Notes on Books
This page reflects my comments on the books I read recently and posted on Goodreads.com. I decided to have this page up so I can introduce some of the scholarship written in East Asian languages to English readers. I sometimes read those books and write reviews too quickly – this was the case particularly during my orals preparation between 2009 and 2010. Please understand that they are my unpolished, raw, immediate reactions to the books with no offensive intentions.
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Toward Restoration: The Growth of Political Consciousness in Tokugawa Japan
February 11, 2012
author: Harry D. Harootunian
name: S
average rating: 3.00
book published: 1970
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2012/02/11
shelves: japanese-history, reviewed
review:
a brilliant scholar but his writing does not register in my brain effectively.
author: Paul Ricoeur
name: S
average rating: 3.96
book published:
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2012/02/07
shelves: historiography, theory, reviewed
review:
Dense. It surely makes you wonder if it is worth spending time reading this book instead of reading others. But you’ll feel his passion.
author: Kojin Shimomura
name: S
average rating: 4.00
book published: 32767
rating: 4
read at: 2011/03/23
date added: 2012/02/04
shelves: agrarianism, childhood-and-youth, fun-readings, reviewed
review:
I started reading 次郎物語 because I hear that the author was a youth association educator in prewar years, and this novel shows the details of the teachings and lives within the seinen dojo (youth training home). This long story consists of 5 volumes, although it is incomplete as a story. In the middle of this, the Tohoku earthquake happened and occupied my full attention for a while. Even when I forced myself to go back to work after a week, I could not switch quickly back to newspaper articles, and ended up reading this novel primarily.
The story follows the boyhood of Jiro, who grows out of his experiences of living in somewhat complicated family environments and human relationships (which probably were quite common back in those days), influenced by his father, brother, and teachers. He goes through an incredible amount of youthful and painful self-reflections. It is quite affecting and engaging, I have to say.
As a source that tells me about the teachings in seinen dojo, this is not something I expected. The author finished the first three volumes before the war ended, and the last two after the war. And this makes it difficult for me to judge its value as a primary source. Towards the end of the third volume, Jiro was impressed by Hagakure, or the samurai philosophy, and his favorite teacher, Asakura (he is certainly a favorable figure with deep love for students and wisdom in anyone’s view as well), tells him that the martial arts that students learn in chugakko help them "be ready for death." But in the volumes four and five, this mysterious comment by Asakura is never repeated again and there is a stronger focus on pacifism, love, communal spirits that come from individuals’ conscience, and anti-militarism. The transition in the story from the third to the fourth is not ostensibly awkward, and Asakura’s philosophy gets even more affecting to current me. But as a history student, a big chunk of me is super suspicious about whether this truly was happening in the seinen dojo in prewar years. Having said that, I have to admit, even the first three volumes give incredibly complicated messages to the reader, and it’s definitely different from average "moral suasion" stories in prewar years. I wish the author had finished the last two before the war ended so I could be a bit more sure about the credibility of his descriptions.
author: 夢野 久作
name: S
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at: 2010/10/07
date added: 2012/01/29
shelves: fun-readings, japanese, reviewed
review:
I wouldn’t equate Yumeno with Edogawa Rampo. Rampo is 10 times more readable and consistent, has a strong plot. Dogura-magura is more like reading someone else’s inconsistent nightmare. Creative, for sure, but there is not much "story" but "theory" about how human brains work. Requires patience to read through it.
