The Life And Death Of A Japanese General

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The Life And Death Of A Japanese General

Author : John Deane Potter
Publisher : Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1786259397
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (862 download)

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Book Synopsis The Life And Death Of A Japanese General by : John Deane Potter

Download or read book The Life And Death Of A Japanese General written by John Deane Potter and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2016-07-26 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: LEYTE...LUZON...MANILA...places where thousands of Americans died, bloody battles that finally turned the tide for America in World War II. Who was the man who led the Japanese to fight so tenaciously in the face of certain defeat, who cost the Americans such a hard-won victory? While Manila was being razed and raped by Japanese troops, while his soldiers were dying of starvation in the hills, Tomoyuki Yamashita finally bowed to the orders of his Emperor and surrendered to American forces. Official historian Robert Ross says of the brilliant general, “No one can ever dispute the fact that Yamashita executed one of the most effective delaying actions in the whole history of warfare.” Yamashita was the first Japanese to be tried as a war criminal; as general he was held responsible for the atrocities committed by the soldiers under his command. Was his conviction in accordance with the code of American justice? Or was he a scapegoat of war, was he sent to the scaffold in vengeful retaliation for overwhelming American losses? Foreign correspondent and biographer John Deane Potter interviewed General Yamashita in the military prison near Manila and later spoke at length with the general’s widow, who gave him access to her husband’s papers, books, and photographs.

No Surrender

Author : Hiroo Onoda
Publisher : Naval Institute Press
ISBN 13 : 1612515649
Total Pages : 226 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (125 download)

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Book Synopsis No Surrender by : Hiroo Onoda

Download or read book No Surrender written by Hiroo Onoda and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2013-12-04 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spring of 1974, Second Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda of the Japanese army made world headlines when he emerged from the Philippine jungle after a thirty-year ordeal. Hunted in turn by American troops, the Philippine police, hostile islanders, and successive Japanese search parties, Onoda had skillfully outmaneuvered all his pursuers, convinced that World War II was still being fought and that one day his fellow soldiers would return victorious. This account of those years is an epic tale of the will to survive that offers a rare glimpse of man's invincible spirit, resourcefulness, and ingenuity. A hero to his people, Onoda wrote down his experiences soon after his return to civilization. This book was translated into English the following year and has enjoyed an approving audience ever since.

Bataan Death March

Author : Bollich, James
Publisher : Pelican Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9781455600601
Total Pages : 228 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (6 download)

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Book Synopsis Bataan Death March by : Bollich, James

Download or read book Bataan Death March written by Bollich, James and published by Pelican Publishing. This book was released on 2003-10-31 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a brave American veteran comes an eyewitness account of a gruesome chapter in World War II history. Captured when America surrendered the PhilippinesBataan Peninsula, James Bollich experienced first-hand the march that cost more than 8,000 American and Filipino lives. Now, he shares the unforgettable experience of his three and a half years of Japanese imprisonment.This journal relates his personal experience, first focusing on the sixty-five-mile march that deprived prisoners of food, water, and rest. Prisoners received harsh punishments for any infraction, one of the most brutal of these being the policy of beheading them for taking a sip of water. Rather than force him to give up, these things made Bollich fight for life even more. Witnessing his comrades falling beside him and watching his own body waste away to ninety pounds, he never yielded his will to survive. After completing the march, he remained a prisoner of war, first at an old Philippine army base, then in another camp at Mukden, Manchuria. He relates his imprisonment in detail, from starvation and torture to digging their own comrades graves in the hot sun, without hats or water. Through it all, he remained courageous and hopeful that he would one day make it back home. His story reminds both past and present generations of the horror and brutality of the Pacific war, all the while providing an inspiring testament to the will ofthe human spirit.

The Tiger Of Malaya:

Author : Lt. Col. Aubrey Saint Kenworthy
Publisher : Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1786251558
Total Pages : 246 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (862 download)

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Book Synopsis The Tiger Of Malaya: by : Lt. Col. Aubrey Saint Kenworthy

