excellent review resonated with me.

I certainly would not be thanking my shoes for the good job they did today either (ROFL)

I think too you have to ask about what a belonging brings into your life - how it makes you feel - good bad or nothing. Is it useful or is it just there.

Looking forward to reading this book as part of the Japan Challenge. Akira Kurosawa was a wonderful director/writer of Japanese film. Seven Samurai, Ran, Rashomon are a few of my favorites.

Something Like an Autobiography

by Akira Kurosawa

Synopsis:

"A first rate book and a joy to read...It's doubtful that a complete understanding of the director's artistry can be obtained without reading this book...Also indispensable for budding directors are the addenda, in which Kurosawa lays out his beliefs on the primacy of a good script, on scriptwriting as an essential tool for directors, on directing actors, on camera placement, and on the value of steeping oneself in literature, from great novels to detective fiction."
—Variety

"For the lover of Kurosawa's movies...this is nothing short of must reading...a fitting companion piece to his many dynamic and absorbing screen entertainments."
—Washington Post Book World

That sound like a good one, Teri. There is also a book, cited below, about Kurosawa and his favorite actor Toshiro Mifune (love him) but it is HUGE, so I haven't read it.

by Stuart Galbraith(no photo)

Ahhh - thanks...and the reading list grows!

Thanks Teri and Jill

My fifth book in the Japan Challenge is a small novel of a Japanese WWII veteran whose eyes are opened to the beauty of ordinary stones by a dying soldier in the closing days of the war. He becomes a successful merchant, but spends his spare time as an amateur rock hound, developing knowledge and expertise well beyond the typical amateur. He marries, has two sons and life is good - until tragedy strikes. As his life unravels to some extent, I have to confess that I'm a little unclear on one or two incidents. I'm not sure whether the author just went a little over my head or whether something may have been lost in the translation to English. Either way, it's a little challenging but a good read and some interesting philosophical notes to make you think.

by Hikaru Okuizumi (no photo)

Thank you Dave - I have to get back to this challenge - I completed the India challenge and was a lot of fun.

Just Finished:

Zen Gardens; The Complete Works of Shunmyo Masuno, Japan's Leading Garden Designer

by Mira Locher (no photo)

Synopsis:
Shunmyo Masuno, Japan's leading garden designer, is at once Japan's most highly acclaimed landscape architect and an 18th-generation Zen Buddhist priest, presiding over daily ceremonies at the Kenkoji Temple in Yokohama. He is celebrated for his unique ability to blend strikingly contemporary elements with the traditional design vernacular. He has worked in ultramodern urban hotels and in some of Japan's most famous classic gardens. In each project, his work as a designer of landscape architecture is inseparable from his Buddhist practice. Each becomes a Zen garden, "a special spiritual place where the mind dwells."

This beautiful book, illustrated with more than 400 drawings and color photographs, is the first complete retrospective of Masuno's work to be published in English. It presents 37 major gardens around the world in a wide variety of types and settings: traditional and contemporary, urban and rural, public spaces and private residences, and including temple, office, hotel and campus venues. Masuno achieved fame for his work in Japan, but he is becoming increasingly known internationally, and in 2011 completed his first commission in the United States which is shown here.

Zen Gardens, divided into three chapters, covers: "Traditional Zen Gardens," "Contemporary Zen Gardens" and "Zen Gardens outside Japan." Illustrated with photographs and architectural plans or sketches, each Zen garden design is described and analyzed by author Mira Locher, herself an architect and a scholar well versed in Japanese culture.

Celebrating the accomplishments of a major, world-class designer, Zen Gardens also serves as something of a master class in Japanese garden design and appreciation: how to perceive a Japanese garden, how to understand one, even how to make one yourself. Like one of Masuno's gardens, the book can be a place for contemplation and mindful repose.

