The rapid pace of technological, social and cultural change throughout the 20th century propelled Japan forward but left countless establishments, industries and entire towns deserted. Through his photography Jordy Meow explores these forgotten places and sheds light on a lost world that was thriving just a few decades ago

This book relates the experiences of the zanryu-hojin - the Japanese civilians, mostly women and children, who were abandoned in Manchuria after the end of the Second World War when Japan’s puppet state in Manchuria ended. It examines their eventual repatriation, alongside issues of war memory and war guilt, and the worldviews of the zanryu-hojin, alongsideJapanese society and its anti-war social movements.

Dotted over Japan from north to south, hundreds of abandoned abodes lay forgotten and left to decay. These shadowy realms provide a paused, silent and darkly enchanting contrast to a country known for the brightness, sound and movement that swells in it many thriving metropolises. Stepping away from the lights and into the shadows, one adventurous photographer embarks on an underground voyeuristic journey, documenting a curious collection of images that provide a rare and intimate glimpse into a secret, mysterious and sometimes bizarre world.

This book relates the experiences of the zanryu-hojin - the Japanese civilians, mostly women and children, who were abandoned in Manchuria after the end of the Second World War when Japan’s puppet state in Manchuria ended, and when most Japanese who has been based there returned to Japan. Many zanryu-hojin survived in Chinese peasant families, often as wives or adopted children; the Chinese government estimated that there were around 13,000 survivors in 1959, at the time when over 30,000 "missing" people were deleted from Japanese family registers as" war dead". Since 1972 the zanryu-hojin have been gradually repatriated to Japan, often along with several generations of their extended Chinese families, the group in Japan now numbering around 100,000 people. Besides outlining the zanryu-hojin’s experiences, the book explores the related issues of war memories and war guilt which resurfaced during the 1980s, the more recent court case brought by zanryu-hojin against the Japanese government in which they accuse the Japanese government of abandoning them, and the impact on the towns in northeast China from which the zanryu-hojin were repatriated and which now benefit hugely from overseas remittances from their former residents. Overall, the book deepens our understanding of Japanese society and its anti-war social movements, besides providing vivid and colourful sketches of individuals’ worldviews, motivations, behaviours, strategies and difficulties.

After Japan's defeat in August 1945, some Japanese children were abandoned in China and raised by Chinese foster parents. They were unable to return to Japan even during the mass repatriation carried out by the Japanese government in the 1950s. Most of them returned to Japan in the 1980s. They are called Japanese war orphans. They are victims of the Sino-Japanese War and have been exploited and abandoned by the Japanese government. They are also border people who have lived in the interstices between two nations, China and Japan, and are migrants who have exploited the gap in economic development between Japan and China to seek individual happiness. Modern East Asia underwent drastic social change. These drastic social changes affected the lives of the Japanese war orphans and their families in a variety of ways. Over the years, Zhong has interviewed Japanese war orphans, their Chinese foster parents, and Japanese volunteers. The title is an interview-based sociological study of the issue of Japanese war orphans. The first half of the Japanese war orphans' lives were spent in China, and the latter half in Japan. It brings to the fore the dramatic personal histories of the Japanese war orphans surviving in the interstices between two nation-states. Through analyzing the issue of Japanese war orphans, the research on the subject makes the following three points: (1) the powerlessness of civilians caught up in modern warfare and the long-lasting effects of modern warfare on the life histories of individuals and their families; (2) the nature of the modern nation-state, which exploits and abandons its citizens as though they were expendable; and (3) immigration as a product of modernization gaps. Scholars pursuing studies in Japanese society and historians of the Sino-Japanese war would find this an ideal read.

Developed out of the aesthetic philosophy of cha-no-yu (the tea ceremony) in fifteenth-century Japan, wabi sabi is an aesthetic that finds beauty in things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. Taken from the Japanese words wabi, which translates to less is more, and sabi, which means attentive melancholy, wabi sabi refers to an awareness of the transient nature of earthly things and a corresponding pleasure in the things that bear the mark of this impermanence. As much a state of mind--an awareness of the things around us and an acceptance of our surroundings--as it is a design style, wabi sabi begs us to appreciate the simple beauty in life--a chipped vase, a quiet rainy day, the impermanence of all things. Presenting itself as an alternative to today's fast-paced, mass-produced, neon-lighted world, wabi sabi reminds us to slow down and take comfort in the simple, natural beauty around us. In addition to presenting the philosophy of wabi-sabi, this book includes how-to design advice--so that a transformation of body, mind, and home can emerge. Chapters include: History: The Development of Wabi Sabi Culture: Wabi Sabi and the Japanese Character Art: Defining Aesthetics Design: Creating Expressions with Wabi Sabi Materials Spirit: The Universal Spirit of Wabi Sabi

