(Part 2) Best japanese history books according to redditors
We found 675 Reddit comments discussing the best japanese history books. We ranked the 291 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
You may want to read something like Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War. Nuclear fallout can not only fuck you up decades after the event, but it can fuck up your descendants as well. The victims of a nuclear bomb are not limited to those who died in the blast. Plenty of people survive that.
I'm going to get downvoted for this, but there is a translation issue here. The video never mentions "Comfort Women" (위안부/慰安婦), but instead talks about Teishintai (정신대/挺身隊), or volunteer corps. These were mostly girls, mostly Japanese, who "volunteered" (and in 1944 were recruited) to help out with the war effort in factories and military support roles, in some ways similar to women in wartime in the US and the UK.
Now, I'm almost 99% percent sure there were women who were duped into prostitution via the volunteer corps, but there's a lot of confusion and debate between Korea and Japan between 정신대 and 위안부, the former being generally innocuous, although it does raise some major issues about gendered mobilization in wartime in general. You can read about it in Japanese here and C. Sarah Soh's book on the comfort women, one of the best sources on the issue in my opinion, problematizes this confusion.
My point is, yeah this JAV is in super bad taste, playing off some weird kind of historical nostalgia, but translation and subjectivity are important to consider and from the producers' viewpoint, it's probably not specifically targeting the Comfort Women.
Edit: A word
I've seen a handful of people say that this sort of academic content is only produced (or acceptable to produce) about white men. I'd like to note that cultural, anthropological and historical studies of specific demographics, especially groups of alienated men, are actually pretty common. Take this classic study about Kashmiri Jihadists, or this one about drug dealers in East Harlem or hell, this study of the changing mores and social expectations in samurai culture. In other words, studying the identity of a group of men who are finding their social status threatened, uncertain or rapidly changing is actually quite a common academic pursuit.
In academic contexts like this there are clear epistemological and ethical considerations to keep in mind. The first is that any study of a group of people, whoever they are, needs to engage with the voices, experiences and worldviews of those people in good faith. This doesn't mean agree with, or even have an overall positive view of them or their beliefs - see the studies about Kashmiri Jihadists or drug dealers above - but it does mean that the purpose should be to reach a kind of understanding of the way these people think and feel about their world. A course that talks about the experiences of white men, with an aim at looking at processes of anger or radicalisation, would almost certainly be approaching the issue from this angle. I don't see anything to indicate that this won't be the case.
From the responses I've seen, a lot of people imagine this course to basically be a semester long dunk-session on white dudes without any nuance. From where I stand it seems pretty clear this course is intended to deconstruct, understand and talk about the experiences and alienation of certain white men in the US and UK in the last 70 years.
I think, in 2019, most Westerners with eyeballs have realised that young white men are a demographic that is noticeably prone to radicalisation, extremism and alienation. I think it's inevitable that this will be a phenomenon that is increasingly discussed and researched in academic and public circles.
To add to what was said, oil was important.
Following the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, the UK, Netherlands and the U.S. engaged in some pretty severe embargos against the Japanese, and it was starving their military. Without oil from the U.S., the Japanese wouldn't have been able to fuel its military to occupy Korea and China or to expand its empire into the European colonies they desired.
So to swipe the oil (And rubber) rich East Indies to become self reliant after the American oil embargo, the Japanese would have to deal with American bases in the Philippines, and it's pretty much what watermark0on said.
This little article gives a good summary.
Edit: If you ever want to read all about it, there is an absolutely excellent book about the Pacific war called The Eagle Against the Sun.
From my limited perspective as someone who has studied both European History and, specifically, Japanese history - a great amount of animosity is still seething to this day, especially with Japan's most direct neighbors: Korea and China. Much of this is due to the fact that the Government of Japan has made very few apologies for the crimes committed during the Imperial regime. Germany, on the other hand, has made numerous apologies for the war crimes committed in the name of the Third Reich.
A text I highly reccommend on this topic is Ienaga's Pacific War, 1931-1945 which goes into great detail about how Japan ended up the way it did in the years immediately before World War II.