Download or read book The Tiger Of Malaya: written by Lt. Col. Aubrey Saint Kenworthy and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-06 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes over 30 illustrations As in Nazi occupied countries that were liberated by the Allies, horrible crimes had been uncovered, perpetrated in the name of superior culture on defenceless civilians and prisoners of war. As the emaciated American, British, Australian soldiers emerged from the prisoner of war camps with barbaric tales of torture, mistreatment and neglect, it was clear that justice must be sought. The U.S. Military fixed on two Japanese generals who were foremost in causing and ordering these outrages, the conqueror of Malaya Tomoyuki Yamahsita and the notorious “Death March” Masaharu Homma. Lt. Col. Kenworthy was a member of the U.S. military police assigned to the Philippines and saw at first hand the military tribunal ordered at the express command of General MacArthur. He was detailed to guard both Yamashita and Homma during the trial and was able to view their reactions to the detailed evidence that was used against them. He was determined to write this account of this momentous event, he recorded not only the evidence of the crimes but also the stoic calm with which the two generals faced the weight of Allied Justice. A fascinating sidelight on the ending of the World War Two.

The First Free Women

Author : Matty Weingast
Publisher : Shambhala Publications
ISBN 13 : 0834842688
Total Pages : 161 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (348 download)

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Book Synopsis The First Free Women by : Matty Weingast

Download or read book The First Free Women written by Matty Weingast and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2020-02-11 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Ancient Collection Reimagined Composed around the Buddha’s lifetime, the Therigatha (“Verses of the Elder Nuns”) contains the poems of the first Buddhist women: princesses and courtesans, tired wives of arranged marriages and the desperately in love, those born into limitless wealth and those born with nothing at all. The original authors of the Therigatha were women from every kind of background, but they all shared a deep-seated desire for awakening and liberation. In The First Free Women, Matty Weingast has reimagined this ancient collection and created a contemporary and radical adaptation that takes the essence of each poem and highlights the struggles and doubts, as well as the strength, perseverance, and profound compassion, embodied by these courageous women.

Dead Reckoning

Author : Dick Lehr
Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN 13 : 0062448528
Total Pages : 504 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (624 download)

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Book Synopsis Dead Reckoning by : Dick Lehr

Download or read book Dead Reckoning written by Dick Lehr and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-06-09 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive and dramatic account of what became known as "Operation Vengeance" -- the targeted kill by U.S. fighter pilots of Japan's larger-than-life military icon, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the naval genius who had devised the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor. “AIR RAID, PEARL HARBOR. THIS IS NO DRILL.” At 7:58 a.m. on December 7, 1941, an officer at the Ford Island Command Center typed what would become one of the most famous radio dispatches in history, as the Japanese navy launched a surprise aerial assault on U.S. bases on Hawaii. In a little over two hours, more than 2,400 Americans were dead, propelling the U.S.’s entry into World War II. Dead Reckoning is the epic true story of the high-stakes operation undertaken sixteen months later to avenge that deadly strike – a longshot mission hatched hastily at the U.S. base on Guadalcanal. Expertly crafting this "hunt for Bin Laden"-style WWII story, New York Times bestselling author Dick Lehr recreates the tension-filled events leading up to the climactic clash in the South Pacific skies – frontline moments loaded with xenophobia, spycraft, sacrifice and broken hearts. Lehr goes behind the scenes at Station Hypo on Hawaii, where U.S. Navy code breakers first discovered exactly where and when to find Admiral Yamamoto, on April 18, 1943, and then chronicles in dramatic detail the nerve-wracking mission to kill him. He focuses on Army Air Force Major John W. Mitchell, the ace fighter pilot from the tiny hamlet of Enid, Mississippi who was tasked with conceiving a flight route, literally to the second, for the only U.S. fighter plane on Guadalcanal capable of reaching Yamamoto hundreds of miles away – the new twin-engine P-38 Lightning with its fabled “cone of fire.” Given unprecedented access to Mitchell’s personal papers and hundreds of private letters, Lehr reveals for the first time the full story of Mitchell’s wartime exploits up to the face-off with Yamamoto, along with those of key American pilots Mitchell chose for the momentous mission: Rex Barber, Thomas Lanphier Jr., Besby Holmes, and Ray Hine. The spotlight also shines on their enemy target –Admiral Yamamoto, the enigmatic, charismatic commander in chief of Japan’s Combined Fleet, whose complicated feelings about the U.S.—he studied at Harvard—add rich complexity. In this way Dead Reckoning offers at once a fast-paced recounting of a crucial turning point in the Pacific war and keenly drawn portraits of its two main protagonists: Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of Pearl Harbor, and John Mitchell, the architect of the Yamamoto’s demise. Dead Reckoning features black-and-white photos throughout.

