This article describes books about Japan. One important motive that led to my writing this is to lessen cultural frictions caused by misunderstandings. Selected here are mostly books that discuss cross-cultural intersections.
All reviews come with a note on how the works and their authors are accepted by the Japanese. The feelings of the majority are more important than absolute truth for most Japanese. A typical conversation would go like: "Have you seen the new movie? No? Don't you know it's become a major topic?"
It can easily be seen that there can be no better environment than this for the germs of totalitarianism to multiply. This seriously concerns me for my parents and teachers have told me the savages of war and that the collective mindset led to it should never be allowed get hold of the people again. The last generation could blame a brutal government that quenched all opposition for starting a stupid war. But today Japan has a democracy and the people are responsible for their own fate. Something must be done. Japan needs a prophet and I'm going to play that role.
This article is intended to provide information about certain peculiarities about Japanese culture, which would greatly help those who wish to study any topic or field. Readers are strongly recommended not to scroll to a typical keyword but to read through the whole document to get the general picture in mind. It must be kept in mind that by definition a prophet's standpoint deviates from the social norm.
This is the place to examine the world that produced the books. Not much information about their contents is provided here. Please visit an online bookstore or contact the publisher for that purpose.
History
The most popular book on this subject is 'Japan: The History of a Nation' by Edwin O.Reischauer'. It views the progress of Japanese history and development of culture from a thoroughly orthodox standpoint. The author served as ambassador to Japan during the Kennedy years. His wife was Japanese.
Reischauer is well known by the Japanese and regarded by most Japanese as a good-willed understander of their society and culture.
Advanced readers should consider 'Japan: From Prehistory to Modern Times'. It views Japanese history from an institutional standpoint. How religion and philosophy interacted with political systems is closely analyzed in this volume.
Few Japanese know about this book or the author.
Industry and Economy
Those considering doing business with the Japanese are strongly recommended to read David Halberstam's 'The Reckoning'. The corporate histories of two automobile companies, Ford and Nissan are vividly portrayed in one of the greatest masterpieces of industrial journalism. The author of 'The Best and the Brightest' displays his superb biographical talents as he narrates the lives of the captains of the manufacturing mights.
Halberstam's name became well known to the Japanese when NHK television aired a series based on this book. Viewers liked the program because it discussed how the Japanese surpassed the decadent Americans through diligence. Readers of the original will discover that the author does not always see things in such simple terms.
For those who need a quick digest, a book called 'The Next Century' by the same author is available. The interview with Kazuo Inamori of Kyocera is particularly interesting.
An interesting theory of what policies enabled the Japanese postwar economic miracle to happen appears in Peter Drucker's 'The New Realities'. Drucker is admired by many Japanese businessmen because he is so famous worldwide. But the prophet has never seen a Japanese businessman talking about the above theory. Get used to this logic when thinking about the Japanese.
The most interesting account on Japanese finance is 'Pacific Rift: Adventures in Big Business where Japan meets the West' by Michael Lewis. Readers of 'Liar's Poker' can imagine what kind of a book this is. 'Pacific Rift' is not as technically involved as the author's most famous work and discusses mostly social matters. Even Lewis encounters trouble when it comes to cutting into the vast Japanese financial jungle and keeps a stance when discussing his views.
The final chapter, 'Why do the Japanese want to Leap into our Snake Pit?' is an unorthodox but ingenious attempt to explain why Japanese real estate companies paid exorbitant prices to acquire skyscrapers in New York City. It had nothing to do with money, short range or long range, according to the author. It well explains why Japanese firms had so much interest in New York while they totally neglected other locations where profitable opportunities existed.
For all the interest the Japanese have in matters of money, Lewis and his works are little known of in Japan.
