Hiroshima Maidens

Hiroshima Maidens: The Story of Twenty-Five Remarkable Women and Their Heroic Journey to America

Hiroshima Maidens

by Rodney Barker

ISBN: 0670806099
Viking Publishing, 1985
240 pp, Paperback

Among the historically significant but mostly forgotten aftermaths of World War II was the Hiroshima Maidens Project, a humanitarian effort that sent 25 young women who had suffered severe facial and body burns in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima to America in the mid-1950s for reconstructive surgery, which was still relatively undeveloped in Japan.

The project - controversial at the time in both America and Japan — was organized by several people and organizations, most notably Japanese Methodist minister Koyoshi Tanimoto, American political journalist Norman Cousins and The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a U.S.-based Quaker organization founded in 1917 to promote peace, humanitarian relief, and social justice.

Author Rodney Barker spent five years researching this book (1979-84), going back and forth between America and Japan and interviewing all 25 Maidens, Cousins, doctors and nurses from Mt. Sinai Hospital where the operations were conducted, the Maidens' interpreters and host families and a host of other connected people. He also most likely interviewed the Rev. Tanimoto, although this has not been 100% confirmed. Barker focuses primarily on three of the maidens' stories.

Notably, Rodney Barker's family in Darien, Connecticut, hosted two of the Hiroshima Maidens during their time in America, and there is a photograph in the book of Barker at the age of nine with the two in his house; Suzue Oshima (mistakenly ID'd as Suzue Hiyama in the book) and Misako Kannabe. Barker's family were Quakers. His acquaintance with the Maidens in the early years surely helped him build the trust he needed to get candid interviews with the Maidens in later years.

Readers expecting to ease into the book are in for an unexpectedly powerful, out-of-the-blue punch in the solar plexus, even before the first chapter. The prelude section might make you hate the American media even more than most people do now. The callousness of some members of the media is inexhaustible.

After that, Barker, who cannot be blamed for what is described in the prelude, examines the Hiroshima bombing, life after the bomb, the international effort to help the 25 women selected, their approximately 18 months of medical treatment in America, aspects of the cultural exchange and the legacy of the mission. There is compassion, insight and plenty of actions and decisions to ponder of people who rallied for and against the humanitarian efforts.

As you would expect, some of the Maidens fared better than others, both in their reconstructive surgeries and in their ability to adapt to life afterward. There was hope. There was despair.

Refreshingly, since the book was written in 1985, there is none of the vitriolic hatred of America that is de rigueur in books written today about the war.

Review by Marshall Hughes, author of Rural Reflections: What 11 Years in Provincial Japan Taught Me.

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Goodbye Madam Butterfly Sex Marriage and the Modern Japanese Woman

Japan Book Review: Goodbye Madam Butterfly: Sex, Marriage and the Modern Japanese Woman

Goodbye Madam Butterfly

by Sumie Kawakami

ISBN: 978-0974199535
Chin Music Press, 2007
221 pp; hardcover

Loveless, sexless and often hopeless, yet they keep trudging along.

Goodbye Madam Butterfly, clearly named with a nod to John Luther Long's famous 1898 short story Madam Butterfly, is a book based on author Sumie Kawakami's early 2000s interviews with Japanese women who volunteered their sad stories, most all of whom thought their stories merely mundane.

After the interviews, Kawakami came to the conclusion that, "while the sex industry maintains a high profile in Japan, the nation doesn't seem to be having much actual sex."

Like Long's book (later turned into the Puccini 1904 three-act Italian opera Madama Butterfly), things are bleak, but not quite as depressing and anger-inducing as the original Madame Butterfly. It seems there is a lot of "gaman" (enduring) among Japanese women.

Most of the women interviewed in this book are divorced single mothers, although some are still married and some don't have children. If you know Japanese culture well, you can guess most of the reasons why there is not much sex going on.

Kawakami tells 11 tales from her interviews with the women. Actually, one story is told from the perspective of a man who runs a clinic for male "sex volunteers." One of his (unpaid) volunteers sees his job as a kind of "rehabilitation program" for women not getting regular sex. He handles (so to speak) all kinds of women.

"…we can never fail, even if they are very fat, very ugly or physically disabled," he said. How altruistic of him.

The chapters are unrelated to each other, other than having lack-of-sex related themes.

While in some books skipping the preface isn't a bad idea, doing so with the book would be a mistake. There is a lot of good background information and explanation for the reasons of what is upcoming.

Readers might expect that since the book was written by a woman who interviewed unhappy women, that men would really come in for a kicking. Well, yes, they do, but the blame for the unhappiness seems to be shared pretty equally. Also, the way some women treat other women will make you cringe.

Kawakami's writing style is simple and direct. There is little to no analysis, either of each individual case or of Japanese society in general. Readers may wish there had been a bit of analysis, but that didn't happen.

