A young Marine Corps sergeant newly assigned to a tour of duty on Okinawa, Japan, encounters a six-hundred-year-old ghost. Both the marine and the ghost have a history of violence and no desire to move past it. After a tumultuous beginning to their relationship, a relationship embroiled in murder investigations involving a local crime family, it forces a collaboration between the two. Artemis Jones reenlisted in the Marine Corps for four years to receive orders to Okinawa. His wife, an army specialist, had received orders to Okinawa a year previous. This was to be their long-waited reunion. The ghost, a vengeful spirit with samurai training, growing ever stronger over the years, was finally strong enough to resume the role of protector over the family land. Whether by chance or by fate, their paths collide.

An entertaining odyssey by all means, which all readers, not only karate-ka, can enjoy. The work describes a fascinating 'voyage of discovery' through the Okinawan martial arts during the author's younger years. Both informative & factual, the work leads the reader on a journey of initiation from the preliminary stages of being a 'live-in disciple' of Goju-ryu & trainee of Matayoshi Kobudo in post-Reversion Okinawa, as he travels with the reader through the exploration of Uechi-ryu, Shorin-ryu & Okinawan te; also of a vast spectrum of connected Ryukyuan cultural entities. His attention to detail is commendable, as the shared expedition becomes an esoteric odyssey to find the zen spark of enlightenment that evades so many seekers, but which can be found within one's own nature. Mark D Bishop is arguably the foremost authority on historical Okinawa karate & martial arts. He continues to write, travel, research and teach extensively on various aspects of these, including its related anma bodywork & zen.

Okinawa, the only Japanese prefecture invaded by US forces in 1945, was forced to accommodate 146 “military comfort stations” from 1941–45. How did Okinawans view these intrusive spaces and their impact on regional society? Interviews, survivor testimonies, and archival documents show that the Japanese army manipulated comfort stations to isolate local communities, facilitate “spy hunts,” and foster a fear of rape by Americans that induced many Okinawans to choose death over survival. The politics of sex pursued by the US occupation (1945–72) perpetuated that fear of rape into the postwar era. This study of war, sexual violence, and postcolonial memory sees the comfort stations as discursive spaces of remembrance where differing war experiences can be articulated, exchanged, and mutually reassessed. Winner of the 2017 Best Publication Award of the Year by the Okinawa Times.

Brand new from Bradt is Okinawa and Japan’s Southwest Islands, the sole travel guidebook dedicated to the archipelago stretching from the southern tip of mainland Japan to Taiwan, whose landscapes include award-winning beaches, coral reefs, tropical jungles and ancient forests. This guide contains all the detailed information that travellers need to get the most out of their visit, from accommodation and restaurants to transport and sights. Japan expert Jo Davey complements this with rich context and entertaining insights to help readers understand this fascinating region, covering culture, recipes, architectural highlights, historical episodes and traditional folktales. Japan’s Southwest Islands are a remote but rewarding and geographically diverse area that comprises the Satsunan Islands (formed of the Osumi and Amami islands) and the Ryukyu Islands (consisting of the Okinawa, Kerama, Miyako and Yaeyama islands). The capital city of Naha on Okinawa-honto is a bright and busy hub of history, art, karate and food. Thanks to its many US military bases and post-war occupation by the US, Naha is a fusion of Japanese and American culture. In contrast, the more remote islands preserve traditional Ryukyuan life with festivals, architecture, traditional accommodation and religious sites. Depending where you travel, you can dive with manta rays off Iriomote or kayak along its jungle rivers, hike through Yakushima’s ancient forest, search for star sand on Taketomi, pay tribute to the fallen of World War II at museums and monuments on Okinawa-honto, cycle between Miyako’s award-winning beaches, take home a chunk of rope from the world’s largest tug-of-war (in Naha) or go whale watching off the Kerama Islands. Wherever you go, the islands’ amazing food – known for being the world’s healthiest cuisine – can be found throughout the archipelago. As well as dedicated chapters covering each island group, the book also provides a glimpse into the ‘gateway cities’ of Tokyo and Kagoshima, with coverage that highlights little-known areas, activities, accommodation and restaurants. Throughout, extensive practical information includes transport, seasonality, itineraries, visas and budgeting. Whether you come for culture or cuisine, karate or nature, diving or trekking, let Bradt’s Okinawa and Japan’s Southwest Islands be your guide.