'The Bubble Economy: The Japanese Economic Collapse' teaches us about the financial euphoria that struck Japan in the 1980s. The author, 'The Economist's' Tokyo based Far East Financial Editor, fully employed his expertise in investigating and analyzing financial systems to write the most objective account of the incident known. On the other hand, one may say he is but a financial reporter, not an economist. Though he is excellent in reporting sequences of events and their reasons in policy and market minds, he does not care to examine structural changes in industry or the cultural backgrounds of policy makers and market participants. He has no interest in solving the riddle of the clocklike precision of the 60 year boom to bust world-wide economical cycle that has been puzzling economists for so long.
This book has been translated into Japanese and is quite well known in the financial community. But most Japanese are apparently content with the 'explanations', circular logic and the like, which local economists of renown give. For them, 'Baburu' is like an Ultra-man monster that came out of nowhere to cause great havoc to a peaceful society. Smarter minds with darker intentions use the 'Baburu' as a giant rug to hide the true causes of the wide set of financial troubles now nagging the nation.
Anthropology
The classic work of this field remains to be 'The Chrysanthemum and the Sword' by Ruth Benedict. Written in 1946, many of the author's observations on Japanese society remain relevant today. Though perhaps difficult for those who are not specialists in the field, intellectuals with interest in socializing with the Japanese must read this work. This is the book to read to understand concepts such as 'giri', 'on' and 'haji'.
A Japanese national fetish is 'Nihonjinron': research of their own cultural nature. Scholars and commoners alike love to tell stories going like 'Foreigners are like this but Japanese are not like that'. Little is debated; they just indoctrinate themselves with stereotypical views. A major source of such observations is this book, highly renowned by the Japanese.
For example, the Japanese love to indulge in Benedict's theory that "Christian societies are sin based, Japanese society is shame based". Therefore, "We do not understand sin." they often claim. Those who read 'The Tale of Genji', a tenth century court love romance which ranks among the world's most sophisticated novels, or the recollections of Second World War veterans can easily see that sin does trouble the Japanese soul.
Originally, Nihonjinron was almost always self-criticism, but matters seem to be changing at least in some circles nowadays.
Sports
A totally enjoyable book about cultural differences between Japan and America is 'You Gotta Have Wa' by Robert Whiting. This book discusses the unbelievable troubles that foreign players who join professional Japanese baseball teams encounter. Such hired hands unanimously agree that 'yakyuu' as the Japanese call is a totally different activity from the sport called 'baseball' they love to play. They find out that there are things more important than victories or fine plays in this mysterious quarter of the world. The book is a remarkable study of how the Japanese view life and cultural frictions between outsiders they cause by their unique attitude. The film called 'Mister Baseball' based on this book fails to capture in depth the mastery of the author. 'The Chrysanthemum and the Bat' is an earlier book by the same author on the same subject.
Interpreters should read the chapter describing how their contemporaries who work for Japanese baseball teams strive to bridge what must be one of the vastest, deepest cultural chasms in the world.
When translated, sport fans regarded this book as a marvelous work of exposure. Today the experiences of athletes contribute to Nihonjinron. Whiting lives in Japan with a Japanese wife.
Education
Among the children that must be enduring the most hardships in the civilized world are the Japanese who receive a substantial part of their education abroad. Earlier it was thought that the problems of the so called 'kikokushijo' or returnees were largely caused by the hardships of learning the world's most difficult language in a period shorter than the norm. Now it is known that it is due to the tremendous pressures of the world's most homogenized culture to sterilize young spirits which carry the foreign bacillus of individual thinking. An American teacher who worked for an educational program for such kids named a boy, explained he was bright by his standards and described the situation: "Now he is really having his soul killed."
The prophet, a kikokushijo, has first-hand knowledge of some of the darker aspects of human nature. Kikokushijo often have to endure relentless bullying by their peers, in cases tolerated if not coordinated by the teachers, while struggling to understand classes in one of the world's most strenuous educational environments.