Not to trivialize or attempt to rationalize the atrocities committed by Germany, Japan, and even the Allies - but a great deal of the most vicious crimes in the war can be boiled down to Nationalism. Nazi Germany was fighting in the name of German honor, much of the military (perhaps, say, the SS) did not have associations with the Nazi party and fought in the name of the Fatherland. The Japanese Empire, similarly, was fighting for the Divine Emperor. The public, in many ways, was terribly brainwashed. Again, Ienaga's text goes into great detail about how, from the turn of the 20th Century onward, Japan was getting its public accustomed to the notion of a God-Emperor. Really terrifying when you look at it in retrospect, huh?
If you're interested in the IJN, then Evan's and Peter's Kaigun is the essential book:
https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/B01DRYEMH2/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_cmps_btm?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews
Throw in Sunburst for the aerial side as well. It was originally supposed to be a chapter in Kaigun, but they realized the IJN's naval air side was too important to be limited to 30-40 pages.
Yes, I've read it. My answer was for the army as whole, and it's doctrine.
My answer was based mostly on these books:
http://www.amazon.com/Eagle-Against-Sun-American-Japan/dp/0394741013/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369281149&sr=1-1&keywords=eagle+against+the+sun
http://www.amazon.com/Soldiers-Sun-Rise-Imperial-Japanese/dp/0679753036
http://www.amazon.com/Fighting-Techniques-Japanese-Infantryman-1941-1945/dp/0760311455/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369281120&sr=1-2&keywords=fighting+techniques+of+a+japanese
http://books.google.com/books/about/Warriors_of_the_rising_sun.html?id=wkHyjjbv-yEC
http://www.amazon.com/Path-Infinite-Sorrow-Japanese-Kokoda/dp/174237591X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369281290&sr=1-1&keywords=the+path+of+infinite+sorrow
I also left out the days of leave, vacations, holidays, low pay rate, sake rations, and lots of other things that might actually be "fun."
Well, the obvious immediate go-to would be Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941, which is pretty much exactly what you're looking for.
In addition to describing the design philosophies driving Japanese naval architecture during their buildup to the Second World War, it also describes the evolution of the strategy, tactics, organization, culture, and technology developed by the Imperial Japanese Navy.
The book also has a fairly broad chronological focus, encompassing the entire era between the foundation of the IJN and the opening battles of the Pacific War.
It's considered one of the more prominent Western works on the topic in recent years. It's also fairly engagingly written, so I'd recommend you check it out.
If you're interested in naval air power's development by Japan, I'd also check out Sunburst, by one of the same authors, as well as the acclaimed Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway by Parshall and Tully, which both provide in-depth analysis of Japanese carrier doctrine and tactics. The latter book is particularly groundbreaking in the Western scholarship of the battle for overturning several longstanding myths surrounding Midway.
EDIT: Fun fact - Kaigun is the only reason why I know who the heck Emile Bertin was :)
> Japan was more the allies then the good old USA
...what? The US had direct occupation and total governmental control of Japan for six years after WW2, and had the largest presence of any of the Allies there for the next several decades. The UK/France were too busy rebuilding their own countries and trying to maintain their control over their colonies to be rebuilding Japan, and Russia would have had to fight the US to try to do so.
Embracing Defeat is a great book about it and about how it transformed Japanese society.
It's culturally constructed from Japan's Meiji era. Literally the kanji for "road" (道). After samurai were abolished in 1870s, many former samurai went back and recreated their history and emphasized the "way" of things. As such, many things became "way-ified," as if there was a prescription that one could only do things in a specific way.
In that specific book, you're looking at one author's "method" or "plan." The "way-ification" of things is a more modern translation. Most samurai followed many different rules of conduct throughout pre-modern Japanese history.
For more: https://www.amazon.com/Taming-Samurai-Honorific-Individualism-Making/dp/0674868099
https://www.amazon.com/Inventing-Way-Samurai-Nationalism-Internationalism-ebook/dp/B00N306Y1I/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1CPOZVC905KF5&keywords=oleg+benesch&qid=1556915103&s=books&sprefix=oleg+ben%2Cstripbooks%2C166&sr=1-1
Just saw this. Thanks for the shout out! In The Invention of Religion in Japan, I do argue agains the idea that religion is a natural category or a cultural universal. I could say a lot about this and the debates in Religious studies/anthropology if you are curious. The video series never finished because I got saddled with a bunch of administrative work chairing a department.... Sorry. I'm about to go to a meeting but if you are curious about the evidence/argument about "religion" as a category I'd be happy to share my thoughts or summarize the state of the field. I'll check back periodically over the span of the day to see if there are any comments.