author: Carter J. Eckert
name: S
average rating: 3.15
book published:
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2012/01/10
shelves: korean-history, reviewed
review:
This is "the textbook" of Korean history used in American colleges. It tries to be as objective as possible so that it can detach itself from ideological fights between nationalist-leftists and nationalist-conserves. But the outcome is EXTREMELY DRY. It does not give a nice readable narrative with punctuations, and leaves the reader wondering "so what was important?" The best alternatives available for "modern" Korean history are: Bruce Cumings’ Korea’s Place in the Sun and Michael Robinson’s Korea’s Twentieth Century Odyssey. The former challenges the reader with many important historical questions. The problem is that Cumings devotes sooo much space for 1945-1953 history (about 100 pages), which I think is too detailed as an introduction to a survey history. It might also be a little confusing in terms of chronological narrative. Robinson’s coverage is shorter and with more elaboration on colonial society than Cumings’s. Since I study colonialism I am biased for him, but it has a much more readable narrative that gives a sense of what it would have felt like if you had lived in that period.
author: 南 富鎭
name: S
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2010/04/22
date added: 2012/01/05
shelves: colonial-studies, japanese-history, japanese, korean-history, reviewed
review:
I was looking for references on naisen kekkon and my cohort C suggested this. Issues surrounding Japanese-Korean colonial intermarriage are bizarre.
UPDATE: I finished the entire book. The second part on the language (what did it mean to write in Japanese to Korean authors) was the best. I was touched.
author: Haruki Murakami
name: S
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2011/12/26
shelves: fun-readings, reviewed
review:
It’s ok. Nothing special about it. Moderately entertaining. If you read book 1 and 2, you have to read it anyway.
author: Haruki Murakami
name: S
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2009/07/01
date added: 2011/12/26
shelves: japanese, fun-readings, reviewed
review:
I liked Book 1 slightly better. There are more intriguing "people" in it. Book 2 gives more of the "murakami world," but also makes you feel nervous as the number of pages left decreases. It has a strong aftereffect, but not as strong as Kafka or Norwegian.
author: 加藤邦彦
name: S
average rating: 3.00
book published: 1979
rating: 3
read at: 2011/07/27
date added: 2011/08/28
shelves: colonial-studies, soldiers, reviewed, taiwanese-chinese-history
review:
3.5 stars. This is a journalistic account of the former soldiers and military personnel in Taiwan who fought for the Japanese military in various places. As a journalist’s book, it deserves 5 stars I guess. The book gives good personal details, and the author chose what sounds plausible from what I assume are sometimes contradictory in the interviewees’ memories. Some information must have been difficult to prove when he wrote this book, but after examining with the digitally available information today, I find an astonishing amount of details still stand. In other words, he has a terrific journalistic hunch on what sounds realistic.
At the same time, however, it also made me think that, in order to maintain a coherent narrative — in this case, a tragedy of fighting for the Japanese state, losing body parts, and not getting the compensation that the military promised — some complicated issues are dropped. For example, one interviewee mentions that he "married someone he liked, and that was against the customs of that time," and nearly all of the interviewees were "sad when Japan lost the war." This means, in their lives, the position of the Japanese state oscillated in different directions — sometimes it is a liberator (for free marriage against the old Chinese customs), sometimes a source of existential meanings (providing their identity as Japanese youth), other times a harsh coercer of labor and resource exploitation. These fluctuations are something historians find interesting (or at least I do). And that makes it difficult for us to claim a political message about this period, I think.
author: Unknown Author 557
name: S
average rating: 5.00
book published: 1992
rating: 5
read at: 2011/08/27
date added: 2011/08/27
shelves: childhood-and-youth, japanese-history, reviewed
review:
This book is a solid academic work, but so entertaining (if you’ve lived in Japanese society) that I laughed out loud many times. I did not know that the status of lawyers and doctors was relatively low, and was not a respectable career for former samurais in Meiji. It was also unintuitive that middle class education emphasized skills and knowledge, rather than so-called personality formation (人格の修養) (– it makes sense that it became the center of social education later on to overcompensate it). It covers various issues relating to city dwellers, middle-class merchants, poor peasants, upper-class samurais. Super interesting to read how private universities like Waseda and Keio struggled to fund themselves and compete with the national university. Made me realize how much I love social history and want to read the other books by the same author.
