Okakura wrote The Book of Tea in 1906. The books seeks to bridge and explain the Eastern perspective to the West. At the time, most people weren’t familiar with Japan, China, or Korea. Japan had opened to the West in 1853. Fifty-three years isn’t a lot of time for people to understand another culture. As…
Category: Book Reviews
Lafcadio Hearn’s Japan
Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) offered a view into Japan during the Meiji Restoration with his books: Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, Out of the East, Kokoro, The Boy Who Drew Cats, In Ghostly Japan, Kwaidan, and other books. He lived in Japan for 14 years before his death; his writings provide a snapshot of the land and…
Stranger in the Shogun’s City by Amy Stanley
History tends to represent the voices of men and those in power. Typically, governmental officials, who are most often men, know how to read and write. And those documents are what survive. The majority of people in the past were illiterate and unable to write. Because of this, their voices disappeared outside of a few…
Geishas and the Floating World: Inside Tokyo’s Yoshiwara Pleasure District
Geishas and the Floating World by Stephen and Ethel Longstreet examines the history and development of Tokyo’s red-light district of Yoshiwara. The name of the book misleads a little. Most of the book focuses upon the prostitutes that worked Yoshiwara. The authors note that geisha weren’t sex workers, but geisha did blur the line as…
The Delicate Happiness of “The Guest Cat”
The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide focuses on a childless couple who is adopted by the neighbor’s cat. The novella offers a detailed slice of life set in the late 1980s. It’s hard to believe that is over 30 years ago! The author isn’t familiar with cats, so Chibi’s antics surprise and delight him. Chibi doesn’t…
The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang
The Rape of Nanking covers the destruction of present-day Nanjing City by the Japanese during World War II. The book doesn’t hold back. In several chapters, I had to take a break from the relentless atrocities the author accounted. Nanking was the first area the Japanese went after taking Shanghai. The goal was to conquer…