'Japan's International Youth: The Emergence of a New Class of Schoolchildren' by Roger Goodman investigates Japanese education as well as culture in depth from various standpoints in order to explain the kikokushijo problem. Although most of his observations are valid, most Japanese will doubt that kikokushijo will ever gain a place in the country's power centers as the author predicts. They believe that those who work hard will attain high-paying jobs in trade, finance and the arts, but their role in society would remain marginal. Not infrequently men in positions of power in this country coerce translators to intentionally misinterpret, causing serious misunderstandings between nations and companies.
This book is little known of in Japan.
Japan Bashing
Japan's success in the international economy brought words of appraisal from outside observers such as Ezra Vogel, author of 'Japan as Number One: Lessons for America'. The world knew that Japan had an efficient economy, an well-educated populace, and a clean and safe society, and writers attempted to explain why.
Practices unheard of in other capitalist nations, such as close coordination of the activities of government, business and labor, life-long employment and long term strategic planning were identified and analyzed. How such principles were actually applied is beautifully described in 'The Reckoning' mentioned above.
In the past decade a new group of writers appeared, focusing on the darker side of Japan. They claim, for instance, that lack of healthy confrontation causes deep-rooted corruption. It is also argued that while physical violence is virtually unheard of, psychological violence goes unchecked. The economy is far from ideal when one observes what is going on inside the protective barriers: Economic institutions instead of petty thieves steal from the hard-working Japanese through inflated prices of goods and services. Even the Japanese have to agree on the last point.
The bible of Japan bashing is 'The Enigma of Japanese Power', written by Karel van Wolfren. The nastiest criticism ever written about any society, its pages are saturated with negative value judgments which even the author admits to be subjective.
The author warns the world that in Japan, words say one thing and mean another. He also states that news from Japan through established media channels should be received with caution. Policymakers and policemen only hold ceremonial press interviews and real information flows through unofficial channels in which those in power demand that their versions of accounts be fed to the masses in return for relevant information. The prophet has heard the same story from a young news reporter of a national newspaper.
Problems like this can be seen anywhere. Take 'agent orange' for example. But the situation is nowhere as serious as it is in Japan among the industrial nations.
This academic journalist understands and investigates policy, academia and media with apparent great accuracy, but clearly has shortcomings when discussing economics, as can been seen from the section title 'The Bubble that does not Burst'. If this book sees Japanese society as a typical Leviathan, it is puzzling why the author doesn't explain why this monster came into existence, for Hobbes' theory is clear and simple and well understood by students worldwide.
This book should not be regarded as a study of a rare and exceptional socio-political disaster that is recently extending its tentacles to the outside world but a warning message of the hazards of manipulated reality to all who live in democratic dominions. Read this book, learn lessons and carefully examine your own culture. Your country might be on its way to becoming the next Japan and the symptoms are hard to discern.
The author's observations range from sarcastic: "The Liberal Democratic Party is nothing but conservative and authoritarian." to spine-chilling: "The people should be obedient but they should not be taught the rules." This work is by far the greatest non-fiction version of 'Nineteen-Eighty-Four'.
Some Japanese respect Wolfren, many love to hate him. Both sides know well that there is no way to deny him.
The bureaucracy is apparently trying to keep the author's most potent weapon, namely the concept of 'accountability', or the obligation of those in power to explain what they are doing, from the hands of the populace by loading their documents with the word 'akauntabiriti', thus making it alienate to the masses. This is of course, the way Wolfren would see matters.
Japan is a myriad of regional, economic and cultural subsocieties. The major ones are called 'kai' or 'world'. There is the jurist kai, sumo kai, entertainment kai and so on. Such spheres are far more insular than Japan as a whole, all with their unique traditions and languages at times incomprehensible to none but initiated members and close supporters. It is 'natural' by Japanese standards that the bureaucrats write their documents in their jargon.