So it doesn't seem to be from only the Japanese side, but I know it has both sides and focuses only on the Pacific/Asian side of the war and about those areas of fighting that aren't commonly taught. The title is 'Retribution: The Battle for Japan' by Max Hastings. Here is an amazon link for it that I found.
With Wings Like Eagles
The Blonde Knight of Germany
Stuka Pilot Be forewarned, the man was an unrepentant Nazi.
Samurai!
Edit: If you want some non-aviation but still military books:
Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour: Armistice Day, 1918 World War I and Its Violent Climax
The Last Battle
Slaughterhouse 5 Fiction
The Things They Carried
To Hell and Back
>The observed colors of the illumination ranged from purple to green and eventually to white.
Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age.
>The lighting effects beggared description. The whole country was lighted by a searing light with the intensity many times that of the midday sun. It was golden, purple, violet, gray, and blue. It lighted every peak, crevasse and ridge of the nearby mountain range with a clarity and beauty that cannot be described but must be seen to be imagined...
General Groves' report on Trinity Test
>The first thing I saw was the light. It was so bright that I was momentarily blinded. Simultaneously, I was surrounded by an intense heat. The bomb released a 4,000-degree heat wave in the instant that it hit the ground. I panicked, covered my eyes, and lay low on the floor. I couldn’t hear any noise and the trees weren’t rustling. I thought something was up, so I cautiously looked through the window toward where I’d seen the flash of light. The skies were blue with no cloud in sight, but there was this bright red ring of fire high up in the skies above the city! In the middle of the ring was a big white ball that kept growing like a thundercloud—this really round thing. It kept getting bigger and bigger until it finally hit the outer fire ring, and then the whole thing blew up into a huge red fireball. It was like I was witnessing the birth of a new sun. It was so perfectly round! When I was a child, I saw Asama Mountain erupt from really close up, but this was much more full-on. The clouds were white, but shining in rainbow colors as they rose up. It was really beautiful. People call it the “mushroom cloud” but it’s actually a pillar of fire: The bottom part is a column of flames and the top part is a fireball, which metamorphoses into clouds as it keeps rising up.
>Then, below the pillar of fire, pitch-black clouds started spreading horizontally above the mountains surrounding Hiroshima. They consisted of sand and dust that were being pushed up from the ground due to the pressure generated from the blast. They were coming toward me like a tidal wave.
Dr. Hida, Survivor of Hiroshima
I can't find the text of it online, but there were multiple accounts like Dr. Hida's in The Last Train from Hiroshima.
Same with the other two. They are available in Germany, but not for you :P
Jokes aside: Contact Amazon/Google support (I guess you might need to change country settings? No idea.) or buy them from a German shop like thalia.de, ebook.de, hugendubel.de or your local bookstore.
If you haven't read it, "Beans, Bullets, and Black Oil", is a fascinating, if somewhat dry, account of how we were able to project our power across the Pacific. Hopefully our current strategists and logisticians have reread it a few times.
Not really an interview, but this is a translation of a book by Saburo Sakai, another ace. It's a pretty good read that I'm sure a lot of people here would enjoy.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743412834/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_1?pf_rd_p=1944687502&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0671563106&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0P2AMQP3GVAYN0CFF5N3
The Atomic Bombs and the Soviet Invasion: What Drove Japan’s Decision to Surrender?
An essay by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, the author of Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan.
Fairly long read, but interesting and thorough.
TL;DR Russians were scarier than the nukes.
Male Colors is really great if you are interested in the history and sociological impact of homosexuality and (male) gay culture in Japan.
These are books that we used for our class on World War II in the Pacific at my university. I found them helpful and insightful, as two of them are perspectives of Japanese writers.
>: Did the Japanese ever study how they'd get the raw materials from the captured islands back to Japan? It is my recollection that the Japanese merchant fleet was ill suited to transport significant quantities of oil even before the war began. I am less sure about the Japanese ability to transport large quantities of other materials.
I've read extensively about the IJN and IJA, and by and large, they did not. the Japanese military in general was incredibly bad at logistics and combat support.
> nothing suggests the US public would support a declaration of war on Japan.
