The Japan Society
Publications Books & Journals The Japan Society Review

Issue 63 (June 2016, Volume 11, Number 3)

Issue 63 (June 2016, Volume 11, Number 3)

For two days in May Japan, and specifically Ise-Shima, was the focus of the world’s media as it played host to the 42nd G7 summit. The summit, however, was largely eclipsed by President Obama’s visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and Park. At the centre of his speech were the hibakusha.

But the hibakusha have by no means always been at the centre of the nuclear narrative, and in Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War Susan Southard presents the life stories of five hibakusha. Amazingly, she is among the first to document the post-bomb history through the eyes of the survivors with such emotional detail. In her review, Elizabeth Ingrams reminds us that the bombing of Nagasaki has its own particular resonance in the West for the fact that the city was for a long time at the centre of Japan’s global interactions.

Douglas Clark’s Gunboat Justice focusses on a specific aspect of these relations, surveying the key players from the days of the extra-territorial courts in Japan and China. The three volumes focus largely on China, but Chris Roberts suggests that they add significantly to our understanding of the Japanese aspect for the light they shine on the extra-territorial courts in Manchukuo, expanding a history that typically ends in 1899 and bringing it up to 1941.

In 2015 Penguin re-released Alex Kerr’s seminal Lost Japan, part ode to Japan’s cultural inheritance, part polemic on the country’s neglect of that inheritance. Originally published in 1993, Lost Japan has been out of print for some time, and in his review Harry Martin hopes that it will now come into the hands of and inspire a new generation of Japan enthusiasts.

Koreeda Hirokazu is well established as the master of the Japanese family drama, and Susan Meehan tells us that Our Little Sister is a significant addition to his oeuvre, taking a gentler direction to recent films I Wish and Like Father, Like Son.

Lastly, the striking image above was taken at International Dance Festival Birmingham, where sculptor Ito Shun and choreographer Miyata Kei collaborated on a piece of performance art at the Municipal Bank. Dominika Mackiewicz was there for the Japan Society.


Contents

Contributors

Editor
William Upton

Reviewers
Elizabeth Ingrams, Dominika Mackiewicz, Harry Martin, Susan Meehan and Chris Roberts

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