Art of Life and Death

Author : Daniel Fletcher
Publisher : Tuttle Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1462909957
Total Pages : 211 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (629 download)

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Book Synopsis Art of Life and Death by : Daniel Fletcher

Download or read book Art of Life and Death written by Daniel Fletcher and published by Tuttle Publishing. This book was released on 2012-11-10 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This masterfully crafted guide to ninjitsu or budo explores in depth the history, culture and philosophy of this fascinating and enduring Japanese martial art. Budo is one of the least understood forms of art in the world. Even more than skills or techniques, the teachings of budo require faith to learn and courage to understand. One of the fundamental teachings of budo is ninjutsu, the art of perseverance that forms the basis of the Japanese martial arts. The lessons in this book come directly from experiencing the living vitality of the world's foremost master of the ninja arts, Masaaki Hatsumi. Through the use of stories, poetry, art, and earned wisdom, the authors move beyond the common image of the martial arts and reveal the nature of the unexpected changes in themselves as they struggled to come to terms with what being a martial artist in the ninja tradition meant. The Art of Life and Death is a reflection of the discipline, the aesthetics, and the philosophy that lies hidden within the martial way. It is a glimpse at the hidden potential of the martial arts, one where the practitioner can embrace transcendence and transformation in order to face all the fears that litter life and also life's most fearsome opponent: Death.

Bodies of Memory

Author : Yoshikuni Igarashi
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400842980
Total Pages : 295 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis Bodies of Memory by : Yoshikuni Igarashi

Download or read book Bodies of Memory written by Yoshikuni Igarashi and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-09 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japan and the United States became close political allies so quickly after the end of World War II, that it seemed as though the two countries had easily forgotten the war they had fought. Here Yoshikuni Igarashi offers a provocative look at how Japanese postwar society struggled to understand its war loss and the resulting national trauma, even as forces within the society sought to suppress these memories. Igarashi argues that Japan's nationhood survived the war's destruction in part through a popular culture that expressed memories of loss and devastation more readily than political discourse ever could. He shows how the desire to represent the past motivated Japan's cultural productions in the first twenty-five years of the postwar period. Japanese war experiences were often described through narrative devices that downplayed the war's disruptive effects on Japan's history. Rather than treat these narratives as obstacles to historical inquiry, Igarashi reads them along with counter-narratives that attempted to register the original impact of the war. He traces the tensions between remembering and forgetting by focusing on the body as the central site for Japan's production of the past. This approach leads to fascinating discussions of such diverse topics as the use of the atomic bomb, hygiene policies under the U.S. occupation, the monstrous body of Godzilla, the first Western professional wrestling matches in Japan, the transformation of Tokyo and the athletic body for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, and the writer Yukio Mishima's dramatic suicide, while providing a fresh critical perspective on the war legacy of Japan.

Hirohito And The Making Of Modern Japan

Author : Herbert P. Bix
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 0061860476
Total Pages : 832 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (618 download)

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Book Synopsis Hirohito And The Making Of Modern Japan by : Herbert P. Bix

Download or read book Hirohito And The Making Of Modern Japan written by Herbert P. Bix and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 832 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize In this groundbreaking biography of the Japanese emperor Hirohito, Herbert P. Bix offers the first complete, unvarnished look at the enigmatic leader whose sixty-three-year reign ushered Japan into the modern world. Never before has the full life of this controversial figure been revealed with such clarity and vividness. Bix shows what it was like to be trained from birth for a lone position at the apex of the nation's political hierarchy and as a revered symbol of divine status. Influenced by an unusual combination of the Japanese imperial tradition and a modern scientific worldview, the young emperor gradually evolves into his preeminent role, aligning himself with the growing ultranationalist movement, perpetuating a cult of religious emperor worship, resisting attempts to curb his power, and all the while burnishing his image as a reluctant, passive monarch. Here we see Hirohito as he truly was: a man of strong will and real authority. Supported by a vast array of previously untapped primary documents, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan is perhaps most illuminating in lifting the veil on the mythology surrounding the emperor's impact on the world stage. Focusing closely on Hirohito's interactions with his advisers and successive Japanese governments, Bix sheds new light on the causes of the China War in 1937 and the start of the Asia-Pacific War in 1941. And while conventional wisdom has had it that the nation's increasing foreign aggression was driven and maintained not by the emperor but by an elite group of Japanese militarists, the reality, as witnessed here, is quite different. Bix documents in detail the strong, decisive role Hirohito played in wartime operations, from the takeover of Manchuria in 1931 through the attack on Pearl Harbor and ultimately the fateful decision in 1945 to accede to an unconditional surrender. In fact, the emperor stubbornly prolonged the war effort and then used the horrifying bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, together with the Soviet entrance into the war, as his exit strategy from a no-win situation. From the moment of capitulation, we see how American and Japanese leaders moved to justify the retention of Hirohito as emperor by whitewashing his wartime role and reshaping the historical consciousness of the Japanese people. The key to this strategy was Hirohito's alliance with General MacArthur, who helped him maintain his stature and shed his militaristic image, while MacArthur used the emperor as a figurehead to assist him in converting Japan into a peaceful nation. Their partnership ensured that the emperor's image would loom large over the postwar years and later decades, as Japan began to make its way in the modern age and struggled -- as it still does -- to come to terms with its past. Until the very end of a career that embodied the conflicting aims of Japan's development as a nation, Hirohito remained preoccupied with politics and with his place in history. Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan provides the definitive account of his rich life and legacy. Meticulously researched and utterly engaging, this book is proof that the history of twentieth-century Japan cannot be understood apart from the life of its most remarkable and enduring leader.