My Review: Whether sited in a traditional Japanese temple, a modern office building courtyard or rooftop in New York City, the Zen gardens of Shunmyo Masuno demonstrate the deep sensitivity and connection to place that are the result of the priest/landscape architect's spiritual lineage and contemporary training. Author Mira Locher provides an entrée for novices and experts alike into Masuno's gardens as well as his design process. Having both the beautiful photographs and illustrations of a coffee table book and thoroughly researched documentation of design, Zen Gardens: The Complete Works of Shunmyo Masuno Japan's Leading Garden Designer is an accessible study of the landscape architect's work.

Great for you

Finally finished:

The Tale of the Heike

Translated by Royall Tyler (no photo)

Synopsis:

A masterpiece of world literature; the samurai saga of pride, romance, and warfare of medieval Japan

With a reflection on the fleeting nature of power and glory begins The Tale of the Heike, an epic from twelfth-century Japan. Comparable in stature to The Tale of Genji, The Tale of the Heike narrates with wit, energy, and compassion the stories of such unforgettable characters as the ruthless warlord Kiyomori, who dies still burning with such rage that water poured on him boils; Hotoke, the beautiful young dancer who renounces wealth and fame to follow her conscience; Shigemori, the tyrant’s righteous son, who struggles against all odds to uphold fairness and justice; and Yoshitsune, the daring commander who defeats the enemy in battle after battle, only to be condemned by his jealous, powerful brother.

The Tale of the Heike is a foundation stone of Japanese culture and a major masterpiece of world literature. Lavishly illustrated and accompanied by maps, character guides, and genealogies, this book is a volume to treasure.

Link to my review, as its too long to add to this post: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Good for you Michelle

WOW! Shockwave: Countdown to Hiroshima

by Stephen Walker (no photo)

Synopsis:

On a quiet Monday morning in August 1945, a five-ton bomb—dubbed Little Boy by its creators—was dropped from an American plane onto the Japanese city of Hiroshima. On that day, a firestorm of previously unimagined power was unleashed on a vibrant metropolis of 300,000 people, leaving one third of its population dead, its buildings and landmarks incinerated. It was the terrifying dawn of the Atomic Age, spawning decades of paranoia, mistrust, and a widespread and very real fear of the potential annihilation of the human race.

Author Stephen Walker brilliantly re-creates the three terrible weeks leading up to the wartime detonation of the atomic bomb—from the first successful test in the New Mexico desert to the cataclysm and its aftermath—presenting the story through the eyes of pilots, scientists, civilian victims, and world leaders who stood at the center of earth-shattering drama. It is a startling, moving, frightening, and remarkable portrait of an extraordinary event—a shockwave whose repercussions can be felt to this very day

My Review:

I am in awe of Stephen Walker's ability to tell a story. His descriptive eloquence flows from one page to another, unveiling in first-person detail, that chain of events that brought a decisive end to World War II. The story is made all the more powerful because it is told from the dual perspectives of the Americans who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and the citizens of Japan who suffered its effects.

Even though Hiroshima took place a few decades before my birth, through Walker's words, I felt as though I had been given a rare privilege - that of peering into the hearts and minds of those who lived and were forever changed by it



(Uranium Bomb, Hiroshima, on the left; Plutonium Bomb, Nagasaki, on the right)

Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created its Own Lost Generation

by Michael Zielenziger (no photo)

Synopsis:

The world's second-wealthiest country, Japan once seemed poised to overtake America. But its failure to recover from the economic collapse of the early 1990s was unprecedented, and today it confronts an array of disturbing social trends. Japan has the highest suicide rate and lowest birthrate of all industrialized countries, and a rising incidence of untreated cases of depression. Equally as troubling are the more than one million young men who shut themselves in their rooms, withdrawing from society, and the growing numbers of parasite singles, the name given to single women who refuse to leave home, marry, or bear children.

In Shutting Out the Sun, Michael Zielenziger argues that Japan's rigid, tradition-steeped society, its aversion to change, and its distrust of individuality and the expression of self are stifling economic revival, political reform, and social evolution. Giving a human face to the country's malaise, Zielenziger explains how these constraints have driven intelligent, creative young men to become modern-day hermits. At the same time, young women, better educated than their mothers and earning high salaries, are rejecting the traditional path to marriage and motherhood, preferring to spend their money on luxury goods and travel.