If Karel van Wolfren regards Japan as an Orwellian nightmare, Masao Miyamoto views it as a mental illness. 'Straitjacket Society: An Insider's Irreverent View of Bureaucratic Japan', originally titled 'The Rules of the Bureau' reveals the unwritten rules and compulsory freedoms inside Japan's mandarin towers. The author studied mental health in America and was hired by the Ministry of Health and Welfare for his expertise. The leaders there initially set him onto a typical career course and gave him access to vital secrets of the bureaucrat kai. Upon discovering a typical case of double-talk (guess where) he started to employ his not insignificant skills to analyze the behavior of his troublesome contemporaries.
A typical kikokushijo, only to have received his foreign education at a high age, the author soon ran into trouble. Bosses scolded this rebel; he remained adamant, analyzed their logic and exposed them in a series in a serious liberal weekly magazine. The author was demoted to a position with nothing to do with mental health, and subsequently caught for a petty violation and dismissed, disproving Roger Goodman's 'the ugly duckling called kikokushijo will become a beautiful swan' theory, at least for the time being.
The Japanese cheered the courageous author for finally standing up against the bureaucratic behemoth. The book was a total success. However, the ordinary Japanese says "The same things are going on in my company. I can't possibly act like him." The author is revered as Don Quixote might have been.
The counterargument to the world by a prominent right-wing politician is 'The Japan that can Say No: Why Japan will be First among Equals' by Shintaro Ishihara. The prophet has not read this book.
Ishihara is a talented writer who in 1956 wrote a prize winning novel based on the beautiful lives of the ring of sons and daughters from rich families around his younger brother Yujiro. He became a prominent congressman and Yujiro a film star. The elder Ishihara recently became Governor of Tokyo and vows to rule with an iron hand. Whether the morals he preaches or the decadence he adores will prevail remains to be seen. The Japanese recognize him as the most outspoken hawk but few care to understand the details of his rhetoric.
A word must be mentioned about 'Japan bashing'. Initially, and to a large extent even today, the Japanese did not understand why their society should be criticized. But as the validity of the arguments of critics became clear and started to set in, clever minds came up with a system of counterarguments to refuse to accept them.
Any criticism of Japan through foreign logic is Japan bashing. The Japanese claim they have a cultural tradition that respects 'harmony' and it must be respected. Let noisy foreigners go back to their motherlands, where crime and economic decay is out of control, they believe.
For almost all Japanese, what would be called vanity elsewhere is not vice but virtue. Deeply rooted insecurity leads them to take whatever measures to hide any sign of weakness. It is unanimously regarded that the worst possible offence to someone is to expose his problems in public. Whenever a company causes an industrial accident or is caught in a financial scandal, the president bows and apologizes: "I deeply regret causing the current social turmoil." Here 'turmoil' means media exposure, rather than the real damage caused to society through loss of lives, health or waste of economic resources.
Expensive brands of international fame know how delicious the Japanese market is. Merchants who come to Japan with a useful good at a reasonable price seldom succeed, unless people can be convinced that not having it would indicate weakness.
Religion
A masterpiece of modern Japanese literature is 'Roof Tiles of Tempyo' by Yasushi Inoue. It describes the lives of Buddhist monks of the seventh century or the Nara period, Japan's first cosmopolitan era. Monks were the scholars and moral leaders of society then. A group of young monks are selected and sent to Tang China to import 'Risshuu', a Buddhist sect that emphasizes adherence to strict moral codes, in an attempt to fight increasing corruption within the capital temples. The mission is hazardous: crossing the ocean in those days was the equivalent of putting a satellite into orbit in the early years of the space age.
If you visit the ancient city of Nara, visit Toushoudaiji, the national center of Risshuu, and see for yourself how angry the statues of the deities there are.
Inoue is one of modern Japan's most renowned writers. His art is not dynamic, but beautifully balanced. Through his works one can see how conservative Japanese see the internal impulses and interactions of men with strong individualities.
'Silence' by Shusaku Endo is a story about Catholic missionaries who try to spread their faith against relentless prosecution in the early seventeenth century, the closing years of Japan's second cosmopolitan era. Endo is the nation's foremost Christian novelist, known overseas as 'The Japanese Graham Greene'. He has remarkable talent when examining the anguishes of faith caused by weak souls that have just enough courage to understand their shortcomings. 'Silence' caused great controversy in the Christian world and won the author international fame.
