Destruction, when massive but not total, engenders rebirth, or reinvention, or both. Japan after World War II is a prime example, a model from which Japan in the wake of March's earthquake-tsunami-meltdown is sure to draw inspiration. What form will this rebirth or reinvention take? ...
THEORY OF LITERATURE AND OTHER CRITICAL WRITINGS, by Natsume Soseki. Columbia University Press, 2009, 287 pp., $50 (hardcover) Natsume Soseki (1867-1916) is said to rank among the world's great 20th-century writers. Many consider him Japan's greatest modern novelist. His books, from the comic "I Am ...
In 1902, an American science writer named Robert Kennedy Duncan wrote a magazine piece titled "Radio-Activity: A New Property of Matter." Its subject is French physicist Henri Becquerel's discovery, in 1896, of the rays that now bear his name. Duncan's tone is so radiant ...
If you chanced to visit Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s website in mid-April, you probably saw a note regarding the utility's tsunami e no taisaku (津波への対策, tsunami policy). Clearly it had been written in more innocent times. Relax, it said in effect. The policy was ...
Slowly the nation wakes from its nightmare. Tokyo Disneyland reopens. A semblance of normality returns, at least to areas outside the stricken zone. It's April. Catastrophe does not stop the cherry trees from blooming; nor can it dampen a certain charged atmosphere that permeates corporate ...
INTO THE LIGHT: An Anthology of Literature by Koreans in Japan. Edited by Melissa L. Wender. University of Hawai'i Press, 2011, 226 pp. $22 (paper) The eight stories in this anthology span nearly 60 years, from 1939, when Korea was a resentful and mutinous Japanese ...
In spring 1997, the American news magazine Time published a special issue titled "The New Japan." The subtitle was "A rising generation of risk-takers and rule-breakers is stirring the country from its slumber." Prominent among the mavericks was a promising young politician named Naoto Kan. Time ...
Something so immense has befallen Japan that it almost defies contemplation, let alone expression. It is a watershed event, shattering lives and the ground they are lived on; challenging also one of the unspoken (and unproven) assumptions underlying civilized life — that konton (混沌, ...
Spring dawns on a shattered Japan. "Not since World War II" is a recurring phrase, and no wonder. Mass destruction accompanied by radiation — what other analogy is big enough? It isn't perfect, but it does shed some light. Japan then — militarist, statist, imperialist ...
Mohammed Bouazizi never lived to see the history he made. He was a Tunisian, young, educated and unemployed, and on Dec. 17, out of sheer rage and frustration, he set himself on fire. He died on Jan. 3. He was 26. Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution, ...