author: 何 義麟
name: S
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2011/07/20
date added: 2011/07/19
shelves: taiwanese-chinese-history, reviewed
review:
This is a quality research of the most politically sensitive time-period of the modern history of Taiwan. Very readable for the nitty-grittiness of the information. It covers good details of a wide range of issues. No wonder everyone cites this book!
author: 近藤 正己
name: S
average rating: 5.00
book published: 1996
rating: 5
read at: 2011/06/29
date added: 2011/06/29
shelves: colonial-studies, japanese-history, taiwanese-chinese-history, reviewed
review:
This has been THE go-to book for me since day 1 of my graduate studies, but I finally sat down and read from page 1 to page 669. Yes, it is a long book, but it is quite readable. Each chapter is sooo thorough! I would say, this is my favorite type of political history — he always pays attention to Korean and Southeast Asian counterparts, as well as what was going on within Japan, and China in particular. He is also good at switching the focus from nation-wide policies to local histories or individual perspectives. I also learned a lot about what the anti-Japanese Taiwanese forces were doing in Mainland China in this book. It, indeed, feels ironic that their effort to involve the Nationalist China ended up with another phase of authoritarian (and colonizing) rule in Taiwan…
Good news is that there is an English translation already published for you!
author: Hui-yu Caroline Ts’ai
name: S
average rating: 2.33
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2011/06/09
shelves: colonial-studies, taiwanese-chinese-history, reviewed
review:
This is another painful reading for those who do not specialize in the history of colonial administration in Taiwan. But those who study this subject should read this book as soon as possible because 80% of the book is discussion of previous studies in Chinese, Japanese, and English, which is extremely useful right now, but might get old quickly. Seriously, I do not say everyone has to use a lot of primary sources, but it is much more interesting if authors could mainly present their own arguments rather than their reading notes.
Another point of disappointment is her execution of oral interviews. I wish she had not asked "did you think you were Taiwanese? or Japanese? or Chinese?" "did you have an identity crisis?" in such a direct manner. To her credit, identity studies hadn’t developed before 1993 so it was probably hard to see how relative, circumstantial, and temporary people’s feelings about their selves actually are.
The 20% of the book (Part II) where she presents her own interpretation — creation of "the local" through the hoko system and how it ironically became the foundation of a "Taiwan"-based identity, and the expansion of colonial governmentality during the wartime mobilization — is very insightful. I wanted to see a bit more punchy example of how exactly a hoko led to the "Taiwan" identity without turning over the entire explanatory power to governmentality too quickly.
Another major contribution, I would say, is her translations of many many technical terms and titles of the administrative posts and organizations. THANK YOU Dr. Tsai for providing them for future researchers.
author: 石田 浩
name: S
average rating: 2.00
book published: 1985
rating: 2
read at: 2011/05/13
date added: 2011/05/13
shelves: agrarianism, taiwanese-chinese-history, reviewed
review:
This was probably the beginning of the economic anthropological work in Taiwanese villages, and the information is largely descriptive and scattered. He mentions that "Taiwan has been a very vibrant frontier society" in the introduction and I expected that he develops this point with empiricism. Not really, thus a bit disappointed.
author: 福地 曠昭
name: S
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1975
rating: 4
read at: 2011/04/05
date added: 2011/04/17
shelves: agrarianism, colonial-studies, japanese-history, childhood-and-youth, reviewed
review:
Kijoka, a hamlet in Ogimi village, is probably the most memorable place for historians of modern Okinawa. It is a small village in the north but became famous for its socialist "soviet" in 1931. It also curiously became one of the most famous model (fascist) villages a few years later. The author of this book was born around 1930 in this village, and he documents the daily life based on what he researched and remembers. Read "Yambaru no Hi" for the socialist part of the village history, and read this for the fascist part of it. His descriptions are vivid, and full of interesting anecdotes. This is a good reading to those who want to know about Okinawans’ experiences that are full of ironies and tragedies.
