ryoanji rock garden



 
  japan

Elegant Things

A white coat worn over a violet waistcoat.
Duck eggs.
Shaved ice mixed with liana syrup and put in a new silver bowl.
A rosary of rock crystal.
Wistaria blossoms. Plum blossoms covered with snow.
A pretty child eating strawberries.
 --from ch. 29 of the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon

Needless to say, Japan's presence in the world and in our imaginations can never be underestimated. If you're a designer, its force can be overwhelming. I'm an obsessed Japanophile in addition to being an avid Anglophile and Canadaphile. Why? Because almost everything I'm interested in these days either originate from Britain or from Japan. (Canada is a little harder to explain.) For starters, they have a distinct, extremely fast-paced, very influential, and incredibly developed modern pop (sub)culture(s) which is always fascinating to observe. Interesting global cultural trends often happen in Japan first. As a dedicated follower of trends, you need to know what's big in Japan this week. Secondly, as a modernist, I find most aspects of traditional Japanese aesthetics utterly breathtaking and inspirational. At the risk of criminally gross simplification, what's modern in western aesthetics is essentially traditional in Japan. It's also the only large society (of over 120 million souls) on earth where there is an almost universal obsession with visual aesthetics, which seem to govern almost every aspect of life. In Japan, aesthetic taste is a national institution that has been relentlessly distilled from its distinctive landscape, climate, and relative geographical and historical isolation for the past two millenniums. Thirdly, in Japan, high technology and electronic gadgets are more integrated into people's quotidian lives than perhaps anywhere else in the world, and yet it's all taken rather as-matter-of-factly. In contrast to America, technology in Japan is not an obsession; it's just an intrinsic fact of daily life. Postwar Japan is a country where technology seems compatible to its citizens, and yet it doesn't seem to contradict or even affect their pervasive traditional sensibilities and values. (How well modern appliances fit into cramped tatami rooms is beyond the scope of this page.) Even its formidable litany of monumental problems are fascinating: its pathological and relentless destruction of its natural environment (despite its traditional culture's fixation on the beauty of nature), its chronic and complex attitudes toward race and foreigners, its fixation on hyper-sadistic sex and grisly violence in its media, and its enormous systemic economic problems.

Lastly, one of the reasons I fell in love with Japan has to do with the archetypal drunken salaryman after a night on the town. He’s often lying on the pavement, unconscious after one too many and missing his last train home. His new G3 phone and perhaps even his wallet are hanging out of his pockets, and easy for any passers-by to reach. However, he’s going to be safe and undisturbed, just like his possessions on full display. This is where Japan works. It’s a safe society. This is a place where any young women would feel safe walking out in the middle of night to pick up some snacks or groceries in their neighbourhoods, wherever they may be. The Japanese have freedom from violence. Most crucially, this is a society that doesn’t allow its citizens to fall into dire poverty or polarising states of inequity. For the most part, the Japanese are free from want (the kind that causes horrendous personal debts and crime in other countries). Besides, why would anyone else want his phone? Everyone already thinks he or she has the best phone, personally programmed with the latest and best tunes and games.

In the meantime, here are some random but interesting links collected mostly long ago which deal with various aspects of this bewildering concept-nation. Finally, I'm somewhat concerned that this page may not be as relevant as before since it was originally written awhile back during a time when the web was a relatively small pond without effective resources like Google and such. However, there are some places listed here still worth remembering.


important stuff about Japan

I enjoy watching the officials when they come to thank the Emperor for their new appointments. As they stand facing His Majesty with their batons in their hands, the trains of their robes trail along the floor. Then they make obeisance and begin their ceremonial movements with great animation. --from ch. 10 of the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, translated by the incredible Ivan Morris