I tend to feel the same way, but the Japanese military leadership did not. Perhaps they did not understand the degree to which american leadership was constrained by public opinion.
>With that said, I still think the mistake was attacking Pearl Harbor.
The mistake was going to war with the US, period. The japanese were not a first rate power in the 1930s. they had benefited for years from their geographic isolation and lack of local opposition, which gave them delusions of grandeur, but they were third rate at best. When the best of the Japanese army got absolutely pasted by second rate russian divisions, this should have been a huge wakeup call to japanese leadership. Instead, it was used by the navy as a justification for making war on the US and UK simultaneously.
>the Japanese would have surely cut off China's supply lines and forced the Chinese to surrender or agree to an advantageous peace treaty
Unlikely. resistance by Mao and Chang would have continued, if perhaps much more weakly. China was simply too large for japan to control, a bottomless pit capable of swallowing endless numbers of japanese soldiers and, perhaps more importantly, supplies that they could not spare.
>Japan could have improved upon the Zero fairly easy if its vulnerabilities were discovered - at the very least the generational changes such as a supercharger, pilot armor, self sealing tanks, and larger ammo capacities could have been implemented
Again, not very likely. It is important to remember that while japanese progress at modernization was very impressive, they were no where near the level of the west. My favorite story to demonstrate this is the zero. when it was first built, it was arguably the most advanced plane in the world, but the first prototypes were carried from the factory to the airfield in wooden, horse drawn, hay carts. Japanese industrial development was very shallow, and concentrated in a few frontline areas, with an overall capacity only about that of Italy. the zero was such a lightweight plane because of the inability of japanese industry to build engines of sufficient power density and reliability for heavier planes.
On a more philosophical level, the Japanese were unlikely to discover the weaknesses in their strategy because they would have been spending most of their effort fighting the the chinese and colonial garrisons. Their enormous weaknesses in mechanization and, for lack of a better term, weight, would not have been made apparent battling enemies who were even more industrially deficient than they were. Meanwhile, the US would still have been building big, heavy planes capable of surviving over germany.
>Everything in Hawaii had to be shipped from the United States.
this cuts two ways. the US had a considerably easier time, and much more capacity, for delivering supplies to Hawaii than the Japanese could ever have for delivering ordinance. And in the eastern pacific, there are no islands for bases for subs, planes, etc. to raid those supply lines
>they could have repeatedly sortied 8-10 carriers worth of aircraft on Hawaii's military installations, rendering it unusable for a long period of time.
repeatedly only in the sense of months apart, which would give the US more than enough time for the US to pour far more into Hawaii than the Japanese could ever hope to bring against it. As for invading the islands, it was almost a complete impossibility. The Pearl Harbor operation really represented the limit of japanese logistical capabilities. They did not have the manpower or amphibious transport to mount an invasion on the scale needed to take islands with so many american troops (tens of thousands even before the war). And given the japanese deficiencies in material, artillery, etc, I cannot imagine them storming beaches marine style without truly enormous casualties.
Anyhow, don't mean to be rude, you were asking good questions, I just happen to have read a lot about this particular topic. If you are interested, I would recomend Kaigun and its companion book Sunburst as the single best resource on the IJN. They are masterful books.
edit: several points for clarity.
This?
But not this or this?
Also, I know I'm a bit late to the party, but this installment was great!
This is right in my wheelhouse! My own expertise on the war in the Pacific is mainly naval, but yes, I know some good books about that!
I would recommend, first of all, Clayton James' essay American and Japanese Strategies in the Pacific War, located in Peter Paret's Makers of Modern Strategy, which provides exactly what you are looking for. After that, I recommend George Baer's One Hundred Years of Sea Power: The U.S. Navy, 1890 - 1990 (the relevent sections, obviously; not the whole thing) and Doug Smith's Carrier Battles: Command Decision in Harm's Way for a good overview of the US Navy's role in the development of American strategy, policy, and operations against Japan, as well as how interwar Navy PME influenced their thinking on these issues.
David Evans and Mark Peattie's Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887 - 1941 is absolutely imperative for any kind of understanding of the Imperial Japanese Navy's strategic, institutional, and doctrinal shortcomings as they were eventually revealed during WWII. And I highly recommend Ron Spector's Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan, which also offers excellent analysis on the comparative merits and shortcomings of Japanese and US naval strategy.