Final note: How little sex is happening in Japan? In early 2026 the Japanese government announced that the number of children in Japan has declined…for the 44th straight year.

Review by Marshall Hughes, author of Rural Reflections: What 11 Years in Provincial Japan Taught Me.

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Memoirs of a Kamikaze Book Review

Japan Book Review: Memoirs of a Kamikaze: A World War II Pilot's Inspiring Story of Survival, Honor and Reconciliation

Memoirs of a Kamikaze

by Kazuo Odachi

ISBN: 978-4-8053-1575-0
Tuttle Publishing, 2020
192 pp; hardcover

"Our order was simple: die."

What were the mindsets and motivations of Japan's World War II kamikaze pilots? Since it is impossible to ask "successful" kamikaze pilots, we'll have to go with the words of their "unsuccessful" brothers, the ones who didn't die. Were these pilots all really volunteers?

Kamikaze Kazuo Odachi, the author who survived eight suicide missions because he was unable to find targets worth killing himself for, said he and his fellow pilots did indeed volunteer…"as if we had a choice."

Memoirs of a Kamikaze is a fascinating look into the life of a brave, altruistic and resilient, if not fatalistic, warrior.
Odachi joined the military at age 16 wanting to become a pilot and defend the honor of Japan. He didn't join the kamikaze corps; he was gently pushed into a corner where he had little choice.
The first half of the book takes the reader from his volunteering to join the military, through his training as a zero pilot to his last, aborted mission. He was wheeling his zero down the runway with a specific target in mind when he his mission was called off. The war had ended.

The second half of the book is about Odachi after he returns from the war. He had actually decided to stay in Taiwan for the rest of his life, becoming a farmer and marrying a local girl, but American troops came to the village where he was and put the kibosh on that idea. Readers interested solely in the kamikaze part of the book may be tempted to stop reading at the halfway point, but Odachi's life proves to be interesting until the end.

He becomes a police officer in Tokyo and steadily works his way up the chain of command, becoming a top-notch investigator and solving some important and famous cases. The last part of the book focuses on his life-long love of kendo, and even that is informative, insightful and entertaining at times.

Odachi himself didn't write the book. After having kept his kamikaze background secret for the better part of 70 years, he finally opened up at age 87 and told two authors his story. The book was originally written in Japanese, then translated into English in 2020. The translators did a remarkable job with the voice used throughout the book. Odachi's voice changes from sounding like a teenaged kamikaze pilot at the start of the book, to sounding like a middle-aged police detective and finally sounding like a wise, sharp-minded kendo master approaching 90.

Odachi's strength of mind is inspiring. The book has numerous interesting historical insights and perspectives.
Reading this book will make many people wish they could have shared a meal with him and picked his brain, and that is the sign of a worthwhile book.

Review by Marshall Hughes, author of Rural Reflections: What 11 Years in Provincial Japan Taught Me.

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Japan's Longest Day Book Review

Japan Book Review: Japan's Longest Day: Intrigue, Treason and Emperor Hirohito's Fateful Decision to Surrender

Japan's Longest Day

by Kazutoshi Hando and Yukinobu Hoshino

ISBN: 978-4-8053-1779-2
Tuttle Publishing, 2023 (English version)
480 pp; paperback

In the closing days of World War II, a few days after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had completely eviscerated any faint hopes that Japan could win or even continue the war, the Japanese cabinet met to discuss and vote on the surrender of Japan and acceptance of the conditions set out in the Potsdam Conference. The vote was a tie, and nobody knew what to do or what was next.

Finally, Emperor Hirohito took decisive action, telling the cabinet members that the war had been lost and Japan would agree to the surrender terms. The fighting would end.

However, not everyone agree. In fact, some high-ranking military leaders decided to try to overthrow Hirohito and his planned surrender, continuing the war until every single Japanese was dead, if necessary. That was the only "honorable" possibility. Known historically as the Kyujo Incident, Japan's Longest Day is about this incident.

The day in question was August 14-15, 1945. Hirohito's recorded announcement of surrender was to be played on the 15th. On the night of the 14th Major Kenji Hatanaka and his men spent several hours searching for Hirohito's recording, a recording which was to be played for the nation at noon the next day. Unable to find the recording, the men occupied the NHK Building in an attempt to prevent the broadcast. Hatanaka had support from some factions of the military, but not quite enough to complete his coup. He abandoned the idea, went outside and killed himself.
It is important to know that while the general story is fairly well documented, parts of this graphic novel are speculation. The author opines that Hirohito had been blackmailed from the start to not oppose the war, even though he was generally against it. Potential historical reasons are given.