  • Asahi Shinbum. Find out what's happening in Japan today.
  • Asia One for latest news about and from Asia.
  • Asia Online. This impressive site covers not just Japan but also the rest of Asia.
  • Bank of Japan in English.
  • CIA World Factbook entry gives you the cold hard facts.
  • The postwar Constitution of Japan.
  • Currency Museum provides a detailed history of Japanese currency.
  • Living in Japan.
  • The National Diet of Japan/ House of Councillors. Experimental web site maintained by Stanford's U.S. Japan Technology Management Center.
  • Foreign Press Center. This site acts as a clearinghouse for press working in Japan.
  • J-Guide, formerly known as the X-Guide, is another great Stanford site to begin exploring Japan.
  • Japan Information Center for Science and Technology. It includes Home Servers Guide for Japan.
  • Japan Information Resource Center has been around for a very long time.
  • The Japan Times Online. The English language daily.
  • Japan Window was originally cosponsored by the ubiquitous NTT on Stanford machines.
  • Japanese Computing Resources information at the University of Washington.
  • Mainichi.
  • Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications.
  • Ministry of Transport.
  • NHK. Nippon Hoso Kyokai, also known as the Japan Broadcasting Corporation. It's Japan's public but independent broadcasting organisation. Incidentally, Donald Richie once provided an explanation of a bizarre, uniquely Japanese television phenomenon seen on its talk shows:

    In Japan, however, to give an opinion is to appear opinionated, and this is a fault in a society where dissenting opinion is at least officially unvoiced, and where a consensus of opinion is the invariable goal. These two qualities are hopefully ensured by this near-mute, if attractive, young lady. Her nods and monosyllables of agreement indicate that he is not alone in his opinion and that therefore he his not merely opinionated. Rather, he is stating a truth, since more than one person agrees upon what he says. At the same time, she introduces harmony-- it would be unthinkable of her to disagree with him or even offer a conflicting opinion of her own-- by indicating that we all (and it is us she is so earnestly nodding at) agree and the wished-for consensus has, indeed, already been reached.

  • Nikkei Net Interactive has the latest financial news in English. Here is a place as good as any for me to vent about coverage of the Japanese economic turmoil. We’ve all heard about the moribund Japanese economy ceaselessly for the last decade or so, but it seems that the rules for judging whether a nation’s economy is successful is rather subjective. A question that should be asked is, "successful for whom?" In the mainstream American press and media, a nation’s economic success is entirely determined by how much outrageously wealthier corporations, its executives, entrepreneurs, and the relatively well-to-do get. The 1990s have certainly treated rich Americans well, but what about the rest of us? How successful are we? (Even during the seemingly high-flying times of 1990s, the wages and economic prospects of poor, working, and many middle class Americans have stagnated. The business pages and the mainstream media in general have never cared shit about them.) While the Japanese economy in many respects has indeed been stagnant or in recession, I feel that it is still more ‘successful’ (and certainly more equitable) than the American system. Despite the lack of growth in the Japanese economy, you don’t see the horrific economic disparities seen in America (e.g., homelessness and slums are virtually nil in Japan compared to the extent experienced by Americans). You don’t see the astronomical gap in earnings between executives and workers like you do in America. You don’t see the huge percentage of workers unemployed like you do in Europe. You don’t have a significant portion of its citizens go without health insurance or being underinsured. You don’t have a significant permanent underclass of people who experience crime, drug abuse, and violence on a daily basis (without hope of changes for the better for them or for future generations). There’s certainly room for improvement and reform in the Japanese system, but the American media should point to other (albeit underreported) crises in Japanese society (and there are indeed a lot of them, many of them quite scary like rampant racism, sexism, and environmental degradation) that may prove to be much more problematic in the long run. On the whole, Japan is still visibly a very wealthy society whose government still gives out more foreign aid per capita than the Americans.
  • RTRI. Information about the now-privatised JR system and its R & D projects.
  • Schauwecker's Guide to Japan provides useful basics and links.
  • Tokyo Classified. This online journal / archive / guide is indispensible for information on contemporary Japanese culture, especially if you're a foreigner living there.
  • The Virtual Library index on Asian Studies.
  • The Virtual Library index on Japan.
  • Yahoo Japan. The Japanese version of the comprehensive directory.
  • Yen currency converter.
  • The Daily Yomiuri.

These are more academia-oriented sites:


Corporate Japan

Unsuitable Things

A woman with ugly hair wearing a robe of white damask.
Ugly handwriting on red paper.
Snow on the houses of common people. This is especially regrettable when the moonlight shines down on it.
A handsome man with an ugly wife.
 --from ch. 32 of the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon



Actually, the following links are not necessarily corporations in Japan, but selected businesses based in Japan or elsewhere that may be of interest to Japanophiles, or just to myself, a nascent audiophile and gadget freak.


excursions

One has carefully scented a robe and then forgotten about it for several days. When finally one comes to wear it, the aroma is even more delicious than on freshly scented clothes. --from ch. 124 of the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon



These are mostly travel, transportation, or geography-related links. Incidentally, if you want to visit Japan for the first time, you better go quick. While its urban environments are intoxicatingly awesome and modern in a sci-fi way, Japan is also killing what remains of its beautiful, delicate natural environment at a relentlessly brutal rate with no end in sight. Everything is being paved over. Its streams are all lined with concrete or dammed (or damned). All forests are being chopped down or replanted. It's a sad state of affairs. Go quick!


Culinary Japan

The way in which carpenters eat is really odd. When they had finished the main building and were working on the eastern wing, some carpenters squatted in a row to have their meal; I sat on the veranda and watched them. The moment the food was brought, they fell on the soup bowls and gulped down the contents. Then they pushed the bowls aside and finished off all the vegetables. I wondered whether they were going to leave their rice; a moment later there wasn't a grain left in the bowls. They all behaved exactly in the same way, so I suppose this must be the custom of carpenters. I should not call it a very charming one. --from ch. 174 of the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon

  • A quick introduction to the Tokyo dining scene in 2008 can be found in this Economist article and this Times article.
  • Chopsticks Gallery by Erik Wegweiser.
  • House "Vermont" Japanese Curries.
  • Iron Chef. Ryori no Tetsujin. I don't think I can adequately do justice to the appeal of this campy and outrageous cooking competition / food porn programme by merely describing it here. Just see it for yourself if you have the chance. Skip the dubbed version on the Food Network if you can. It doesn't work.
  • NTT Gourmet Page has recipes galore.
  • Open Kitchen holds a large collection of Japanese recipes.
  • Japanese pizza. Typical Japanese weirdness found here.
  • Dave's Wonderful World of POCKY. Isn't the net fucking great?!!!
  • Japanese Recipe Collection brought to us by the Tokyo Food Page.
  • Klein Dytham Canned, a page that collects the vast number of Japanese beverages introduced (but often soon discontinued) each year.
  • Natto, fermented soybeans.
  • The Official Ramen Home Page. Another yummy and informative site.
  • Sake World provides the 411 on this drink.
  • Sushi at Stickyrice.com is a clearinghouse site for fans of sushi.
  • Sushi Vocabulary Guide is quick and handy.
  • Sushi World Guide. "A guide to Japanese restaurants outside Japan."
  • More sushi. This very ancient page teaches you how to roll your own.
  • Japanese table manners guide.
  • Tempura is certainly one of the great achievements of Japanese cuisine. Here's what Roland Barthes (of all people) had to say about tempura, writing in the delightful Empire of Signs:

    Tempura is stripped of the meaning we traditionally attach to fried food, which is heaviness. Here flour recovers its essence as scattered flower, diluted so lightly that it forms a milk and not a paste; taken up by the oil, this golden milk is so fragile that it covers the piece of food imperfectly, reveals here a pink of shrimp, there a green of pepper, a brown of eggplant, thus depriving the fry of what constitutes our fritter, which is its sheath, its envelope, its density. The oil (but is this oil-- are we really dealing with the maternal substance, the oily?), immediately soaked up by the paper napkin on which you are served your tempura in a little wicker basket-- the oil is dry, utterly unrelated to the lubricant with which the Mediterranean and the Near East cover their cooking and pastry; it loses a contradiction which marks our foodstuffs cooked in oil or grease, which is to burn without heating; this cold burning of the fat body is here replaced by a quality which seems denied to all fried food: freshness. The freshness which circulates in tempura through the floury lace, tang of the toughest and of the most fragile among foodstuffs, fish and vegetables-- this freshness, which is both that of what is intact and that of what is refreshing, is indeed that of the oil...
  • Tokyo Food Page surveys Japanese cuisine and where to get it in Tokyo. This is a great resource.
  • Umeboshi, sour pickled plaums.
  • Uwajimaya. Hard to believe, but life can be even bleaker than it already is without this Seattle institution. This is the place to go for that Pocky fix (as well as for all your other Japanese/ pan-Asian culinary needs).
  • Wagashi, Japanese sweets.
  • Web Resources for Japanese Food.



Shopping Japan

I cannot stand a woman who wears sleeves of unequal width.
--from ch. 170 of the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon

  • AXIS building in Roppongi is a haven for design freaks.
  • Comme des Garçons store in Aoyama, as reviewed by Wallpaper*. Kawakubo Rei has always been a source of inspiration. Who else would create fragrances that smell like toner cartridges?
  • Daimaru. Japanese department stores are a world unto themselves. This is a big but boring one attached to Tokyo Station.
  • Hankyu. Another big department store / railways combo prominent in the Kansai region.
  • Isetan. Big and respectable depato in Shinjuku.
  • Itoya flagship store in Ginza is the ultimate stationery heaven on planet earth.
  • JUN Japanese Gifts and Souvenirs sells these traditional items from a website that is also very informative about particular aspects of Japanese omiyage culture.
  • Keio. Another big department store / railways combo prominent in the Kanto region.
  • Keisei is a Kanto rail operator that actually doesn't sell clothes and dry goods, but they will sell you houses and hotel rooms.
  • Kinokuniya. Japan's largest bookseller.
  • Laforet is where you can find the legendary Harajuku girls.
  • LOFT is kind of like Seibu's own version of Habitat or IKEA.
  • Marui. One of my earliest impressions of Tokyo was seeing the cryptic sign "O1O1" all over the place.
  • Matsuya is a straightforward depato in Ginza.
  • Matsuzakaya is another straightforward depato chain throughout Japan.
  • Mitsukoshi is a rather traditional depato but still fun to visit.
  • Issey Miyake.
  • MUJI. Who can possibly not be in love with MUJI?
  • Odakyu. Another big department store / railways combo prominent in the Kanto region.
  • Parco. It's hard to escape from a Parco in Shibuya.
  • Record stores of Tokyo guide is quite handy.
  • Seibu stores have always got it goin' on, but the big one in Ikebukuro is just incredible. The cute Seibu sailorette elevator girls are amazing to boot. Seibu also own a railway and a baseball team, among other things.
  • Sogo is where you usually end up in Yokohama.
  • Superfuture City is a sleek and trendy site that examines "urban cartography for global shopping experts." Basically, the site has extensive reviews of cool places to shop in Tokyo.
  • Takashimaya. Old-fashoined depato. One of the coolest things about Japanese department stores is the absolutely staggering employees to customer ratio. For instance, you may be greeted by girls at the entrance, at the base of escalators, or in elevators. You may also be greeted by floor managers. When you're ready to pay, you may deal with two employees (sometimes even three). The sales clerk who manages your transaction may also elaborately wrap your purchase (sometimes delegated to another memeber of the staff) while the cashier takes your form of payment to another location (you never see the till it seems) and soon returns with your change. The whole experience feels pampered, sumptuous, and somewhat decadent.
  • Tobu is yet another operator of railways, department stores, and resorts.
  • Tokyu. Another department store/ hotel/ railways combo prominent in the Tokyo area.
  • Tokyu HandsTokyu Hands Creative Life Store has such a cool and very Japanese logo.
  • Yohji Yamamoto.


Japanese culture

When a three-foot curtain of state has been set up, there is hardly any gap between the top of the frame and the bottom of the head-blind; fortunately, the little space that remains always seems to come precisely at the face-level of the man who is standing outside the curtains and of the woman who is conversing with him from inside. What on earth would happen if the man was extremely tall and the woman very short? I really cannot imagine. But, so long as people are of normal height, it is satisfactory. --from ch. 48 of the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon


  • ALLES. Net zine about personalities on the cutting edge of Japanese culture.
  • Anime Network is a large portal and clearinghouse site for anime and manga. Understanding Anime also provides a good introduction to the art and craft.
  • Anime Web Turnpike, another awesome directory and clearinghouse site. It's also easy to use.
  • Anti-Japanophile Japan Page. See it to believe it. Ironically, it's actually one of the best sites for useful links on Japan. Totally indispensable.
  • Azrael: I Am a Japanese School Teacher is perhaps the funniest blog I've come across. He's an African-American teacher for the JET programme in a small Japanese town. This is also one of the most extensive documentation of Japanese mores on the web. His students are all perverted troublemakers. Hilarity ensues.
  • The Blank Generation Web. Check out indie Japan.
  • The Internet Bonsai Club.
  • Cool Girls Japan!!. After all, they are the world's coolest demographic. Fashion, beauty, and all that.
  • The Dragon's Roar. "A Military Brat's Misadventures Growing up in Tokyo." More specifically, from the late 50s through the 1960s, when Tokyo was a very different place. You can find here images, anectodes, and stories galore about a very specific group of American kids living there, as well as about Japanese society at large, then and now.
  • Doraemon. Everybody's favourite robot cat from the 22nd century!
  • Japanese Engrish, sometimes also known as "Japanglish." This is one of the funniest sites I've ever visited. Also check out the Jasper's index of Japanese consumer products.
  • Barbara's Enka Site. Here's a useful and very worthwhile English language site about this particular form of popular Japanese music.
  • Famous Personages in Japan. Bios about famous Japanese individuals.
  • Gagaku, Japanese court music and dance.
  • Genji monogatari information page in English. You can read Murasaki Shikibu's work online in Japanese here.
  • Godzilla. What's Japan without it?
  • Hello Kitty. A brief primer on this cat.
  • Ikebana International answers the basics about this traditional art form.
  • Bonsai's J-pop Page. Japanese pop music.
  • J-Pop Idol Databse. It's exactly what it claims to be. Scary stuff.
  • J-Wave wireless that everyone seems to listen to.
  • Japan Journey. This is a collection of photographs with hilarious as well as informative commentary.
  • Japanese Garden in Portland, Oregon is lovely, and perhaps my favourite in North America, along with the extensive and varied grounds at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. Seattle also has a nice garden, but the traffic noises are overwhelming here.
  • Japanese Garden Databse is for anyone who wants to find out more about the subject, or who wants to visit one near his part of the world, or who wants to build one for himself.
  • Japanophile is also the name of a zine for Japanophiles.
  • Kabuki for Everyone. A cool and colourful introduction.
  • Kinema Club. This wonderful page is devoted to resources on Japanese cinema in North America.
  • Kondansha. They publish books about Japan in both English and Japanese.
  • Komuro Tetsuya, the Stock-Aitken-Waterman of 90s J-Pop.
  • Martial Arts online as compiled by Danny Abramovitch. Do you know what’s the difference between judo / jujutsu and akido / hapkido? If you don't, perhaps this clearinghouse site may be a good place to start.
  • Noh, classical Japanese drama. This is contains an introduction as well as a few complete English translations of some plays.
  • Midnight Eye, a great site dedicated to current, new wave, and cult Japanese cinema with interviews, features, and tons of reviews.
  • Misora Hibari, famous enka singer who died in 1989.
  • Issey Miyake, an introduction to the influential fashion designer.
  • MTV Japan.
  • Old Tokyo exhibits vintage postcards and maps from immediate postwar period and before.
  • Origami.
  • Osumo. This interesting site is dedicated to the latest news and information about the traditional sport of sumo.
  • Ozu Teapot actually has its own erudite film blog.
  • PingMag is an online periodical about all things visual in Japan. It's a graphic designer's wet dream.
  • Pink Lady. Remember them?
  • Pokémon's official American site.
  • Makura no soshi, Sei Shonagon's incredible Pillow Book can be read here in Japanese. From my notes written on 14 February, 1991 in Professor Andrew Barshay's History 9B section:

    Two different sorts of hierarchy seemed to operate in the Heian court as it was depicted by Sei Shonagon in Makura no soshi. One hierarchy is social; another is aesthetic, perhaps even moral. Considering that her strong views on the decorum of each class and its aesthetic sensibilities dominated The Pillow Book, the social and aesthetic hierarchies not just inevitably intersected, they also appeared to be inseparable. In the Heian society, the differences between master and servant, and aristocrat and commoner, were clearly delineated. Sei Shonagon believed that each person should have his or her proper place in life and strictly follow the proper set of decorum respective to his or her class and standing. Most of what she considered as bad aesthetics (more appropriately, pet peeves) were, in her opinion, violations in which persons stepped beyond the complex boundaries of proper behaviour for a particular class and standing. The things and situations in which she regarded as pleasing were usually associated with the aristocracy. She enjoyed poetry, eloquent letters, beautiful landscaping and architecture, colourful religious processions and festivals, elegant clothing properly dressed on appropriate people, and most of all, proper etiquette among the aristocrats. On the other hand, she considered commoners an aesthetic affront as well as vulgar sub-human beings no matter how they behaved. They can do no right, ever. She also believed that aristocratic gentlemen (and even preachers), when properly dressed and behaved, were especially pleasing. However, she wasn't above severely criticising her peers with their lapses in etiquette, let alone mistakes made by those below here. What she believed to be vulgar were often lapses in etiquette, particularly mistakes made by servants and commoners. She hated servants who "[failed] to use honorific forms of speech in referring to their masters" and behaved inappropriately. Not surprisingly, Sei Shonagon seemed to believe that everything that the servants do was inappropriate. She was disturbed by masters who were, in her opinion, too kind, polite and servile to their servants. In fact, she hated anyone who speaks too casually. Unfortunately, she obviously viewed commoners and servants with utter contempt. She once even said, "Praise from a servant can damage a woman's reputation. Besides, people of that class always manage to express themselves badly when they are trying to say something nice." When she discovered that an impeccable-looking man was "a vulgar commoner," she was deeply offended. (Damned if you do, damned if you don't ...) Sei Shonagon was basically pleased by aristocrats who acted and dressed like aristocrats (who behaved according to how she believed they should behave). Most of the time, they could do no wrong, especially when they were in stations above her. To a pathological extent, she loathed the commoners no matter how they acted; to her they were an aesthetic disaster. Her belief might have been influenced by the philosophies regarding karma. She probably believed that the commoners were awful people derived from previous sinful lives and that they deserved the ill-treatment that they were getting.

  • Tea Ceremony. This site provides detailed descriptions, instructions, and history of the art.
  • Tokyo Street Style answers one of the most important questions one can ask these days: "What are the kids wearing in Japan these days?" This is an awesome site that's updated weekly, as it should be.
  • Tokyo Trash covers the arts, culture, and design scenes in Japan.
  • Tora San, an introduction.
  • Totoro, courtesy of the Camphor Tree. You may also want to stop by at Studio Ghibli's official site.
  • Cool Japanese Toys. Discover a whole new world here, especially if you like transformable, robotic superhero figures.
  • Ukiyo-e, courtesy of our own Library of Congress. This is quite an extensive site with decent background information and a substantial online exhibit.
  • The White Path Temple. "A virtual Shin Buddhist temple in Cyberspace." Try it, it's fun!
  • Yakuza, Japanese gangsters.
  • Zen Garden. Believe it or not, it gives you Buddhism lite: koan, serene images, and contemplative sounds.



