The Vanished
The Vanished

Author: Léna Mauger

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2016-09-20

Total Pages: 179

ISBN-13: 1510708286

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Every year, nearly one hundred thousand Japanese vanish without a trace. Known as the johatsu, or the “evaporated,” they are often driven by shame and hopelessness, leaving behind lost jobs, disappointed families, and mounting debts. In The Vanished, journalist Léna Mauger and photographer Stéphane Remael uncover the human faces behind the phenomenon through reportage, photographs, and interviews with those who left, those who stayed behind, and those who help orchestrate the disappearances. Their quest to learn the stories of the johatsu weaves its way through: A Tokyo neighborhood so notorious for its petty criminal activities that it was literally erased from the maps Reprogramming camps for subpar bureaucrats and businessmen to become “better” employees The charmless citadel of Toyota City, with its iron grip on its employees The “suicide” cliffs of Tojinbo, patrolled by a man fighting to save the desperate The desolation of Fukushima in the aftermath of the tsunami And yet, as exotic and foreign as their stories might appear to an outsider’s eyes, the human experience shared by the interviewees remains powerfully universal.

Manazuru
Manazuru

Author: Hiromi Kawakami

Publisher: Catapult

Published: 2017-11-01

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 1640090193

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Startlingly restless and immaculately compact, Manazuru paints the portrait of a woman on the brink of her own memories and future. Twelve years have passed since Kei’s husband, Rei, disappeared and she was left alone with her three–year–old daughter. Her new relationship with a married man—the antithesis of Rei—has brought her life to a numbing stasis, and her relationships with her mother and daughter have spilled into routine, day after day. Kei begins making repeated trips to the seaside town of Manazuru, a place that jogs her memory to a moment in time she can never quite locate. Her time there by the water encompasses years of unsteady footing and a developing urgency to find something. Through a poetic style embracing the surreal and grotesque, a quiet tenderness emerges from these dark moments. Manazuru is a meditation on memory—a profound, precisely delineated exploration of the relationships between lovers and family members.

Japan, the System That Soured
Japan, the System That Soured

Author: Richard Katz

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-03-04

Total Pages: 410

ISBN-13: 1317467175

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After seven long years of economic malaise, it is clear that something has gone awry in Japan. Unless Japan undertakes sweeping reform, official forecasts now warn, growth will steadily dwindle. How could the world's most acclaimed economic miracle have stumbled so badly? As this important book explains, the root of the problem is that Japan is still mired in the structures, policies, and mental habits of the 1950s-1960s. Four decades ago while in the "catch-up" phase of its economic evolution, policies that gave rise to "Japan, Inc". made a lot of sense. By the 1970s and 1980s, when Japan had become a more mature economy, "catch-up economics" had become passe, even counterproductive. Even worse, in response to the oil shocks, Japan increasingly used its industrial policy tools. not to promote "winners", but to shield "losers" from competition at home and abroad. Japan's well-known aversion to imports is part and parcel of this politically understandable, but economically self-defeating, pattern. The end result is a deformed "dual economy" unique in the industrial world. Now this "dualism" is sapping the strength of the entire economy. The protection of the weak is driving Japan's most inefficient companies to invest offshore instead of at home. Without sweeping reform, real recovery will prove elusive. The challenging thesis articulated in this book is receiving widespread media attention in the United States and Japan and is sure to provoke continuing debate and controversy.