Another work by Endo is 'The Sea and Poison' which investigates the mental struggles, or the lack of such troubles, of a group of doctors who conducted a vivisection upon a prisoner of war under the guise of medical research to provide a human liver for the banquet table of Japanese military officers.
Other examples from Endo's fruitful life include 'The Samurai', 'Wonderful Fool', 'Life of Jesus' and 'Deep River'.
Most Japanese Christians study Endo's books, but a wide population from students to seniors faithful and atheists alike enjoy his novels and understand the significance.
'Thank you and OK: An American Zen Failure in Japan' is a little known book which is nevertheless the best account of Japanese religion today: the third and greatest cosmopolitan era. The author's mixes his experiences as a student monk in a Zen temple and as a part-time English teacher dodging the authorities who do not like his semi-legal visa status. This book contains the best observations about the ordinary Japanese's life and view of the world. The author is good at finding out things like when married couples stop sleeping together.
An American friend of the prophet, who knowledge of Buddhism, exclaimed while turning the pages: "This book is interesting. In some ways it is sad. It is so different from what Buddha has said."
Very few Japanese know about this book or the author.
Many Japanese claim to be irreligious. To them, 'religion' means funeral rituals, corrupt superstitions and sightseeing. In reality the Japanese ardently support their religion as Islamic fundamentalists do. They just call their faith 'culture'.
World War Two
Navy fans will enjoy reading 'Build the Musashi: The Life and Death of the World's Greatest Battleship' by Akira Yoshimura. This book, a steely novel totally void of petty human emotions, well captures the violent excess of determination of the war effort.
The author is not a great name in Japan, but this work has won the approval of a large audience outside military manias. Few women read this book. Stories from World War Two used to be regarded as case-studies for men interested in organizations. A recent fad of 'What if?' fantasy novels in which the course of the war is shifted by miracle to bring glorious Japanese victory, and declining popularity of serious studies indicates that this is changing.
By far the most famous book about the nuclear holocaust is 'Black Rain' by Masuji Ibuse. It is not a slow motion photograph of ground zero, instead it lets ordinary folks tell each other their little problems of life caused by the war, while occasionally remembering their footpaths through central Hiroshima on that hot August day.
'The Bells of Nagasaki' by Takashi Nagai is the best book about the second atomic tragedy.
The survivors of the atomic bombings are deeply saddened whenever their pleas of 'No more Hiroshima' bring echoes crying 'Remember Pearl Harbor'. The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki sincerely want their cities to be the last to suffer. They have no hostile feelings to those who dropped the bomb. In many cases, they understand that they were responsible, at least partly, for letting military fascism get out of hand in a democracy, however limited and flawed it was. They believe that they have a duty to tell the world of the consequences that those who allow themselves to fall into the hands of manipulators shall face.
Do visit Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park if you ever come to Japan. If you have the opportunity, lend your ears to the calm and serious voice of a local narrator. They do not have many days left.
Vietnam War
Takeshi Kaiko wrote 'Into a Black Sun', which ranks among the world's best accounts of Vietnamese society during the late war. The author encounters all kinds of people, not just soldiers but also monks, journalists, novelists and so forth. He lives with American officers in the barracks, visits rural villages, roams the city of Saigon and sneaks into clandestine meetings while maintaining a love affair with a young dancer. This Japanese Hemingway certainly knows how to enjoy the fermented juices of life.
Many Japanese intellectuals, mostly students, opposed Japanese involvement with the Vietnam War. They fought against treaties which gave the U.S. the right to use military bases on their land which had a pacifist constitution, ironically given by the Americans. The government took various countermeasures against this movement, the most important being educational reforms. Increasing violence by young Marxist fanatics led many Japanese to support this. The Korean War and Vietnam War created splendid opportunities for big business and capitalists wanted things as they were.