Gerhard Weinberg's A World At Arms: A Global History of World War II is a bit daunting (1200 pages!) but provides the single best overall review of the war, including the war in the Pacific. For a look at US Army strategy, I'd recommend the US Army Green Book Series on the war in the Pacific; these books were written by Army staff and historians in the decade or two following the war, and offer a perspective that is sometimes difficult to find in more recent works.
Just to add a little to /u/tryptaminex's answer, you might be interested in looking at some of the difficulty we've had in applying religion as a term cross-culturally. Jason Josephson's The Invention of Religion in Japan is a nice one for this. There's a pretty good review of it here
(Not an anthropologist, just an interested layperson.)
I regard religion as a problematic category that's used in a bunch of different ways and and increasingly difficult to apply the further you get away from Protestant Christianity. (A close friend of mine has done extensive work on how Meiji Japan imported and adapted the western concept of religion.)
Theologically, I don't believe in an independently existing deity with literal psychological properties like will, desire, knowledge, etc. I'm rather ambivalent about God-language; I have no problem with people using "God" to mean "the ground of being" or "our ultimate concern" or whatnot. I generally prefer the term "religious naturalist" to atheist, agnostic, or pantheist, but I'll accept any of them.
I'm also a Unitarian Universalist. I need to wrap this up now so I'm not late to church.
You can read professor Park Yuha's main ideas here in English and come to your own decision.
http://scholarsinenglish.blogspot.jp/2014/10/summary-of-professor-park-yuhas-book.html
...
In my case I also read C Sarah Soh's The Comfort Women.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Comfort-Women-Postcolonial-Sexuality/dp/0226767779
Also having read a few primary documents, I am convinced that in the case of Korea, the women weren't sex slaves of the Japanese military. The women may have been sex slaves of the Korean pimps (in which case the fault of the Japanese government/military lies in not policing the pimps properly.)
And yeah, this is pretty much a North Korean propaganda story. The main group behind the comfort women in S Korea is an organization that is under surveillance by the S Korean government for being pro North Korea and working with North Korean agents. (The leader's husband and sister were arrested and convicted as spies after all.)
Below is a newspaper article so I don't know how long the link will be active.
http://www.sankei.com/world/news/140524/wor1405240024-n1.html
UK Link:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01CX6XU2I
You should read "The Taming of the Samurai" by Eiko Ikegami. I read it in university and it really serves to show how complicated the social and political structure of the Shogunate and the Daimyo were and how this affected the samurai class. Samurai wanted to distinguish themselves but they had to do so while paying homage to their betters. This fine line between showing off their accomplishments and needing to be humble and collaborate with others is fascinating and informs so much of Japanese society even today.
It does a lot more analysis rather than a regurgitation of facts and events. Just as a warning it is a bit heavy handed and gets fairly dense as you read. Take that as you will.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0674868099?pc_redir=1412659343&robot_redir=1
There are two aspects of homosexuality which will determine whether or not a person is likely to engage in it. First, obviously, is genetics. Most people are simply going to be born attracted to the same sex. However, there is another aspect of it which is equally out of the control of the individual such that they are not able to make a choice over being gay. This would be the cultural aspect.
Male Colors by Gary Leupp actually gives great details on how culture can affect homosexuality. In pre-Meiji Japan, homosexuality was extremely common among both men and women. Samurai children were often sent to monasteries for their education early in the Tokugawa period where they were taught by the monks in an all male environment. Typically, when you have such environments, homosexual acts become more likely as sexual desire is present regardless of whether or not the opposite sex is. So, monks would often have sex and deep relationships with the samurai students, who then grew up and continued to have homosexual sex with others. Samurai, being the upper class of society, influenced the lower classes who wanted to mimic their "betters."
Additionally, when the shogun enacted sankin kotai (alternate residence) which required daimyo to spend a significant amount of time traveling between their domains and the capital, a huge road system developed, which in turn developed areas where the daimyo would stop with their entourage. This caused many areas to develop where the male to female ration was extremely off, as much as 170 males to 100 females (if I remember the numbers right from the book). So, given the upper class was likely to engage in homosexuality and there were many places where there were many more men than women, men started having homosexual sex.