Yamashita's Ghost

Author : Allan A. Ryan
Publisher : University Press of Kansas
ISBN 13 : 0700620141
Total Pages : 408 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (6 download)

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Book Synopsis Yamashita's Ghost by : Allan A. Ryan

Download or read book Yamashita's Ghost written by Allan A. Ryan and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2014-10-17 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I don't blame my executioners. I will pray God bless them. " So said General Tomoyuki Yamashita, Japan's most accomplished military commander, as he stood on the scaffold in Manila in 1946. His stoic dignity typified the man his U.S. Army defense lawyers had come to deeply respect in the first war crimes trial of World War II. Moments later, he was dead. But had justice been served? Allan A. Ryan reopens the case against Yamashita to illuminate crucial questions and controversies that have surrounded his trial and conviction, but also to deepen our understanding of broader contemporary issues-especially the limits of command accountability. The atrocities of 1944 and 1945 in the Philippines-rape, murder, torture, beheadings, and starvation, the victims often women and children-were horrific. They were committed by Japanese troops as General Douglas MacArthur's army tried to recapture the islands. Yamashita commanded Japan's dispersed and besieged Philippine forces in that final year of the war. But the prosecution conceded that he had neither ordered nor committed these crimes. MacArthur charged him, instead, with the crime-if it was one-of having "failed to control" his troops, and convened a military commission of five American generals, none of them trained in the law. It was the first prosecution in history of a military commander on such a charge. In a turbulent and disturbing trial marked by disregard of the Army's own rules, the generals delivered the verdict they knew MacArthur wanted. Yamashita's lawyers appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, whose controversial decision upheld the conviction over the passionate dissents of two justices who invoked, for the first time in U.S. legal history, the concept of international human rights. Drawing from the tribunal's transcripts, Ryan vividly chronicles this tragic tale and its personalities. His trenchant analysis of the case's lingering question-should a commander be held accountable for the crimes of his troops, even if he has no knowledge of them-has profound implications for all military commanders.

The War Against Japan, 1941-1945

Author : John J. Sbrega
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317431790
Total Pages : 1078 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (174 download)

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Book Synopsis The War Against Japan, 1941-1945 by : John J. Sbrega

Download or read book The War Against Japan, 1941-1945 written by John J. Sbrega and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-06-12 with total page 1078 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With over 5,200 entries, this volume remains one of the most extensive annotated bibliographies on the USA’s fight against Japan in the Second World War. Including books, articles, and de-classified documents up to the end of 1987, the book is organized into six categories: Part 1 presents reference works, including encyclopedias, pictorial accounts, military histories, East Asian histories, hisotoriographies. Part 2 covers diplomatic-political aspects of the war against Japan. Part 3 contains sources on the economic and legal aspects of the war against Japan. Part 4 presents sources on the military apsects of the war – embracing land, air and sea forces. Religious aspects of the war are covered in Part 5 and Part 6 deals with the social and cultural aspects, including substantial sections on the treatment of Japanese minorities in the USA, Hawaii, Canada and Peru.

