"This detailed biography chronicles Mao's life from his obscure beginnings as a peasant's son to his rise as the colossus who was to govern a quarter of mankind for a quarter of a century. Through it emerges a tireless and shrewd politician who was also the wildest of dreamers; a romantic and artist trying to draw beautiful pictures on the 'blank sheets' of the Chinese peasantry. From the reminiscences of his wives, his friends, and those who knew Mao all through his life, Dick Wilson draws out a revealing picture of 'the People's Emperor" to provide the most lively and definitive biography of Mao in our lifetime."--P. [4] of cover.
Few institutions are as well suited as the monarchy to provide a window on postwar Japan. The monarchy, which is also a family, has been significant both as a political and as a cultural institution. This comprehensive study analyzes numerous issues, including the role of individual emperors in shaping the institution, the manner in which the emperor’s constitutional position as symbol has been interpreted, the emperor’s intersection with politics through ministerial briefings, memories of Hirohito’s wartime role, nationalistic movements in support of Foundation Day and the reign-name system, and the remaking of the once sacrosanct throne into a "monarchy of the masses" embedded in the postwar culture of democracy. The author stresses the monarchy’s "postwarness," rather than its traditionality.
The one unresolved issue of the Pacific War is the treatment of our prisoners of war, during and after World War II, both by the Japanese and by our own government. Never before in our military history have so many Americans, military and civilian, been taken captive by an enemy at one time. It was a triumph for the Japanese, and an embarrassment to our own government. Over 36,000 men, mostly military but some civilian, were thrown into Japanese military POW camps, forced to labor for companies working to meet quotas for Japan's war effort. Guests of the Emperor takes you inside the largest fixed military prison camp in the Japanese Empire: Mitsubishi's huge factory complex at Mukden, Manchuria, where 1,200 American prisoners were subjected to brutal cold, starvation, beatings, medical experiments and an extremely high death rate while being forced to help manufacture parts for Mitsubishi's Zero fighter planes. This book is the first to reveal conclusively that some Americans at Mukden were singled out for medical experiments by Japan's biological warfare team, the infamous Unit 731, located just a few hundred miles from this camp. Nowhere else did American prisoners despise their officers so much; commit more creative sabotage; survive such brutal cold; endure death by friendly fire; and require the combined efforts of an OSS rescue team and special recovery unit, to come home alive. Anyone who wants to know more about the Pacific War, with all its contradictions and deceptions, will want to read The Manchurian Mystery.
The Emperor Has No Clothes: Teaching About Race and Racism to People Who Don’t Want to Know offers theoretical grounding and practical approaches for leaders and teachers interested in effectively addressing racism and other oppressive constructs. The book draws both on the author’s extensive experience teaching about race and racism in classroom and community settings and from the theory and practice of a wide range of educators, activists, and researchers committed to social justice. The first chapter looks at the toxic consequences of our western cultural insistence on profit, binary thinking, and individualism to establish the theoretical framework for teaching about race and racism. Chapter two investigates privileged resistance, offering a psycho/social history of denial, particularly as a product of racist culture. Chapter three reviews the research on the construction and reconstruction of dominant culture both historically and now in order to establish sound strategic approaches that educators, teachers, facilitators, and activists can take as we work together to move from a culture of profit and fear to one of shared hope and love. Chapter four lays out the stages of a process that supports teaching about racist, white supremacy culture, explaining how students can be taken through an iterative process of relationshipbuilding, analysis, planning, action, and reflection. The final chapter borrows from the brilliant, brave, and incisive writer Dorothy Allison to discuss the things the author knows for sure about how to teach people to see that which we have been conditioned to fear knowing. The chapter concludes with how to encourage and support collective and collaborative action as a critical goal of the process.
Biography of Emperor Hirohito challenging portrayals of him as an unworldly scientist or military might, but a peaceful man caught up in a turbulent time.
The renowned Japanese scholar “brings us as close to the inner life of the Meiji emperor as we are ever likely to get” (The New York Times Book Review). When Emperor Meiji began his rule in 1867, Japan was a splintered empire dominated by the shogun and the daimyos, cut off from the outside world, staunchly antiforeign, and committed to the traditions of the past. Before long, the shogun surrendered to the emperor, a new constitution was adopted, and Japan emerged as a modern, industrialized state. Despite the length of his reign, little has been written about the strangely obscured figure of Meiji himself, the first emperor ever to meet a European. But now, Donald Keene sifts the available evidence to present a rich portrait not only of Meiji but also of rapid and sometimes violent change during this pivotal period in Japan’s history. In this vivid and engrossing biography, we move with the emperor through his early, traditional education; join in the formal processions that acquainted the young emperor with his country and its people; observe his behavior in court, his marriage, and his relationships with various consorts; and follow his maturation into a “Confucian” sovereign dedicated to simplicity, frugality, and hard work. Later, during Japan’s wars with China and Russia, we witness Meiji’s struggle to reconcile his personal commitment to peace and his nation’s increasingly militarized experience of modernization. Emperor of Japan conveys in sparkling prose the complexity of the man and offers an unrivaled portrait of Japan in a period of unique interest. “Utterly brilliant . . . the best history in English of the emergence of modern Japan.”—Los Angeles Times
Emperor Hirohito reigned for more than sixty years, yet we know little about him or the part he really played in the turbulent history of Showa Japan. Stephen Large draws on a wide range of Japanese and Western sources in his study of Emperor Hirohito's political role in Showa Japan (1926-89). This analysis focuses on key events in his career such as the extent to which he bore responsibility for Japanese aggression in the Pacific in 1941, and explains why Hirohito remains such a contested symbol in Japanese post war politics.