Kabuki also contributed to the rise of homosexuality. Women were banned from practicing kabuki in 1629 in part because samurai became so aroused by the women performing that they would fight and kill each other over them. This led to young boys instead performing kabuki made up as women. Because men were already aroused by the shows and women, this simply transferred over to sexual desire for the boys performing. So, it then became required that boys performing have a sort of hair dress code in order to make them less appealing. So, these boys (many were also prostitutes) began wearing purple cloths to cover the bald tops of their heads, which made these purple cloths sexualized. Basically, what you get is a slippery slope effect where things kept becoming sexualized.
This wasn't a result of bad parenting by the Japanese, it was a result of cultural acceptance of homosexual sex. However, what should really be noted though is that most of the time, you would not find anyone who was truly homosexual. Instead, these people in Japan were bisexual. Men would have sex with men and their wives. Women would have sex with women and their husbands. Sometimes, threesomes and orgies happened. This was less a Japan focused on homosexuality than a Japan which had a sexual liberation.
Today, we are seeing the same thing really, but we are at the very beginning of it. The youth of today are growing up in a society which is becoming more accepting of sexuality which isn't heterosexuality. Interestingly though, it has also reacted negatively toward one particular group, bisexuals. Some think bisexuals are confused about their identity and seen as privileged by even some in the gay community because they can enter heterosexual relationships and hide-in-plain-sight. From that article:
> Bisexual women complain they are leered at by straight men and rejected by some lesbians as sexual "tourists" who will abandon them for men. Bisexual men, in turn, struggle to persuade men and women alike that they aren't just gay men with one foot in the closet. Both are stereotyped as oversexed swingers who cannot be trusted.
Honestly, it is extremely likely that under the right conditions, you would see an explosion of people who would identify as bisexual, with relatively few who identify as either strictly homosexual or strictly heterosexual. Humans like to have sex for fun, which means that reproduction becomes secondary as a reason to have sex. Those who would always identify as either homosexual or heterosexual probably would do so as a result of genetics, while most people could probably identify as bisexual if they grew up in a culture which accepted and celebrated sexuality as a whole. Because, in some respects (though certainly not all), it is easier to be homosexual or heterosexual than bisexual, you will probably see more people adopting one or the other over a bisexual choice.
In short, sexuality has nothing to do with choice really. This includes having nothing to do with the parents choices either. Parents spend very little time with their children compared to the rest of society after their children enter school. Many parents will work a significant amount of time even during times when their child is out of school, and during those times when they can, there is a fairly good chance these children spend some of that time with their friends, whether through real life or virtual. It is the culture of society which will most drastically affect them. As our culture becomes more accepting of homosexuality, children will find that their sexual attractions are in part determined by that. Bad parenting won't make these children gay or bisexual. Those who already have a genetic predisposition to be attracted to or open to attraction to the same sex will be more likely to feel that way in an openly accepting society.
For those interested I highly recommend The Two-Ocean War: A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War. Despite it's name it is brief only in comparison to S.E.Morison's History of United States Naval Operations in World War II 15 Volume Set. It is a dispassionate detailing of all navel operations of WWII action by action detailing losses on both sides.
I also recommend the book I am currently reading Max Hasting's Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45. Hastings based this work on interviews of hundreds Japanese who survived the war.
The Rape of Nanking seems fairly easy Here and Here, though I don't know about the Soldiers of the Sun
edit: also available
I will say my library doesn't have Soldiers of the Sun but does have Rape of Nanking.
Given the lack of living survivors I doubt you'll find an answer.
However, during a period when I had no internet, I came upon this book that shed some light the atrocities (mind you, guy has a JPN wife, so take it with a grain of salt).
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0679753036/ref=wp_dp_3
Nice to meet you, fellow redditor. The Atlantic's WW2 photo series is one of the best around. I always forward the links to my contacts.
I agree with the suggestion of having more photos taken by the Axis soldiers.
Also, you'll have a tough job on documenting the Holocaust without shocking the viewers. I hope that doesn't stop you from dedicating an entry to this subject.
Also, when talking about Japan's surrender, don't forget to mention the part where USSR declares war on Japan. A number of authors thinks that this war declaration was more important that the atomic bombs (read this).
I will read your IAMA. Keep up the good work, Sir.