After Japan's defeat in August 1945, some Japanese children were abandoned in China and raised by Chinese foster parents. They were unable to return to Japan even during the mass repatriation carried out by the Japanese government in the 1950s. Most of them returned to Japan in the 1980s. They are called Japanese war orphans. They are victims of the Sino-Japanese War and have been exploited and abandoned by the Japanese government. They are also "border people" who have lived in the interstices between two nations, China and Japan, and are migrants who have exploited the gap in economic development between Japan and China to seek individual happiness. Modern East Asia underwent drastic social change. These drastic social changes affected the lives of the Japanese war orphans and their families in a variety of ways. Over the years, Zhong has interviewed Japanese war orphans, their Chinese foster parents, and Japanese volunteers. The title is an interview-based sociological study of the issue of Japanese war orphans. The first half of the Japanese war orphans' lives were spent in China, and the latter half in Japan. It brings to the fore the dramatic personal histories of the Japanese war orphans surviving in the interstices between two nation-states. Through analyzing the issue of Japanese war orphans, the research on the subject makes the following three points: (1) the powerlessness of civilians caught up in modern warfare and the long-lasting effects of modern warfare on the life histories of individuals and their families; (2) the nature of the modern nation-state, which exploits and abandons its citizens as though they were expendable; and (3) immigration as a product of modernization gaps. Scholars pursuing studies in Japanese society and historians of the Sino-Japanese war would find this an ideal read.

Every year, nearly one hundred thousand Japanese vanish without a trace. Known as the johatsu, or the “evaporated,” they are often driven by shame and hopelessness, leaving behind lost jobs, disappointed families, and mounting debts. In The Vanished, journalist Léna Mauger and photographer Stéphane Remael uncover the human faces behind the phenomenon through reportage, photographs, and interviews with those who left, those who stayed behind, and those who help orchestrate the disappearances. Their quest to learn the stories of the johatsu weaves its way through: A Tokyo neighborhood so notorious for its petty criminal activities that it was literally erased from the maps Reprogramming camps for subpar bureaucrats and businessmen to become “better” employees The charmless citadel of Toyota City, with its iron grip on its employees The “suicide” cliffs of Tojinbo, patrolled by a man fighting to save the desperate The desolation of Fukushima in the aftermath of the tsunami And yet, as exotic and foreign as their stories might appear to an outsider’s eyes, the human experience shared by the interviewees remains powerfully universal.

*Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography* *Winner of the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award* *Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography* A “captivating” (The Washington Post) work of history that explores the life of an unconventional woman during the first half of the 19th century in Edo—the city that would become Tokyo—and a portrait of a city on the brink of a momentous encounter with the West. The daughter of a Buddhist priest, Tsuneno was born in a rural Japanese village and was expected to live a traditional life much like her mother’s. But after three divorces—and a temperament much too strong-willed for her family’s approval—she ran away to make a life for herself in one of the largest cities in the world: Edo, a bustling metropolis at its peak. With Tsuneno as our guide, we experience the drama and excitement of Edo just prior to the arrival of American Commodore Perry’s fleet, which transformed Japan. During this pivotal moment in Japanese history, Tsuneno bounces from tenement to tenement, marries a masterless samurai, and eventually enters the service of a famous city magistrate. Tsuneno’s life provides a window into 19th-century Japanese culture—and a rare view of an extraordinary woman who sacrificed her family and her reputation to make a new life for herself, in defiance of social conventions. “A compelling story, traced with meticulous detail and told with exquisite sympathy” (The Wall Street Journal), Stranger in the Shogun’s City is “a vivid, polyphonic portrait of life in 19th-century Japan [that] evokes the Shogun era with panache and insight” (National Review of Books).

Reginald Van de Velde takes photos of forgotten places, of abandoned spaces where time has ground to a halt. His haunting photos are simply breathtaking Many exclusive locations that have never been photographed before The unknown and the unseen have always held an undeniable appeal to the human nature. In a world that is ever growing and changing, there are places that inevitably slip out of memory and out of sight. Reginald Van de Velde's Between Nowhere & Never shows the past splendor of derelict hospitals, mothballed monasteries, defunct power stations, crumbling castles and many other dormant structures. As a devoted traveller, he journeys into forsaken places all over the world, trying to capture the momentum of a fragile abandonment - the result of an intangible desire to explore what mankind has left behind. The chapters written by Mirna Pavlovic weave the photographs together into a larger narrative, providing an insight into the photographer's thoughts and motivations, and breathe in new life to places desperately searching for it. With the reverb of time as a vantage point, this book will take you on a journey to places that exist between nowhere and never.