The Japan Society Review

The Meiji Restoration in 19th century Japan not only overthrew the Shogun’s rule but rewrote the nation’s religious map. That propelled the emperor into a deity whose absolute authority was crafted by the founders of the new regime for political purposes. This is the basic theme in Yasuhisa Ebisawa’s best-selling novel.

By Simon Olding, with a foreword by Emmanuel Cooper, Crafts Study Centre, University of the Creative Arts, and the Leach Pottery, St Ives, 2010, 135 pages, 76 plates of Leach’s etchings, ISBN 978-0-954374-8-9. Review by Sir Hugh Cortazzi. This book was launched at Daiwa House in London on 23 November 2010 with an explanatory talk […]

Originally called Quakebook on Twitter, 2:46 is a collection of stories about the tsunami and earthquake, which exploded onto the book scene in March of 2011. This was a result of one individual’s simple question to Twitter users: “What can we do?” Whilst many people the world over sat and watched the unfolding disaster on TV and newspapers not knowing how to help, 2:46 got crowdsourcing.

The 1920s were a crucial period in modern Japanese history, when new and revolutionary western ideologies, like communism and fascism, entered Japan and found adherents there. Anti-Semitism was one of those western ideologies to arrive at that time. It offered a simplistic explanation of the perplexing turmoil of the world. It appealed to conservatives alarmed about communist subversion and to those attracted by conspiracy theories.

Cross explains that his book “maps how the pleasures of tea were useful in the invention of a particular form of Japaneseness. Tea precepts such as purity, harmony and respectful appreciation of social stability will be shown to be coercive forces that became keywords in the official definition of wartime Japanese identity, a sacrament that demanded the ultimate sacrifice.”

The title of this book gives only a hint of the scope of this masterly study. It focuses on the life and work of the Buddhist priest Chōgen重源(1121-1206). It covers the development of portraiture in East Asia, efforts to rebuild the Great Buddha of Tōdaiji 東大寺 following its destruction under the Genpei war, and the development of Buddhist sculpture in Nara and Kyoto.

Great Living – In the Pure Encounter Between Master and Disciple – is a volume of essays and commentaries on the Japanese spiritual classic, the Tannisho (歎異抄), in a new English language translation for a western audience. The Tannisho is the most famous text of the Japanese Jodo Shinshu [浄土真宗] – True Pure Land School.

This book consists of a series of studies about Japanese shipping and shipbuilding. These are of interest to anyone specialising in Japanese economic history. It includes chapters on the rise of Japan’s modern shipping industry, the development of Japanese shipping industries in post-war Japan, Japan’s merchant marine and Japanese shipbuilding.

This book is much more than a catalogue (see note 1). Karin Breuer outlines firstly the origins and development of the Japanese prints. The author then describes the aesthetics of ukiyo-e. This is followed by a discussion of “European Artists and Japonisme.” The last chapter is devoted to “the Japanese style in American Printmaking.”

John Breen and Mark Teeuwen, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, 264 pages including index and list of references, $31.95, ISBN 978-1-4051-5516-8 (soft back) Review by Sir Hugh Cortazzi The first two chapters of A New History of Shinto provide a perspective of the development of Shinto in Japan. The book then has a full account of the Hie […]