During a year spent in Japan on a personal quest to deepen her appreciation for such Eastern ideals as commitment and devotion, documentary filmmaker Karin Muller discovered just how maddeningly complicated it is being Japanese. In this book Muller invites the reader along for a uniquely American odyssey into the ancient heart of modern Japan. Broad in scope and deftly observed by an author with a rich visual sense of people and place, Japanland is as beguiling as this colorful country of contradictions.

This Japan travel guide features dozens of beautiful photographs and insightful commentary. Japan: Land of Beauty and Tradition takes the reader on a sweeping tour of this always enticing and often surprising country. From the gaudy exuberance of the Sensoji temple to the tranquility of Ryoanji's stone garden, from Kyushu's tropical shores to Hokkaido's arctic slopes, from rice fields and iris gardens to castles and monasteries, this book presents page after page of graphic testimony that Japan continues to be a land of exquisite beauty and rich tradition. Dozens of stunning, full-color photographs by one of Japan's leading landscape photographers are accompanied by a text that provides concise historical and cultural descriptions of the delightfully varied islands that make up Japan.

A collection of poems of the imagination ranging from Science Fiction, Fantasy, Speculation and Humour to Ecology.

Presents information on the life and customs of Japan.

Schoppa documents how U.S. pressure has been misapplied in the past, insisting on the need for a strategy more informed about internal Japanese politics. While a strategy reliant on brute force is liable to backfire, he argues, one which works with domestic politics in Japan can succeed.

This collective work of a renowned group of scholars, Governing Ocean Resources: New Challenges and Emerging Regimes, edited by Jon M. Van Dyke, Sherry P. Broder,Seokwoo Lee and Jin-Hyun Paik, examines the current state of the Law of the Sea today, offers a variety of new approaches to the field, and serves as a tribute to the late Judge Choon-ho Park, whose profound depth of learning and indomitable spirit of optimism regarding the possibilities of reform and improvement comprised an immense contribution to the study of the Law of the Sea.

This book develops John Rawls’s theory of justice by adding reality-based analyses. This is accomplished by answering the question of who makes rules and how, and by providing new answers to three of today’s most practical and critical issues. The question of who and how makes rules is discussed first; and group orientation instead of individualism, and a balance of negotiating power instead of a veil of ignorance are presented as new answers to this question. Based on this new understanding of rulemaking, three important practical rules are subsequently discussed: the rule of distribution of land and other natural resources, including the question of natural talent or who should bear the costs of children’s education; the rule of distribution of products; and what motives support our acts of kindness. These rules are all dealt with from a shared perspective, viewing society as a single integrated construct. Equal distribution of land, not private but public payment of education fees, strengthening employees’ bargaining power, and moving toward nobility-based kindness are put forward as central answers. By addressing critical questions on social rules and proposing answers, this book provides reliable principles to fall back on in our daily lives, and in our rapidly changing, globalized world.

The main theme of Fire on the Water is that conventional measures of military balance, employed by both the general public and many policy experts, underestimate the threat that China’s military modernization poses to the U.S. position in the Asia-Pacific region. Within a decade, China’s leaders will have the military power to hold at risk U.S. interest in East Asia. The U.S. needs to fashion a new and competitive strategy, one that better matches the strengths of the U.S. and its allies against China’s vulnerabilities, in order to maintain a balance of power in the region and convince China’s leaders to pursue a cooperative course. It is not obvious to many observers why a conflict in the region is plausible, or why the U.S. should bear the responsibility for maintaining a forward military presence in the region. China has rapidly emerged as a great power and by doing so, has acquired many vital interests around the world. Following the pattern set by other such episodes in history, China is also acquiring the military means to protect its new interests, a development that puts at risk the interests of China’s neighbors and the United States. The U.S. forward military presence in the region is an increasingly difficult burden to sustain. But in the long run, this approach will be less costly and less risky than encouraging China’s neighbors to balance China by themselves, an alternative that will very likely result in an unstable arms race and a conflict that will damage America’s interests. While it will be in America’s interest to maintain its position in the Asia-Pacific region, China’s military modernization is making it much more difficult for the U.S. to do so. China’s military strategy, centered on its rapidly-expanding land-based and anti-ship missile forces, is exploiting weaknesses in long-standing U.S. force structure and doctrine. Due to a variety of institutional barriers, the U.S. has been slow to adapt to China’s military modernization. Current efforts to respond are impractical, in that they expend U.S. resources against China’s strengths rather than its vulnerabilities. The U.S. needs a new and competitive strategy that will strengthen its alliances in the region and convince China’s leaders that cooperation, rather than military expansion and an attempt at regional hegemony, will be China’s best course. Fire on the Water proposes reforms to U.S. diplomacy, military programs, and strategy that will offer a better chance at preserving stability. The goal of these reforms is to thwart China’s well-designed military modernization plan, bolster the confidence and credibility of U.S. alliances in the region, and thus persuade China’s leaders that China’s best course is cooperation rather than conflict, the outcome that has usually occurred in history when a new great power has rapidly emerged.