Embracing Defeat

Author : John W Dower
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 9780393320275
Total Pages : 692 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (22 download)

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Book Synopsis Embracing Defeat by : John W Dower

Download or read book Embracing Defeat written by John W Dower and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2000-07-04 with total page 692 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study of modern Japan traces the impact of defeat and reconstruction on every aspect of Japan's national life. It examines the economic resurgence as well as how the nation as a whole reacted to defeat and the end of a suicidal nationalism.

Rampage: MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manila

Author : James M. Scott
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393246957
Total Pages : 631 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (932 download)

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Book Synopsis Rampage: MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manila by : James M. Scott

Download or read book Rampage: MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manila written by James M. Scott and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2018-10-30 with total page 631 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Illuminating.… An eloquent testament to a doomed city and its people.” —The Wall Street Journal In early 1945, General Douglas MacArthur prepared to reclaim Manila, America’s Pearl of the Orient, which had been seized by the Japanese in 1942. Convinced the Japanese would abandon the city, he planned a victory parade down Dewey Boulevard—but the enemy had other plans. The Japanese were determined to fight to the death. The battle to liberate Manila resulted in the catastrophic destruction of the city and a rampage by Japanese forces that brutalized the civilian population, resulting in a massacre as horrific as the Rape of Nanking. Drawing from war-crimes testimony, after-action reports, and survivor interviews, Rampage recounts one of the most heartbreaking chapters of Pacific War history.

To the End of the Earth

Author : John C. McManus
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0593186885
Total Pages : 465 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (931 download)

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Book Synopsis To the End of the Earth by : John C. McManus

Download or read book To the End of the Earth written by John C. McManus and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2023-05-02 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the liberation of the Philippines to the Japanese surrender, the final volume of John C. McManus's trilogy on the US Army in the Pacific War “Brilliant [and] riveting… a truly great book.”—Gen. David Petraeus • “Triumphant [and] compelling.”—Richard Frank • “McManus is one of the best—if not the best—World War II historians working today.”—World War II magazine The dawn of 1945 finds a US Army at its peak in the Pacific. Allied victory over Japan is all but assured. The only question is how many more months—or years—of fight does the enemy have left. John C. McManus, winner of the Gilder Lehrman Prize for Military History, concludes his magisterial series, described by the Wall Street Journal as being “as vast and splendid as Rick Atkinson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Liberation Trilogy,” with this brilliant final volume. On the island of Luzon, a months-long stand-off between US and Japanese troops finally breaks open, as American soldiers push into Manila, while paratroopers and amphibious invaders capture nearby Corregidor. The Philippines are soon liberated, and Allied strategists turn their eyes to China, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and the Japanese home islands themselves. Readers will walk in the boots of American soldiers and officers, braving intense heat, rampant disease, and a by-now suicidal enemy, determined to kill as many opponents as possible before defeat, and they will encounter Japanese soldiers faced with the terrible choice between capitulation or doom. At the same time, this outstanding narrative lays bare the titanic ego and ambition of the Pacific War’s most prominent general, Douglas MacArthur, and the complex challenges he faced in Japan’s unconditional surrender and America’s lengthy occupation.

Suicidal Honor

Author : Doris G. Bargen
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824829980
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (248 download)

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Book Synopsis Suicidal Honor by : Doris G. Bargen