Smart, unconventional, and politically controversial, Shutting Out the Sun is a bold explanation of Japan's stagnation and its implications for the rest of the world

My Review:

I am not sure what to make of this book. It alternates between insightful journalism and bizarre conclusions. The first few chapters are a sensitive and well-researched investigation of the hikikomori phenomenon, of some three million adults who become total recluses from modern life, often staying in their own apartments. He asks their parents, physicians, and even is fortunate enough to interview these self-exiles from society. But with Chap. 6, it, well, goes off the rails. This chapter shoots off into a 30 page crash course on Japan's post-war economic history. Then later another chapter doing the same with South Korea. and runs through the history of Christianity in South Korea. The author is offering up South Korea as a more vibrant counterpoint against Japan's stagnation, but, as we know, the former has their own problems too. Author does not offer up any solutions, maybe there is none. Perhaps this problem is not even limited to East Asia or any unique psychology of their lives, but is, instead, a problem of post-industrial service economies in prolonged economic depression. In that sense, it not just a "japanese" problem., but effects many countries, including our own.

Very good Michelle

Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster

by David Lochbaum (no photo)

Synopsis:

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake large enough to knock the earth from its axis sent a massive tsunami speeding toward the Japanese coast and the aging and vulnerable Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power reactors. Over the following weeks, the world watched in horror as a natural disaster became a man-made catastrophe: fail-safes failed, cooling systems shut down, nuclear rods melted.

In the first definitive account of the Fukushima disaster, two leading experts from the Union of Concerned Scientists, David Lochbaum and Edwin Lyman, team up with journalist Susan Q. Stranahan, the lead reporter of the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Pulitzer Prize–winning coverage of the Three Mile Island accident, to tell this harrowing story. Fukushima combines a fast-paced, riveting account of the tsunami and the nuclear emergency it created with an explanation of the science and technology behind the meltdown as it unfolded in real time. Bolstered by photographs, explanatory diagrams, and a comprehensive glossary, the narrative also extends to other severe nuclear accidents to address both the terrifying question of whether it could happen elsewhere and how such a crisis can be averted in the future.

My Review:

This book suffers from a split personality. The first half is an engaging, well-researched account of what initially happened at Fukushima. Nearly a blow by blow description. Its a a detailed analysis of the events, from the earthquake to the tsunami and how things went wrong so badly.

The weakness of the book, starting in chap. 9, is the extrapolation from Fukushima to US nuclear reactors. The book has extensive coverage of the discussions and policies of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission related to both Fukushima and US reactor safety in general. They rehash Three Mile Island as if it were nearly the same as Fukushima, which it was not. Sadly, the last chapters were filled with bias against nuclear energy, effectively breaking the nice neutral tone that the first half of the book possessed.

Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

by Pamela Rotner Sakamoto

Synopsis:

Meticulously researched and beautifully written, Midnight in Broad Daylight is the true story of a Japanese American family that found itself on opposite sides during World War II. An epic tale of family, separation, divided loyalties, love, reconciliation, loss, and redemption, Pamela Rotner Sakamoto’s history is a riveting chronicle of U.S.-Japan relations and of the Japanese experience in America.

After their father’s death, the Fukuhara children—all born and raised in the Pacific Northwest—moved with their mother to Hiroshima, their parents’ ancestral home. Eager to go back to America, Harry and his sister, Mary, returned there in the late 1930s. Then came Pearl Harbor. Harry and Mary were sent to an internment camp until a call came for Japanese translators, and Harry dutifully volunteered to serve his country. Back in Hiroshima, their brothers, Frank and Pierce, became soldiers in the Imperial Japanese Army.