The Omoro Sōshi(1531-1623) is an indispensable resource for historical linguistic comparison of Old Okinawan with other Ryukyuan languages and Old Japanese. Leon A Serafim and Rumiko Shinzato offer a reference grammar, including detailed phonological analyses, of the otherwise opaque and dense poetic/religious language of the Omoro Sōshi.Meshing Western linguistic insight with existing literary/linguistic work in Ryukyuan studies, and incorporating their own research on Modern Okinawan, the authors offer a grammar and phonology of the Omoro language, with selected (excerpts of) songs grammatically analyzed, phonologically reconstructed, translated, and annotated.

Book One: Young Nate is on a foreign exchange assignment to stay with a family in an ancient castle in western Germany. As he eagerly learns to adapt to the culture, Nate is befriended by neighboring Germans, Thorston and Sandra, who together discover there is something terribly wrong in the castle and the surrounding farming village of Gauersheim. Book Two: Nate Brighton returns home to America and soon departs with his Christian education/missionary family for the island of Okinawa, Japan. Once settled into this foreign but astonishingly eventful place, Nate and his younger brother and friends set off for a camping trip at the ruins of Nakagusuku Castle. Book Three: It is one thing to talk about protecting the environment, but its an entirely different thing to stand up and do something about it. The Connor boys, as you will see, are up for such a task. Nate and Rickys parents send them home to Washington State from Okinawa, Japan, to stay in their home under the guardianship of their Uncle Hank and prepare for a new school year.

In her most ambitious, moving, and provocative novel to date, Sarah Bird makes a stunning departure. Above the East China Sea tells the entwined stories of two teenaged girls, an American and an Okinawan, whose lives are connected across seventy years by the shared experience of profound loss, the enduring strength of an ancient culture, and the redeeming power of family love. Luz James, a contemporary U.S. Air Force brat, lives with her strictly-by-the-rules sergeant mother at Kadena Air Base in Okianawa. Luz’s older sister, her best friend and emotional center, has just been killed in the Afghan war. Unmoored by her sister’s death and a lifetime of constant moving from base to base, Luz turns for the comfort her service-hardened mother cannot offer to the “Smokinawans,” the “waste cases,” who gather to get high every night in a deserted cove. When even pills, one-hitters, Cuervo Gold, and a growing crush on Jake Furusato aren’t enough to soften the unbearable edge, the desolate girl contemplates taking her own life. In 1945, Tamiko Kokuba, along with two hundred of her classmates, is plucked out of her elite girls’ high school and trained to work in the Imperial Army’s horrific cave hospitals. With defeat certain, Tamiko finds herself squeezed between the occupying Japanese and the invading Americans. She believes she has lost her entire family, as well as the island paradise she so loved, and, like Luz, she aches with a desire to be reunited with her beloved sister. On an island where the spirits of the dead are part of life and your entire clan waits for you in the afterworld, suicide offers Tamiko the promise of peace. As Luz tracks down the story of her own Okinawan grandmother, she discovers that, if she surrenders to the most unbrat impulse and allows herself to connect completely with a place and its people, the ancestral spirits will save not only Tamiko but her as well. Propelled by a riveting narrative and set at the very epicenter of the headline-grabbing clash now emerging between the great powers, Above the East China Sea is at once a remarkable chronicle of how war shapes the lives of conquerors as well as the conquered and a deeply moving account of family, friendship, and love that transcends time. This eBook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.