Download or read book Suicidal Honor written by Doris G. Bargen and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2006-09-30 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On September 13, 1912, the day of Emperor Meiji’s funeral, General Nogi Maresuke committed ritual suicide by seppuku (disembowelment). It was an act of delayed atonement that paid a debt of honor incurred thirty-five years earlier. The revered military hero’s wife joined in his act of junshi ("following one’s lord into death"). The violence of their double suicide shocked the nation. What had impelled the general and his wife, on the threshold of a new era, to resort so drastically, so dramatically, to this forbidden, anachronistic practice? The nation was divided. There were those who saw the suicides as a heroic affirmation of the samurai code; others found them a cause for embarrassment, a sign that Japan had not yet crossed the cultural line separating tradition from modernity. While acknowledging the nation’s sharply divided reaction to the Nogis’ junshi as a useful indicator of the event’s seismic impact on Japanese culture, Doris G. Bargen in the first half of her book demonstrates that the deeper significance of Nogi’s action must be sought in his personal history, enmeshed as it was in the tumultuous politics of the Meiji period. Suicidal Honor traces Nogi’s military career (and personal travail) through the armed struggles of the collapsing shôgunate and through the two wars of imperial conquest during which Nogi played a significant role: the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). It also probes beneath the political to explore the religious origins of ritual self-sacrifice in cultures as different as ancient Rome and today’s Nigeria. Seen in this context, Nogi’s death was homage to the divine emperor. But what was the significance of Nogi’s waiting thirty-five years before he offered himself as a human sacrifice to a dead rather than living deity? To answer this question, Bargen delves deeply and with great insight into the story of Nogi’s conflicted career as a military hero who longed to be a peaceful man of letters. In the second half of Suicidal Honor Bargen turns to the extraordinary influence of the Nogis’ deaths on two of Japan’s greatest writers, Mori Ôgai and Natsume Sôseki. Ôgai’s historical fiction, written in the immediate aftermath of his friend’s junshi, is a profound meditation on the significance of ritual suicide in a time of historical transition. Stories such as "The Sakai Incident" ("Sakai jiken") appear in a new light and with greatly enhanced resonance in Bargen’s interpretation. In Sôseki’s masterpiece, Kokoro, Sensei, the protagonist, refers to the emperor’s death and his general’s junshi before taking his own life. Scholars routinely mention these references, but Bargen demonstrates convincingly the uncanny ways in which Sôseki’s agonized response to Nogi’s suicide structures the entire novel. By exploring the historical and literary legacies of Nogi, Ôgai, and Sôseki from an interdisciplinary perspective, Suicidal Honor illuminates Japan’s prolonged and painful transition from the idealized heroic world of samurai culture to the mundane anxieties of modernity. It is a study that will fascinate specialists in the fields of Japanese literature, history, and religion, and anyone seeking a deeper understanding of Japan’s warrior culture.

Japanese Death Poems

Author :
Publisher : Tuttle Publishing
ISBN 13 : 146291649X
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (629 download)

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Book Synopsis Japanese Death Poems by :

Download or read book Japanese Death Poems written by and published by Tuttle Publishing. This book was released on 1998-04-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A wonderful introduction the Japanese tradition of jisei, this volume is crammed with exquisite, spontaneous verse and pithy, often hilarious, descriptions of the eccentric and committed monastics who wrote the poems." --Tricycle: The Buddhist Review Although the consciousness of death is, in most cultures, very much a part of life, this is perhaps nowhere more true than in Japan, where the approach of death has given rise to a centuries-old tradition of writing jisei, or the "death poem." Such a poem is often written in the very last moments of the poet's life. Hundreds of Japanese death poems, many with a commentary describing the circumstances of the poet's death, have been translated into English here, the vast majority of them for the first time. Yoel Hoffmann explores the attitudes and customs surrounding death in historical and present-day Japan and gives examples of how these have been reflected in the nation's literature in general. The development of writing jisei is then examined--from the longing poems of the early nobility and the more "masculine" verses of the samurai to the satirical death poems of later centuries. Zen Buddhist ideas about death are also described as a preface to the collection of Chinese death poems by Zen monks that are also included. Finally, the last section contains three hundred twenty haiku, some of which have never been assembled before, in English translation and romanized in Japanese.

The Encyclopedia of War, 5 Volume Set

Author : Gordon Martel
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 140519037X
Total Pages : 2973 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (51 download)

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Book Synopsis The Encyclopedia of War, 5 Volume Set by : Gordon Martel

Download or read book The Encyclopedia of War, 5 Volume Set written by Gordon Martel and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-01-17 with total page 2973 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ground-breaking 5-volume reference is a comprehensive print and electronic resource covering the history of warfare from ancient times to the present day, across the entire globe. Arranged in A-Z format, the Encyclopedia provides an overview of the most important events, people, and terms associated with warfare - from the Punic Wars to the Mongol conquest of China, and the War on Terror; from the Ottoman Sultan, Suleiman ‘the Magnificent’, to the Soviet Military Commander, Georgi Konstantinovich Zhukov; and from the crossbow to chemical warfare. Individual entries range from 1,000 to 6,000 words with the longer, essay-style contributions giving a detailed analysis of key developments and ideas. Drawing on an experienced and internationally diverse editorial board, the Encyclopedia is the first to offer readers at all levels an extensive reference work based on the best and most recent scholarly research. The online platform further provides interactive cross-referencing links and powerful searching and browsing capabilities within the work and across Wiley-Blackwell’s comprehensive online reference collection. Learn more at www.encyclopediaofwar.com. Selected by Choice as a 2013 Outstanding Academic Title Recipient of a 2012 PROSE Award honorable mention