Two movies have been made about the Kyujo story: The 1967 film entitled, "Japan's Longest Day" and the 2015 film entitled, "The Emperor in August." Both movies are done in Japanese.

The overly picky could point out a few minor annoyances with the manga. First, there are half a dozen or so typos. Secondly, and perhaps it is a necessity and not an annoyance, is that the reader is swamped with many names and titles to keep straight.

One interesting touch is that the manga opens backwards from Western tomes, meaning the spine is on the right, not the left; so, the manga opens like old-style Japanese books did. This add to the authentic Japanese feeling of the manga, which was originally published in Japanese.

Japan's Longest Day is a gripping look at the anatomy of political decision-making under extreme duress. It shows that wars' conclusions can be as perilous and uncertain as wars' geneses. History buffs will be intrigued.

Review by Marshall Hughes, author of Rural Reflections: What 11 Years in Provincial Japan Taught Me.

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Mashi: The Unfulfilled Baseball Dreams of Masanori Murakami

Japan Book Review: Mashi: The Unfulfilled Baseball Dreams of Masanori Murakami, the First Japanese Major Leaguer

Mashi: The Unfulfilled Baseball Dreams of Masanori Murakami, the First Japanese Major Leaguer

by Robert K. Fitts

ISBN: 978-1-4962-1951-0
University of Nebraska Press, 2014
232 pp; paperback

Part-pioneer, part-legend, part wide-eyed innocent kid and (unintentionally) part-baseball troublemaker, Japan's Masanori "Mashi" Murakami had one of the most interesting and consequential careers in baseball history.

In 1964, the Nankai Hawks of Japan's Pacific League sent their promising 19-year-old left-handed pitcher with two other young players to America to improve their skills. While the two other players struggled, Murakami thrived for the Class A (low minor leagues) Fresno Giants, the San Francisco Giants' affiliate.

On August 29, Murakami struck out 10 of the 12 batters he faced for a four-inning save. By September 1st, he was pitching in the majors.

The S.F. Giants, deep in a pennant race, desperately needed a left-handed reliever, so bypassing their AA and AAA players, they shockingly called up Murakami. Murakami was thrust into high-pressure situations armed with little more than a savage curveball and pinpoint control. He spoke very little English and knew next to nothing about America.

At that season's end, the Giants offered Murakami a contract for the 1965 season. He quickly signed, even though he was then unable to read English. Problematically, he was already under contract to return to the Nankai Hawks for the 1965 season. The conflict quickly drew the attention of both Japan and America's baseball commissioners, and a legal battle ensued.

It was finally decided that Mashi would pitch for San Francisco for one more year, then return to Japan. Still, the bad blood between the two commissioners and the two leagues resulted in no more Japanese players being allowed to play in America for 30 years. The next Japanese to play in America was the famous Hideo Nomo.

Author Fitts' research for the book is remarkable. He interviewed Murakami three times over a period of 10 years, and gained access to Murakami's diaries. Other players and team personnel made themselves available for interviews, too, and Fitts must have spent many hours poring through old newspaper clippings.

The details on a number of famous incidents – for example the Giants-Dodgers game in 1965 where Giants' star pitcher Juan Marichal cracked Dodgers' catcher John Roseboro over the head with his bat - are fantastic. As a former sportswriter myself who grew up near San Francisco, I knew a lot about this incident, but still got some new information from Fitts.

The book is not just about baseball. There are numerous insights into 1960s social turmoil, but not enough to slow down the pace of the book. Of course, Murakami's personal life is covered, too, starting from when he was just four years old.

The appendix (filled with Murakami's stats) and attributions to his research are impressive.

Note: Mashi is one of three books written by Fitts about Japan and baseball. The others are Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, and Assassination During the 1934 Tour of Japan, and Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Baseball. These books can be purchased by clicking on the links above.

Review by Marshall Hughes, author of Rural Reflections: What 11 Years in Provincial Japan Taught Me.

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A Geek in Japan Book Review

Japan Book Review: A Geek in Japan: Discovering the Land of Manga, Anime, Zen, and the Tea Ceremony

A Geek in Japan: Discovering the Land of Manga, Anime, Zen, and the Tea Ceremony

by Hector Garcia

ISBN: 978-4-8053-1129-5
Tuttle Publishing, 2010
160 pp; paperback

A Geek in Japan is a vibrant, visually stunning guide exploring Japanese culture through the eyes of, it would appear, a knowledgeable, hardcore Japanophile, who melds tradition and modernity with enthusiasm and insight.

Helping the book's appeal is its large size of 19x25 cm, or 7.5x10 inches. This allow for hundreds of large, colorful and easy-to-see photos. The sidebars and infographics are equally impressive.

A Geek in Japan

The book covers a lot of ground, starting with the origins of Japanese culture, the traditional arts and the unique Japanese character, including the famous work culture. