I took a great seminar on the history of the Chûshingura (忠臣蔵 or the story of the 赤穂浪人: the famous Japanese saga of the revenge of the 47 ronin) with Henry D. Smith at Columbia 2 years ago. We focused mostly on the imaginative potential of a historical event and the many fascinating ways that [...]
The assumption has always been that sanctions just don’t work. Additionally, in an argument more persuasive with those of us with soft spots for the humanitarian side of the equation, the feeling is that sanctions often end up causing massive amounts of suffering amongst those outside a country’s ruling circle. George A. Lopez and David [...]
I leave Takarazuka and my adventures in the Kansai region tomorrow morning and travel to Beijing and Qingdao for about a week. I’ll be back in Tokyo at the end of the month and leave Japan August 15th. I’ll be back visiting my parents in Bartlesville, Oklahoma until early September, when I move to Boston.
As a kind of follow up to my recent article at Chanpon.org on Japan “Losing its soul” I have also noticed a lot of posters in recent Japanese advertisements which claim that visiting some place will help you discover yourself—that is, discover one’s latent or forgotten Japanese identity. Today I noticed just such a poster [...]
I love going through the book offerings at Japanese shrines, where you are almost guaranteed to get some gems. At Kasuga Taisha (春日大社) in Nara, I found a series of childrens’ books entitled “Japan: A Good Country” (『日本いい国に』). Each chapter was designed to give children a lesson in how to be a good Japanese or [...]
After giving my final presentation at Waseda University, where I have spent the last two years as a “research student” 研究生, I left immediately for the Kansai area of central Japan to join Sayaka and her family in her hometown of Takarazuka 宝塚. The next three days were spent traveling around to nearby sites that [...]
After losing their surnames during Communist Rule, since 1997 Mongolians have been required to have them again. This interesting saga has, among other things, led to everyone wanting Genghis Khan’s tribal name “Brojigin.” Read more about this on this posting at Keywords and this article. I also talked a little bit about Mongolia’s national fascination [...]
The Taiwanese Vice President has always been a bit loopy, but really… Read more in the pro-DPP Taipei Times. She also said that, “The government must have an advanced immigration policy, because Taiwan is so small while the population is increasing quickly.” Hmm…shifting an aboriginal population overseas…wouldn’t that make it an emigration policy? Seriously though, [...]
There is a great collection of Cold War related docs at Woodrow Wilson Cold War International History Project. There is a really interesting collection of articles and (and in many cases newly discovered) primary documents related to the DPRK. (Thanks to Budaechigae for this awesome link) Incidentally, I am not really comfortable with many of [...]
Scott Sommers in Taiwan has a very interesting collection of postings on the issue of English Teachers as Migrants over at his Taiwan Blog. While the issues covered in the postings vary and I don’t have time to give my own take on everything here, I found lots of fascinating little tidbits. One of the [...]