"For all who have ever sought to understand the enigmas of life, for those who have held within their hearts an uncertain hope about the reality of God, and for seekers who have already turned toward the Supreme in their quest, this anthology of talks by the author of Autobiography of a Yogi offers illuminating insights and encouragement. In its pagese, Paramahansa Yogananda explores little-known and rarely explained aspects of such subjects as meditation, life after death, health and healing, the unlimited powers of the human mind, the equality of man and woman, and the interrelatedness of all life. Topics include: * Making Religion Scientific

In this first volume of the collected talks and essays of Paramahansa Yogananda, readers will journey through some little-known and seldom-explained aspects of meditation, life after death, healing, and the power of the mind.

"An elegiac prose celebration . . . a classic in its genre."—Publishers Weekly In this acclaimed travel memoir, Donald Richie paints a memorable portrait of the island-studded Inland Sea. His existential ruminations on food, culture, and love and his brilliant descriptions of life and landscape are a window into an Old Japan that has now nearly vanished. Included are the twenty black and white photographs by Yoichi Midorikawa that accompanied the original 1971 edition. Donald Richie (1924-2013) was an internationally recognized expert on Japanese culture and film. Yoichi Midorikawa (1915-2001) was one of Japan's foremost nature photographers.

The twentieth century is as remarkable for its world wars as it is for its efforts to outlaw war in international and constitutional law and politics. Japan in the World examines some of these efforts through the life and work of Shidehara Kijuro, who was active as diplomat and statesman between 1896 until his death in 1951. Shidehara is seen as a guiding thread running through the first five decades of the twentieth century. Through the 1920s until the beginning of the 1930s, his foreign policy shaped Japan's place within the community of nations. The positive role Japan played in international relations and the high esteem in which it was held at that time goes largely to his credit. As Prime Minister and 'man of the hour' after the Second World War, he had a hand in shaping the new beginning for post-war Japan, instituting policies that would start his country on a path to peace and prosperity. Accessing previously unpublished archival materials, Schlichtmann examines the work of this pacifist statesman, situating Shidehara within the context of twentieth century statecraft and international politics. While it was an age of devastating total wars that took a vast toll of civilian lives, the politics and diplomatic history between 1899 and 1949 also saw the light of new developments in international and constitutional law to curtail state sovereignty and reach a peaceful order of international affairs. Japan in the World is an essential resource for understanding that nation's contributions to these world-changing developments.

Paramahansa Yogananda's Collected Talks and Essays present in-depth discussions of the fast range of inspiring and universal truths that have captivated millions in his Autobiography of a Yogi. Readers will find these talks alive with the unique blend of all-embracing wisdom, encouragement, and love for humanity that have made the author one of our era's most revered and trusted guides to the spiritual life. In this anthology of talks, Paramahansa Yogananda speaks to the deepest needs of the human heart and soul. He shows how we can meet the daily challenges to our physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual well-being by awakening our divine nature, the neglected reality at the core of our being. The practical, how-to-live talks in this volume show how each of us can discover the limitless inner resources already present within our souls, and bring greater harmony to ourselves, our families, our communities, our world. Topics include: How to Cultivate Divine Love Do Souls Reincarnate? How to Free Yourself from Bad Habits The Yoga Art of Overcoming Mortal Consciousness and Death Practicing Religion Scientifically.

This collection debates the path and purpose of life. The author discusses such topics as whether it is possible to hasten human evolution, the possibility of a scientific method to ensure a pathway to life's highest fulfilments and what guidelines help mediators find genuine spiritual progress.

A beautiful Eurasian waitress employed at Amsterdam's most elegant Japanese restaurant reports that her boyfriend, a Japanese art dealer, is missing. The police search throughout The Netherlands and finally locate a corpse. But to find the killer, the commissaris and de Geir must go to Japan and match wits with a yakuza chieftain in his lair. This is the fifth novel in the Amsterdam Cops series.