author: Michel Foucault
name: S
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1961
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2011/04/12
shelves: theory, historiography, reviewed
review:
I read the complete version (History of Madness), which was very impressive but long, and required a bit of effort to finish the book. I like his *theory* but, in this book, it was the craft of how he put historical information together to reveal something not obvious yet mind-blowing that inspires me the most. Foucault in the last two chapters discusses how ‘madness’ was objectified in 19C onwards, and I cannot help but think about the fact that what scholars do, certainly including Foucault, is ultimately to objectify phenomena, including ‘history of madness,’ as well.
author: 山城善光
name: S
average rating: 2.00
book published: 1978
rating: 2
read at: 2011/03/07
date added: 2011/03/06
shelves: japanese-history, reviewed
review:
The author of the book, "Yambaru no hi," decided to detach himself from Socialists and Communists, reset his life, and started working for Japanese diplomats and then for Yokusan kai. There is no big drama behind these changes. He just emphasizes that he wanted to restart his life because he was sorry for his mother and family members who had to suffer because of his previous engagement in the peasant movements. This sequence has less information regarding Okinawa itself. The latter half that talks more about the Okinawan communities in Osaka and Tokyo is more useful for researchers, I guess.
author: 山城 善光
name: S
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1976
rating: 4
read at: 2011/03/02
date added: 2011/03/02
shelves: agrarianism, childhood-and-youth, reviewed
review:
This is a memoir supported by his numerous interviews with the old people who were involved in the movement in the 1930s. This is probably the biggest Socialist/Communist movement in Okinawa, and according to his description, it is as "grass-roots" as any movement could possibly get. The trick is the village youth groups which actively and unitedly joined this village-politics reform movement. There are not many sources left on this movement because of the harsh crackdown by the police as well as the battles of Okinawa — even newspaper articles are gone. His memoir is incredibly detailed, and I really enjoyed catching his nuances that reveal to what extent ideology mattered or did not matter. In the end Communism helped them a lot in building strong morale and "connected-ness" to the rest of the world, but at the same time brought extremely harsh crackdown by the police which led to their eventual defeat. He also emphasizes the "youth" element of the movement (yes!).
author: 福地昿昭
name: S
average rating: 3.00
book published: 1985
rating: 3
read at: 2011/03/03
date added: 2011/03/02
shelves: agrarianism, colonial-studies, soldiers, reviewed
review:
A collection of interviews about the battles in Okinawa. "Boeitai" basically consisted of all male residents under 40 years old in Okinawa who could work. Many of them brought their own shovels and plows — they were the only "weapons" they had. Their stories highlight Okinawans’ perception of the Yamato (non-Okinawan) soldiers and military officers who brought in extreme battlefield psychology without respect for the locals. Many mentionings about Korean comfort women in Okinawa, too.
author: Masahide Ōta
name: S
average rating: 5.00
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at: 2011/02/03
date added: 2011/02/26
shelves: colonial-studies, japanese-history, reviewed
review:
This book is like.. three rich dissertations in one! The author shows what kinds of influential people ran the three major newspapers in Okinawa during Meiji, how they fought each other, oppressed the freedom/popular rights movement, how they imagined the place of Okinawa within the Japanese empire, how they reacted against various "plans" and "rumors" from Yamato (e.g., sending all the lepers and criminals to Okinawa, putting Okinawa under the control of the Government General of Taiwan, etc) and so on and so forth. Most relevant to my research, he shows how the militarization (recruiting and raising soldiers) and assimilation went hand in hand. When I first read other books on the Okinawan history, I thought the authors confused the usage of "kominka 皇民化" with assimilation 同化 without knowing the deeply colonial connotation that it conveys, but it makes total sense that this process is called kominka!!
Update: Wait. I just realized that the author is THE Ota Masahide, the famous governor of Okinawa in the 1990s who fought the Japanese government. NO WONDER he’s awesome.