First, textbooks should be less expensive for students. Increasingly university libraries are offering digital copies of textbooks for free to students (they pay a broad license to the publisher), who can read them on their computer or pay $50 to get a copy printed and bound at Kinkos if they want.
But no Reddit or Quora post will ever been a replacement for a good book. The level of detail required to describe difficult material is too much to be read on a website. Those posts that you find useful? They were written by people who... read many books on the subject.
I often referred to a textbook I was assigned my first quarter of graduate school both in subsequent classes and in professional settings. Same goes for a few technical books about coding or methodology. Heck, I still flip through my old Norton Anthology of Poetry from undergrad every now and then.
"Textbook" is also a bit of loose term. It seems like you have in mind broad summaries like a high-school textbook. But plenty of books are just lengthy works of original scholarship that are not available elsewhere and that would not be understood in full if read as a summary. Reading Embracing Defeat, as I did for a Japanese History class, could not be replaced by reading the Wikipedia entry on the occupation of Japan.
One thing that worked really well for me was to travel to a major rail station like Shibuya, Shinjuku, Akihabara and just walk around. Each major station is a commerce centre.
There is a ton of good information out there, including this reddit. Tuttle press offers several good guide books including one that I used as a daily guide: 29 Walks in Tokyo.
I showed this book to an English-speaking guide in the observation gallery of the Metropolitan Tokyo Government building and her comment was that most people in Tokyo were not aware of what was in the book. I also spent a fair amount of time studying maps and the transit system. That will be very helpful in finding your way around.
I hope you enjoy your stay in Japan.
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amazon.co.jp
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I remember there being an interesting chapter or two on this subject in Max Hasting's Retribution if you can get your hands on it, it detailed the advances that the Soviet Army made in Manchuria and described the military aspects and the treatment of civilians rather well. It's worth a look.
http://www.amazon.com/Retribution-Battle-1944-45-Max-Hastings/dp/0307263517
Zombie horrors from the 9th dimension.. I don't buy it.
>From Henry Holt and Company and Macmillan Books in the Editorial reviews on Amazon.com
>It is with deep regret that Henry Holt and Company announces that we will no longer print, correct or ship copies of Charles Pellegrino's The Last Train from Hiroshima due to the discovery of a dishonest sources of information for the book.
It is easy to understand how even the most diligent author could be duped by a source, but we also understand that opens that book to very detailed scrutiny. The author of any work of non-fiction must stand behind its content. We must rely on our authors to answer questions that may arise as to the accuracy of their work and reliability of their sources. Unfortunately, Mr. Pellegrino was not able to answer the additional questions that have arisen about his book to our satisfaction.
>Mr. Pellegrino has a long history in the publishing world, and we were very proud and honored to publish his history of such an important historical event. But without the confidence that we can stand behind the work in its entirety, we cannot continue to sell this product to our customers.
Well the thing is that the replacement government didn't start a war. There were rebel factions that wanted to become a part of Russia. Ukraine wasn't going to take that sitting down. No country would. If Siberia said "Hey Russia, we aren't going to be a part of Russia anymore and if you come here we'll shoot at you" what do you think the Russian government would do?
And no. No Americans (to my knowledge) have been punished for starting the War in Iraq under false pretenses and that's a damn shame. I hope one day that they will have to stand trial and face the consequences of what they did.
A good place to start would be Eagle Against The Sun. It was written by a former US Marine and professional historian and it covers the entirety of the Pacific War and shows both American and Japanese perspective (both of which were very important in the decision of the dropping of the atomic bombs) and presents both sides of the arguments for and against the bombings.
there was an article on this recently
I think it got posted to r/history ?
Refers to this new book
Author's webpage
Other resources
http://www.amazon.com/Midway-Battle-Doomed-Japan-Japanese/dp/1557504288?tag=duckduckgo-d-20
This is a compelling read.
http://www.amazon.com/Pacific-War-1931-1945-Saburo-Ienaga/dp/0394734963?tag=duckduckgo-d-20
Not always well written, sometimes comes across as a polemic, but contains some great sources.
http://www.amazon.com/Divine-Japans-Kamikaze-Foreword-Admiral/dp/B000HZBKEI%3FSubscriptionId%3DAKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q%26t
That's all I can think of from the top of my head. I would also reccomend John Costello's *The Pacific War. It's a great synthesis, well sourced, and doesn't treat Burma as a sideshow.