Japanese Peony
Japanese Peony

Author: Rei Kimura

Publisher: Booksmango

Published: 2014-12-09

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 1633232107

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“My name is Yoshiko Kawashima, some call me Aisin Gioro Xianyu in Manchuria but to many in my circle who knew what I did, I am known simply as the Japanese Peony after my favorite flower! I have lived a colorful and covert double life of intrigue and lies, I'm even supposed to have been executed in 1948! So I really can't complain that I managed to make it to “old bones” but day by day, as my body grows weak, the burden of the secrets that will die with me grows heavier. I need to tell my story and change history forever!” Born into the royal family of Prince Su and a relative of Pu Yi, the last Emperor of China, Yoshiko was a princess. How, one might ask, did a Chinese Princess from the royal house of the Qing Dynasty become a spy for the Japanese Secret Service Unit? This book sets out to put all the disjointed pieces of a huge puzzle together to answer that question! This book also looks at the fascinating covert activities of Yoshiko as a spy, planning and engineering some of the most famous Japanese incursions into China that made her a historical figure never to be forgotten. But in the midst of so much hardness, angst and high living were two poignant moments in Yoshiko’s life when she loved and lost first Yamaga, a Japanese military officer and in the final years of her heydays, Jack Stone, an American journalist. In 1945, when Japan lost the war, Yoshiko was betrayed by her bodyguards and captured by Chiang Kai Shek’s men and sentenced to death for treason and espionage. History has it that she was executed on 25th March, 1948 but as in life, her “death” was shrouded in mystery and intrigue. Was she executed or did she cheat death in a daring swap with a dying girl paid to take her place? This is the true story of Yoshiko Kawashima and her spectacular life as a princess and a spy. We travel with her through the breath taking maze of her early years in Manchuria evolving to her turbulent life in Japan as the adopted daughter of Naniwa Kawashima and his cold, disdainful wife, Natsuko. The trail then takes us on a whirlwind arranged marriage to a Mongolian prince which lasted just one year and on to a glittering life in Shanghai where Yoshiko was recruited by the Japanese Intelligence as a spy for Japan and finally to Peking where she ended up in Prison No. 1 with an execution order on her head. It remains a mystery whether Yoshiko Kawashima was actually executed on 25th March, 1948, the official stand of China is that she was executed.

Dictionary of Iconic Expressions in Japanese
Dictionary of Iconic Expressions in Japanese

Author: Hisao Kakehi

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2011-04-20

Total Pages: 1468

ISBN-13: 3110809044

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The lexicon of Japanese contains a large number of conventional mimetic words which vividly depict sounds, manners of action, states of mind etc. These words are notable for their distinctive syntactic properties, for the strikingly patterned way in which they exploit sound-symbolic correspondences, and for the copiousness of their use in conversation as well as in many written registers of Japanese. This dictionary is a comprehensive resource for linguists, language teachers, translators, and others who require detailed information about this important sector of the Japanese vocabulary. Examples created by the editors are accompanied by thousands of contextualized, referenced examples from published sources to illustrate the alternative meanings of each mimetic form. All examples appear in Japanese orthography, in romanization, and in English translation. Concise information is provided concerning the varieties of syntactic usage appropriate for each mimetic. An extensive English index facilitates comparison of English and Japanese vocabulary.

Single Mothers In International Context
Single Mothers In International Context

Author: Simon Duncan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-11-05

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 1134228015

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Single mothers caring for dependent children are an important and increasing population in industrialized countries. In some, single mothers are seen primarily as mothers and few have paid work; in others, they are regarded as workers and most have paid work; and sometimes they are seen as an uneasy combination of the two with varying proportions taking up paid work.; This edited collection explores these variations, focusing on the interaction between dominant discourses around single motherhood, state policies towards single mothers, the structure of the labour market at national and local levels, and neighbourhood supports and constraints.

Propaganda Performed: Kamishibai in Japan's Fifteen-Year War
Propaganda Performed: Kamishibai in Japan's Fifteen-Year War

Author: Sharalyn Orbaugh

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2016-05-02

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 9004249443

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The first in-depth scholarly study in English of the Japanese performance medium kamishibai, Sharalyn Orbaugh’s Propaganda Performed illuminates the vibrant street culture of 1930s Japan as well as the visual and narrative rhetoric of Japanese propaganda in World War II. Emerging from Japan’s cities in the late 1920s, kamishibai rapidly transformed from a cheap amusement associated with poverty into the most popular form of juvenile entertainment, eclipsing even film and manga. By the time kamishibai died as a living medium in the 1970s it had left behind indelible influences on popular culture forms such as manga and anime, as well as on avant-garde cinema, theater, and art. From 1932 to 1945, however, kamishibai also became a vehicle for propaganda messages aimed not primarily at children, but at adults. A mixture of script, image, and performance, the medium was particularly suited to conveying populist, emotionally compelling messages to audiences of all classes, ages, and literacy levels, making it a crucial tool in the government’s efforts to mobilize the domestic populace in Japan and to pacify the inhabitants of the empire’s colonies and occupied territories. With seven complete translations of wartime plays, over 300 color illustrations from hard-to-access kamishibai play cards, and photographs of prewar performances, this study constitutes an archive of wartime history in addition to providing a detailed analysis of the rhetoric of political persuasion.