“My name is Yoshiko Kawashima, some call me Aisin Gioro Xianyu in Manchuria but to many in my circle who knew what I did, I am known simply as the Japanese Peony after my favorite flower! I have lived a colorful and covert double life of intrigue and lies, I'm even supposed to have been executed in 1948! So I really can't complain that I managed to make it to “old bones” but day by day, as my body grows weak, the burden of the secrets that will die with me grows heavier. I need to tell my story and change history forever!” Born into the royal family of Prince Su and a relative of Pu Yi, the last Emperor of China, Yoshiko was a princess. How, one might ask, did a Chinese Princess from the royal house of the Qing Dynasty become a spy for the Japanese Secret Service Unit? This book sets out to put all the disjointed pieces of a huge puzzle together to answer that question! This book also looks at the fascinating covert activities of Yoshiko as a spy, planning and engineering some of the most famous Japanese incursions into China that made her a historical figure never to be forgotten. But in the midst of so much hardness, angst and high living were two poignant moments in Yoshiko’s life when she loved and lost first Yamaga, a Japanese military officer and in the final years of her heydays, Jack Stone, an American journalist. In 1945, when Japan lost the war, Yoshiko was betrayed by her bodyguards and captured by Chiang Kai Shek’s men and sentenced to death for treason and espionage. History has it that she was executed on 25th March, 1948 but as in life, her “death” was shrouded in mystery and intrigue. Was she executed or did she cheat death in a daring swap with a dying girl paid to take her place? This is the true story of Yoshiko Kawashima and her spectacular life as a princess and a spy. We travel with her through the breath taking maze of her early years in Manchuria evolving to her turbulent life in Japan as the adopted daughter of Naniwa Kawashima and his cold, disdainful wife, Natsuko. The trail then takes us on a whirlwind arranged marriage to a Mongolian prince which lasted just one year and on to a glittering life in Shanghai where Yoshiko was recruited by the Japanese Intelligence as a spy for Japan and finally to Peking where she ended up in Prison No. 1 with an execution order on her head. It remains a mystery whether Yoshiko Kawashima was actually executed on 25th March, 1948, the official stand of China is that she was executed.

"In the second half of the twentieth century, Reiki went from an obscure therapy practiced by a few thousand Japanese and Japanese Americans to a global phenomenon. By the early twenty-first century, people in nearly every corner of the world have undergone the initiations that authorize them to channel a cosmic energy--known as Reiki--to heal body, mind, and spirit. They lay hands on themselves and others, use secret symbols and incantations to send Reiki to distant recipients, and strive to follow five precepts to cultivate their spiritual growth. Reiki's international rise and development is due to the work of Hawayo Takata (1900-1980), a Hawai°i-born Japanese American woman who brought Reiki out of Japan and adapted it for thousands of students in Hawai°i and North America, shaping interconnections across the North Pacific region as well as cultural transformations over the transwar period spanning World War II. Alternate Currents: Reiki's Circulation in the Twentieth-Century North Pacific analyzes how, from her training in Japan in the mid-1930s to her death in Iowa in 1980, Takata built a vast trans-Pacific network that connected Japanese American laborers on Hawai°i plantations to social elites in Tokyo, Hollywood, and New York; middle class housewives in American suburbs; and off-the-grid tree planters in the mountains of British Columbia. Using recently uncovered archival materials and original oral histories, Stein examines how these relationships between healer and patient, master and disciple, became deeply infused with values of their time and place and how they interplayed with Reiki's circulation, performance, and meanings along with broader cultural shifts in the twentieth-century North Pacific. Highly readable and informative, each chapter is structured around a period in the life of Takata, the charismatic, rags-to-riches architect of the network in which Reiki spread for decades. Alternate Currents explores Reiki as an exemplary transnational spiritual therapy, demonstrating how lived practices transcend artificial distinctions between religion and medicine, and circulate in global systems while maintaining strong connections with the practices' homeland"--