Might I also suggest a crosspost to r/history? They're a helpful bunch.
I highly recommend reading "last train from Hiroshima" first or second chapter is very descriptive.
Edit: Here's a link
These are pretty good
https://www.amazon.com/Tokyo-Walks-Worlds-Most-Exciting/dp/4805309172
For a good history of the atomic bombings from the traditional American perspective I'd recommend Richard Frank's book on the subject. For an alternative look, I'd recommend Hasegawa's Racing the Enemy. They serve pretty well to show the debate on the subject.
Great novel! seconded for sure, I started reading this when I first started learning kendo.
Keep in mind its a work of fiction, and is often times mixed up with historical fact. if you want something fact-based on Musashi, I highly recommend this book:
https://smile.amazon.com/dp/4805314761/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_di5IDbQHQPQG9
its the best translation i've read, it not only contains "the book of five rings" but also Musashi's other works. The Author is an established history professor and kendo instructor.
Btw in case anyone has read them and can give their opinions on them, I own a translation by Thomas Cleary and one inside The Complete Musashi translated by Alexander Bennett.
Saburo Sakai's Samurai! paints a fascinating first-person perspective of Japanese air craft throughout the war. At the beginning, according to his accounts, the Zeroes were flying circles around the American aircraft in the Pacific Theater. They were lighter, more maneuverable and the pilots were rigorously vetted and trained (like samurai). It wasn't until the introduction of the Hellcat and the dwindling number of Japanese pilots that the Zero's superiority was lost.
Not that I have read them but here is a direction to look in.
These for China
Western Queers in China
The Libertine's Friend
Obsession
Passions of the Cut Sleeve
This one is for Japan
Male Colors
And check for Kindle versions, they cost tons less.
You need to read up on some literature.
They did not surrender after the first bomb.
Great read and highly recommended. You can pick it up electronically dirt cheap... here it is on Kindle for $0.99 Book of Five Rings
I didn't check them all, but the first one is being offered to me as a 3.37 Euro Kindle edition here. I guess something about your country settings or the location of the Amazon website you use doesn't line up.
Barely knowledgeable reporters? You mean the people who risk their job and reputations when they're reporting?
OK, sure you mean these books?
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0231120338/?tag=annals
http://www.amazon.com/The-Comfort-Women-Enforced-Prostitution/dp/0393316947/ref=pd_sim_b_1
http://www.amazon.com/The-Comfort-Women-Postcolonial-Sexuality/dp/0226767779/ref=pd_sim_b_2
This ones from a Philipino woman
http://www.amazon.com/Comfort-Woman-Filipinas-Prostitution-Japanese/dp/0847691497/ref=pd_sim_b_4
And if you can read Korean, here are the Korean books.
http://www.yes24.com/SearchCorner/Search/List?query=%C1%BE%B1%BA%C0%A7%BE%C8%BA%CE&domain=ALL&theme=%C1%BE%B1%BA%C0%A7%BE%C8%BA%CE&detail_yn=Y&scode=026
Simply radiation, it does horrific things to anyone who survives beyond the initial blast.
This book is haunting and can explain it better than I ever could: https://www.amazon.com/Nagasaki-Life-After-Nuclear-War/dp/0143109421
ok I'm tired of arguing with you, there is no point to this.
If you really want to read up on facts and the truth have a read of this book by South Korean professor Soh:
Chunghee Sarah Soh's (2009) book "The Comfort Women" and LEARN that Japan had no policy to coerce women into prostitution:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Comfort-Women-Postcolonial-Sexuality/dp/0226767779
C. Sarah Soh is professor of anthropology at San Francisco State University and the author of Women in Korean Politics.
>Nuclear weapons have been the greatest agents of peace in all of humanity history
This is the most ridiculous, delusional thing I've ever heard. Nuclear weapons incinerated hundreds of thousands of people on the spot and poisoned tens of thousands more over decades. You should read about people who have actually had to survive nuclear warfare before making such a naive statement.
As for acting as a deterrent that's just as ridiculous. The Soviet Union posed no threat to the United States or Western Europe after losing 27 million people in WWII. US officials created the Cold War because of their insistence on global hegemony. Anti-imperialism always has been and always will be the only "agent of peace", not nightmarish weapons of death and destruction.