As the war raged on, Harry, one of the finest bilingual interpreters in the United States Army, island-hopped across the Pacific, moving ever closer to the enemy—and to his younger brothers. But before the Fukuharas would have to face one another in battle, the U.S. detonated the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, gravely injuring tens of thousands of civilians, including members of the Fukuhara family.

Alternating between American and Japanese perspectives, Midnight in Broad Daylight captures the uncertainty and intensity of those charged with the fighting, as well as the deteriorating home front of Hiroshima—never depicted before in English—and provides a fresh look at the events surrounding the dropping of the first atomic bomb. Intimate and evocative, here is an indelible portrait of a resilient family, a scathing examination of racism and xenophobia, an homage to the tremendous Japanese American contribution to the American war effort, and an invaluable addition to the historical record of this extraordinary time.

My Review:

A true story of a Japanese American family during WWII and their family separations, love, reconciliation, loss, and the future of some of them that do carry on. It explores a family's plight from the Great Depression through World War II, the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and the reconstruction of a post war Japan. A great biographical memory book.

Thank you Michele for your very thoughtful selections and reviews.

Thanks for setting up this up! It was fun. I tried to read books and introduce topics that had not been covered before.

That is what these challenges are for and you can always add to the challenge as well by increasing the number of books you want to read.

Read the same book as Dave in message 107

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

by Marie Kondō.

Synopsis:
Despite constant efforts to declutter your home, do papers still accumulate like snowdrifts and clothes pile up like a tangled mess of noodles?
Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes tidying to a whole new level, promising that if you properly simplify and organize your home once, you'll never have to do it again. Most methods advocate a room-by-room or little-by-little approach, which doom you to pick away at your piles of stuff forever. The KonMari Method, with its revolutionary category-by-category system, leads to lasting results. In fact, none of Kondo's clients have lapsed (and she still has a three-month waiting list).

With detailed guidance for determining which items in your house "spark joy" (and which don't), this international best seller featuring Tokyo's newest lifestyle phenomenon will help you clear your clutter and enjoy the unique magic of a tidy home - and the calm, motivated mindset it can inspire.

Comments:
I had a similar opinion as Dave did on this book. Though I have no plans to start thanking my stuff, I may try the method the author uses to fold shirts. Anything to help out my exploding tee-shirt drawer! Funny thing, author says to get rid of anything that doesn't bring you joy. I have gotten rid of most of that stuff and what's left is stuff I like to wear, and the drawer is still exploding!

Michele wrote: "Read the same book as Dave in message 107

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

[bookcover:The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Ar..."

I read that book too, Michelle, but didn't think to add it to my challenge shelf. Thanks

You're welcome, Donna. I saw no reason not to add it to my Japan shelf and include it here, since its "the Japanese art of decluttering!"

I have this book to read. Good to hear everyone's reviews and to know what to expect.

Last book for this challenge, unless I run into another book.

Silence

by by Shūsaku Endō

Synopsis:

Father Rodrigues is an idealistic Portuguese Jesuit priest who, in the 1640s, sets sail for Japan on a determined mission to help the brutally oppressed Japanese Christians and to discover the truth behind unthinkable rumours that his famous teacher Ferreira has renounced his faith. Once faced with the realities of religious persecution Rodrigues himself is forced to make an impossible choice: whether to abandon his flock or his God.

Winner of the 1966 Tanizaki Prize, Silence is Shusaku Endo's most highly acclaimed novel and a classic of its genre. It caused major controversy in Japan following its publication in 1967.

Silence will soon be a major film directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Liam Neeson, Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver.

Review:
This is an intense and rather grim, novel written mostly from the vantage point of a Roman Catholic priest, a missionary to Japan, early in the 17th century. Someone said that “Endo’s writing is intensely psychological (Catholic)”…and I agree. It’s beautiful. No wonder M. Scorsese wanted to make a film out of this book.

You are doing great Michelle and the challenge has been extended.

Jean - no self promotion - one of our cardinal rules.