Textbooks were rewritten and aspiring teachers with leftist inclinations were barred. The glorious days of the student movement came to an end. But soon, various illnesses began to appear in the schools. Critics claim that the younger generation now easily kneels to superior authority with no consideration of moral consequences. Thus can be explained why so many talented engineers joined the destructive cult named AUM Supreme Truth which is held responsible for countless crimes including the subway nerve gas attack of 1996.
Kaiko also wrote 'Japan Threepence Opera', a colorful story of a group of rascals making a living by looting steel from a closed military factory in the confused months following the war. It has been translated into French, but unfortunately not into English yet.
Kaiko is famous, but more people know his name than read his works. Schools, understandably, do not recommend his books to young students.
Japanese Literature
Other important Japanese authors include Soseki Natsume, Yukio Mishima, Osamu Dazai, Yasunari Kawabata, Kobo Abe and Kenzaburo Oe. Soseki Natsume is the national favorite. Kobo Abe's surrealistic novels are popular worldwide. Many international critics regard Kenzaburo Oe to be the best writer of the nation of this age although his countrymen are generally puzzled why. Those who bought his books upon his winning the Nobel mostly found him uninteresting and the hype soon ebbed.
Special mention should be made of Shin'ichi Hoshi. The son and successor of a leading entrepreneur who strove and failed to bring American business methods to pre-war Japan, he turned to writing and opened a totally new field of literature. He is widely regarded a science fiction novelist, who wrote countless 'short short' tales. But in reality his works are fables in which space voyagers, fairies, devils, scientists and so on all discuss human nature. Most Japanese have a favorite Hoshi tale or two. They wonder why his works are so amusing when read yet arouse little impression to listeners when narrated second-hand.
Educators of the Japanese language should consider using Hoshi's books as supplement texts. They are clearly written in standard Japanese, easy to read, and of course, short.
Hoshi wrote one serious work of non-fiction, 'Strong is the Government, Weak are the People' based on the fate of his father's pharmaceutical firm. It is well written and well known, but did not sell as well as his short novels and the line was abandoned. This book has good chances to gain international popularity but is not yet translated.
The name of the twentieth century Aesop is likely to live on.
Much Japanese literature awaits introduction to the wide world. If you are interested in translation work, come to the prophet for ideas.
Foreign Literature in Japan
High literacy and a strong interest of the outside world are contributing factors for the great popularity of imported literature in Japan. Everything from Homer to Sidney Sheldon is available in Japanese translations in bookstores big and small. Only those with special education open the pages of originals because Japanese schools emphasize the ability to translate precisely rather than the ability to read steadily. There are ardent fans of Dostoevsky, Nietzsche and Tolkien. Any Japanese acquaintance is likely to have a favorite foreign author or two along with substantial knowledge of world literature.
An important field that the Japanese like to read which is largely ignored by Westerners is Chinese classics, especially history. Japan borrowed history from China in the same manner the Germanic peoples of Europe grafted Semitic, Greek and Roman history to compensate for their lack of experience in the classic world. Those who have knowledge of Chinese culture are likely to encounter troubles trading views with the Japanese for they use their own pronunciation of Chinese proper names in the same manner that the British call French Bourgogne 'Burgundy'. Lao Zi is 'Roushi', Tang is 'Tou', Mao Ze Dong is 'Mou Taku Tou' and the Japanese seldom know the Chinese pronunciations.
Few Japanese have interest in the literature of other Asian countries. The Japanese know far less about Korean history than about Chinese or European history.
This article needs more work. It will be updated periodically. Future extension plans include discussion of Japanese movies and comics. It is beyond my capabilities to examine every title available in this manner. Contributions are largely welcome. Send any questions about the life of authors, difficult passages, historical backgrounds or whatever and they will be considered. The contents of mail received will be handled under the spirit of Copywrong unless otherwise declared.