Other resources on Japan

It is delightful when there has been a thin fall of snow; or again when it has piled up very high and in the evening we sit round a brazier at the edge of the veranda with a few congenial friends, chatting till darkness falls. There is no need for the lamp, since the snow itself reflects a clear light. Raking the ashes in the brazier with a pair of fire-tongs, we discuss all sorts of moving and amusing things. --from ch. 114 of the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon



The following links feature random topics on just about anything Japan-related but don't fit elsewhere on this page:



  • Aoshima, a Japanese 'Cat Island.' Japanese culture seems to be obsessed with cats. So are we, and we want to go there one day.
  • Chris Broad in Japan the cheeky and sarcastic youtuber, has his own website.
  • Earthquakes in Japan. Find out about the latest seismic and volcanic activity happening in these geologically hyperactive archipelago. It's in Japanese, and it's updated continuously.
  • Gaijin Net is a necessary resource for living in a difficult and relentlessly strange land.
  • Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombing information. While the horrors of these cities can never be underestimated, the Errol Morris documentary Fog of War reiterated something that has always disturbed me, as a historian and as an individual who feels that we should never forget or disregard the incomprehensible ravages of war on civilians. Conventional firebombing of Japanese cities in World War II has largely been forgotten, just like the relentless conventional bombing of German cities that began earlier in the war. (The latter was recounted hauntingly by the late German writer W.G. Sebald in On the Natural History of Destruction, which challenged the lack of acknowledgement of the fact that the brutal air war on 131 German cities killed some six hundred thousand civilians and destroyed the homes of more than seven and a half million people. Incidentally, the city of Dresden was memorialised quite memorably in Slaughterhouse-Five.) About this documentary, Roger Angell wrote in the January 19, 2004 issue of the New Yorker:

    …[Robert] McNamara’s testimony cuts deepest when he goes back to the Second World War firebombing of Tokyo by the American Twentieth Air Force, whose high-altitude B-29 bombers, redeployed at five thousand feet, rained down incendiaries that killed at least eighty-five thousand civilians in a single night. This campaign was continued almost in secrecy against lesser targets, and here, to a thrumming score by Philip Glass, Morris transforms clustering names of the burnt-down wooden Japanese cities into equivalent American towns, with the percent of residents killed attached: thirty-five percent of Chicago, fifty-eight percent of Cleveland, ninety-nine percent of Chattanooga, forty-two percent of Toledo, and so on. Sixty-seven Japanese cities were firebombed by the B-29s in the spring of 1945, and three hundred and fifty thousand civilians burnt to death- and the war in effect won- well before Hiroshima.

  • Japan CS Project. More science and technology information from University of Arizona.
  • JapanesePod101.com. Podcasts that teach you the Japanese language. Sounds like a good idea, eh?
  • Paul Krugman once wrote a series of articles on Japan that is helpfully archived here.
  • Ken Lunde. The author of the classic O'Reilly & Associates'Understanding Japanese Information Processing, this guy's home page contains really useful information on working with Japanese text on computers.
  • Murakami Haruki creates fantastical worlds that are still somehow very much recognisably our own realm-- our quotidien urban environments with our cares, values, routines, and pop culture. It's not exactly science fiction, nor is it exactly magical realism. It's Murakami's unqiue brand of literature that ultimately explores how we really function as humans.
  • Photo Guide Japan. Come here if you're searching for photographic resources relating to Japan.
  • "Rape of Nanking" (Nankin jiken) was definitely not cool. Although the vehement tone of this site somewhat compromises it as a scholarly resource, the pictures here speak for themselves. Japan's wartime role in China, Korea, and the rest of Asia is a dark and important chapter in recent Japanese history that should never be forgotten. The cruelty of human beings never ceases to amaze me. It saddens me that the Japanese people of today have not really attempted to come to terms with its wartime roles as did the Germans.



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