Oops - sorry - Try this one instead: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

I am about to start reading by Shigeru Mizuki and am wondering if any one else had read it and can give me their opinions on this book. It is the first of a 4 part massive-history on Japan in the 20th century and written by one of its founding fathers of manga.

I have not read it Ken but others might be able to let you know.

In the early 1960s, Gar Alperovitz wrote his dissertation that challenged the accepted story surrounding the events of the summer of 1945 and the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan. It was obviously very controversial. This book, published in 1995 on the 50th anniversary of the bombings, builds on that argument with much new material that was declassified over the intervening years.

The standard story is that the bombs forced Japan's surrender before an invasion of the home islands by American troops would be necessary. It was claimed that invasion would have cost as many as a million American lives, and an equal number on the Japanese side. Alperovitz points out, however, that the actual numbers from a military estimate of the time started out at 46,000 casualties. That's casualties, not lives. Based on percentages in the Pacific war, that would translate to roughly 7,000 to 10,000 deaths. Alperovitz shows how politicians gradually inflated that number over the years to solidify the case for dropping the bombs.

There is much evidence in declassified arguments that points toward a Japanese nation ready to surrender before the bombs were dropped. The threat of the Soviet Union entering the war that summer is thoroughly examines, as is the question of clarifying the term "unconditional surrender." U.S. officials were willing to consider allowing Japan to keep its emperor, and that would likely have been a concession that made surrender more likely. But despite urging from the majority of his advisors, Truman followed the advice of Secretary of State James Byrnes and chose not to communicate this to the Japanese.

This is a huge book, and I can't possibly summarize all of the arguments here. They are very convincing, but not totally so. Certainly mistakes were made on the part of Truman and his team, but Alperovitz's proof that the Japanese were ready to surrender is thin - basically relying on one or two intercepted cables.

My image of Harry Truman is definitely shaken by this account, but I'm not totally won over.

by Gar Alperovitz

Thank you Dave

Published July 28th 2017. The site "the vintage news" runs an article on the book which explains the origins and content in greater detail.



The Hundred Rules of War

by Tsukahara Bokuden(no photo)

Synopsis:

A book by a veteran Samurai to young warriors who had not tasted battle. The man known as a sword saint, Tsukahara Bokuden 1489-1571, composed this work seventy-five years before Miyamoto Musashi's Book of Five Rings. Bokuden studied Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto School and later founded the Kashima Shinto School of sword fighting. This book, which consists of a hundred songs, was transmitted to Samurai who had not yet fought in battle. In the early 1600s a forward was written by the Zen Priest Takuan Soho. Later the eighth Tokugawa Shogun Yoshimune added an introduction. This is the first English translation of this work and it is presented beside the original Japanese brush script. The English will be on the facing page. According to the afterword, for several generations this document was only transmitted to only one other person

Thank you Dimitri

Countdown to Pearl Harbor

by Steve Twomey (no photo)

Synopsis:

A Smithsonian Top History Book of 2016

A Japan Times Best Book About Japan of 2016

A fascinating look at the twelve days leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor—the warnings, clues and missteps—by a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter.

In Washington, DC, in late November 1941, admirals compose the most ominous message in Navy history to warn Hawaii of possible danger, but they write it too vaguely. They think precautions are being taken, but never check to see if they are. A key intelligence officer wants more warnings sent, but he is on the losing end of a bureaucratic battle and can’t get the message out. American sleuths have pierced Japan’s most vital diplomatic code, and Washington believes it has a window on the enemy’s soul—but it does not.

In a small office at Pearl Harbor, overlooking the battleships at the heart of America’s seafaring power, the Commander of the Pacific Fleet tries to figure out how much danger he really faces. His intelligence unit has lost track of Japan’s biggest aircraft carriers, but assumes they are resting in a port far away. The admiral thinks Pearl is too shallow for torpedoes, so he never puts up a barrier. As he frets, a Japanese spy is counting the warships in the harbor and reporting to Tokyo.

