19 August 2011
by Kiyofumi Kato [加藤 聖文,], Kodansha [講談社], November 2006, 266 pages, 1600 yen, ISBN-10: 4062583747 Review by Fumiko Halloran The year 2006 was the 100th anniversary of the establishment of “Mantetsu” [満鉄], or “Minami Manshu Tetsudo Kabushiki-kaisha,” [南満州鉄道株式会社], in English the Southern Manchurian Railways Company, a semi-public corporation that was far more than a railway [...]
18 August 2011
By Peter Pagnamenta and Momoko Williams, Century, (Random House Group), 2006, 314 pages including notes and acknowledgements, £12.99, ISBN 9781844138203 and ISBN 1844138208 Review by Sean Curtin The central focus of this well written, moving and excellently researched book is the decades-long relationship between a British Army officer, Captain Arthur Hart Synnot, and a Japanese [...]
16 August 2011
by Toshio Kurihara [栗原 俊雄], Iwanami Shinsho [岩波新書], 2009, 211 pages, 735 yen, ISBN-10: 4004312078 Review by Fumiko Halloran On 9 August 1945, six days before Japan’s surrender to the Allied forces in World War II, the Soviet Army began a massive attack on Japan’s Kwantung Army [関東軍] in Manchuria [満州国] in northeast China. Some [...]
16 August 2011
, directed by Sang-il Lee (李相日), 2010, 139 minutes Review by Susan Meehan It is five years since the release of Sang-il Lee’s hugely enjoyable Hula Girls [read our review on issue 11], a Full Monty-style feel-good film replete with social commentary and the only one of his works I’d seen. I was, naturally, looking [...]
11 August 2011
Abandoned Japanese in Postwar Manchuria: The Lives of War Orphans and Wives in Two Countries by Yeeshan Chan, Routledge (Japan Anthropology Workshop Series), 2011, 208 pages, £85.00, ISBN: 0415591813 This is a superbly researched work about the lives and experiences of the Japanese women and children who were abandoned in Manchuria at the end of [...]
15 February 2011
Ellis Tinios British Museum Press, 2010 143 pages including index numerous illustrations in colour ISBN 978-0-7141-2453-7, £14.99 Review by Sir Hugh Cortazzi The British Museum has an outstanding collection of Japanese prints (ukiyo-e). This book draws on the Museum’s extensive holdings and is an introduction to the Japanese prints in the Museum. In choosing the [...]
