This book, the product of a joint project between a Japanese and an American scholar, successfully addresses the issues important to Americans and others interested in contemporary Japan.

The last twenty years has seen a growth of interest and fascination with the Japanese, and the emergence of Japan as a world economic power has stimulated many works that have attempted to understand Japanese culture. The focus of this book is not on Japanese culture or society per se: rather, it is on how Japanese culture and society structure, shape, and mold the emotions of the Japanese people. All cultures shape and mold emotions, but the degree to which the Japanese culture shapes emotion has led to several misunderstandings about the emotional life of the Japanese, which this book attempts to correct. Describing the findings of over two decades of research, this book presents the Japanese as human beings with real feelings and emotions rather than as mindless pawns caught in the web of their own culture. In the process, it unmasks many myths that have grown around the subject and reveals important similarities as well as differences between the emotional life of the Japanese and that of people of other cultures.

This third edition, published in 1999, considers Japan's changing fortunes in the 1990s.

This history of the ninja uncovers the truth behind the image—from the exploits of medieval ninjas to their modern incarnation as pop culture icons. The ninja is a legendary figure in Japanese military culture, a fighter widely regarded as the world’s greatest expert in secret warfare. The word alone conjures the image of a masked assassin dressed in black, capable of extraordinary feats of daring; a mercenary who disposes of enemies by sending sharp iron stars spinning towards them. This is, of course, a popular myth, based on exaggerations and Hollywood movies. But the truth, as Stephen Turnbull explains in Ninja, is even more fascinating. A leading expert on samurai culture, Turnbull presents an authoritative study of ninja history based on original Japanese sources, many of which have never been translated before. These include accounts of castle attacks, assassinations and espionage, as well as the last great ninja manual, which reveals the spiritual and religious ideals that were believed to lie behind the ninja’s arts. Turnbull’s critical examination of the ninja phenomenon ranges from undercover operations during the age of Japan’s civil wars to the modern emergence of the superman ninja as a comic book character. The book concludes with a detailed investigation of the ninja in popular culture.

In The Spectacle of Japanese American Trauma, Emily Roxworthy contests the notion that the U.S. government’s internment policies during World War II had little impact on the postwar lives of most Japanese Americans. After the curtain was lowered on the war following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, many Americans behaved as if the “theatre of war” had ended and life could return to normal. Roxworthy demonstrates that this theatrical logic of segregating the real from the staged, the authentic experience from the political display, grew out of the manner in which internment was agitated for and instituted by the U.S. government and media. During the war, Japanese Americans struggled to define themselves within the web of this theatrical logic, and they continue to reenact this trauma in public and private to this day. The political spectacles staged by the FBI and the American mass media were heir to a theatricalizing discourse that can be traced back to Commodore Matthew Perry’s “opening” of Japan in 1853. Westerners, particularly Americans, drew upon it to orientalize—disempower, demonize, and conquer—those of Japanese descent, who were characterized as natural-born actors who could not be trusted. Roxworthy provides the first detailed reconstruction of the FBI’s raids on Japanese American communities, which relied on this discourse to justify their highly choreographed searches, seizures, and arrests. Her book also makes clear how wartime newspapers (particularly those of the notoriously anti-Asian Hearst Press) melodramatically framed the evacuation and internment so as to discourage white Americans from sympathizing with their former neighbors of Japanese descent. Roxworthy juxtaposes her analysis of these political spectacles with the first inclusive look at cultural performances staged by issei and nisei (first- and second-generation Japanese Americans) at two of the most prominent “relocation centers”: California’s Manzanar and Tule Lake. The camp performances enlarge our understanding of the impulse to create art under oppressive conditions. Taken together, wartime political spectacles and the performative attempts at resistance by internees demonstrate the logic of racial performativity that underwrites American national identity. The Spectacle of Japanese American Trauma details the complex formula by which racial performativity proved to be a force for both oppression and resistance during World War II.

A collection of essays that provide insight into Japanese culture. This book is a great buy for anyone interested in Japan.

In a rare combination of comprehensive coverage and sustained critical focus, this book examines Japan's progress through its entire history to its current status as an economic, technological, and cultural superpower. A key factor is a pragmatic determination to succeed. Little-known facts are also brought to light, and the latest findings used.

In Ghosts of 45, Geoffrey E. Hill addresses the great questions revolving around Japans past militarismhow did it get started, why were they so aggressive, why were individuals submissive to authority, what was the reason Japanese felt superior, was American bombing and the atomic bombs really justified, why are the Japanese reluctant to recognize their militaristic past, and what can the Japanese do to emerge from this predominantly negative war legacy. After World War II, the Japanese people rebuilt their country, established a new government, restored their infrastructure and became a pacifist nation. Despite these profound changes, modern Japan has not been able to achieve a desired national purpose and a leadership standing in the international community. In Ghosts of 45, Hill examines this problem by exploring the roots and evolution of Japans militaristic period through historical sources and the recollections of people living in wartime Japan. He features in-depth interviews with both well-educated Japanese individuals familiar with Western culture and American POWs subjected to forced labor. Three narratives are brought together that could help guide Japan toward finding renewed national purpose and international respect: the roots of Japans militarism, the ongoing war legacy, and key principles concerning the status of the emperor and public education about wartime Japan. In addition, Hill discusses comparisons between the emperor and the pope, the samurai code and the code of the English knights during the Middle Ages, and the beliefs that allowed Japanese wartime brutality and American slavery.

This volume addresses the entanglement between archaeology, imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, and war. Popular sentiment in the West has tended to embrace the adventure rather than ponder the legacy of archaeological explorers; allegations by imperial powers of "discovering" archaeological sites or "saving" world heritage from neglect or destruction have often provided the pretext for expanding political influence. Consequently, citizens have often fallen victim to the imperial war machine, seeing their lands confiscated, their artifacts looted, and the ancient remains in their midst commercialized. Spanning the globe with case studies from East Asia, Siberia, Australia, North and South America, Europe, and Africa, sixteen contributions written by archaeologists, art historians, and historians from four continents offer unusual breadth and depth in the assessment of various claims to patrimonial heritage, contextualized by the imperial and colonial ventures of the last two centuries and their postcolonial legacy.