There were false assumptions, and racist ones: The Japanese aren’t very good aviators and they don’t have the nerve or the skill to attempt a strike so far from their home. There were misunderstandings, conflicting desires, painful choices. And there was a naval officer who, on his very first mission as captain of his very first ship, did exactly the right thing. His warning could have averted disaster, but his superiors reacted too leisurely. Japanese planes arrived moments later.

Twomey’s telescoping of the twelve days leading to the attack unravels the crucial characters and moments, and produces an edge-of-your seat drama with fascinating details about America at this moment in its history. By the end, the reader understands how assumption is the root of disaster, and how sometimes a gamble pays off.

About the Author

Steve Twomey began his career in journalism as a copyboy at the Chicago Tribune when he was in high school. After graduating from Northwestern University, he began a fourteen-year career at The Philadelphia Inquirer, during which he won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing, and then worked at The Washington Post for the next thirteen years.

More recently, he has written for Smithsonian and other magazines and has taught narrative writing at the graduate schools of New York University and the City University of New York. The ghostwriter of What I Learned When I Almost Died and author of Countdown to Pearl Harbor, Twomey lives in Montclair, New Jersey, with his wife, Kathleen Carroll. They have an adult son, Nick.

Very sad.

(Articles, videos and images follow but are not posted due to graphic details - though contained within the articles - this is a warning)

Hiroshima and Nagasaki: 75th anniversary of atomic bombings
Published20 hours ago

It is 75 years since the US dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August, leading to the end of World War Two.



The article contains graphic images and details some people may find upsetting.

The recorded death tolls are estimates, but it is thought that about 140,000 of Hiroshima's 350,000 population were killed in the blast, and that at least 74,000 people died in Nagasaki.

The nuclear radiation released by the bombs caused thousands more people to die from radiation sickness in the weeks, months and years that followed.

Those who survived the bombings are known as "hibakusha". Survivors faced a horrifying aftermath in the cities, including psychological trauma.

The bombings brought about an abrupt end to the war in Asia, with Japan surrendering unconditionally to the Allies on 14 August 1945.

But critics have said that Japan was already on the brink of surrender.

Following the end of the fighting in Europe on 7 May 1945, the Allies told Japan to surrender by 28 July, but the deadline passed without them doing so.

An estimated 71,000 soldiers from Britain and the Commonwealth were killed in the war against Japan, including more than 12,000 prisoners of war who died in Japanese captivity.

On 6 August 1945 at 08:15 Japanese time, an American B-29 bomber plane named Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Remainder of article:
https://www.bbc.com/news/in-pictures-...

More:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-can...

Sources: BBC News

Hello Kay - where are you from?

I cannot find the book you are trying to post. Here is another.

by Sakunosuke Oda (no photo)

Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan’s Disaster Zone

by Richard Lloyd Parry

Synopsis:

On 11 March 2011, a massive earthquake sent a 120-foot-high tsunami smashing into the coast of north-east Japan. By the time the sea retreated, more than 18,500 people had been crushed, burned to death, or drowned.

It was Japan’s greatest single loss of life since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. It set off a national crisis, and the meltdown of a nuclear power plant. And even after the immediate emergency had abated, the trauma of the disaster continued to express itself in bizarre and mysterious ways.

Richard Lloyd Parry, an award-winning foreign correspondent, lived through the earthquake in Tokyo, and spent six years reporting from the disaster zone. There he encountered stories of ghosts and hauntings. He met a priest who performed exorcisms on people possessed by the spirits of the dead. And he found himself drawn back again and again to a village which had suffered the greatest loss of all, a community tormented by unbearable mysteries of its own.

What really happened to the local children as they waited in the school playground in the moments before the tsunami? Why did their teachers not evacuate them to safety? And why was the unbearable truth being so stubbornly covered up?

Ghosts of the Tsunami is a classic of literary non-fiction, a heart-breaking and intimate account of an epic tragedy, told through the personal accounts of those who lived through it. It tells the story of how a nation faced a catastrophe, and the bleak struggle to find consolation in the ruins.