Watched two movies tonight about Japan - one a Japanese movie covering home territory, the other a foreign documentary I have watched a bazillion times and STILL ADORE. It makes my flesh crawl, but magnificently so.

菊次郎の夏 Kikujirō no Natsu [Kikujiro], 1999. Dir. 北野 武 KITANO Takeshi, starring "ビートたけし" Bīto Takeshi [that would be 北野 武], KISHIMOTO ( Read more... )

ゆきゆきて、神軍 Yuki Yukite Shingun [The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On], 1987. Dir. HARA Kazuo, starring OKUZAKI Kenzo ( Read more... )

Natsume Sōseki, Kokoro, trans. Edwin McClellan (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 1957 ( Read more... )

ビルマの竪琴 Biruma no tategoto [The Burmese Harp], 1956. Dir. 市川 崑 ICHIKAWA Kun. Starring 三國連太郎 MIKUNI Rentaro, YASUI Shoji. Nikkatsu.


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The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief, 2006. Dir. Jake CLENNELL. Jake Clennel Productions ( Read more... )

Richard E. Kim, Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970).

The professor I TA'd for this past quarter recommended this book to me, saying she thought of designing a course just so she could use this. It was really, really wonderful - reminded me some of And So Flows History, though entirely lacking ( Read more... )

Michael A. Barnhart, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987).WWI was a watershed moment for a lot of reasons, and 1919 for even more (some connected to the war, some not). Barnhart theorizes that the lessons of Germany's defeat taught Japanese politicians and military gurus ( Read more... )

Margaret Mehl, History and the State in Nineteenth-Century Japan (Hampshire: MacMillan Press, 1998).The curious thing about history and the state in the 19th century is that just as Japanese scholars are developing history as a profession, with an emphasis on collecting copious textual sources and all that entails, the state wanted history put in ( Read more... )

Nobutaka Ike, ed., trans. Japan's Decision for War: Records of the 1941 Policy Conferences (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967).Since D-Day is nearly upon me, I didn't have the time to meander through this volume - which is a shame, because it's really interesting. Translation (with explanatory notes) of the policy conferences leading up ( Read more... )

Kevin M. Doak, A History of Nationalism in Modern Japan: Placing the People (Leiden: Brill, 2007).A 'handbook' of nationalism in Japan; the most important thing about this book is simply the reminder that terms that are used casually and with little reservation - nationalism, nation, state, society - have had flexible meanings. Especially in the ( Read more... )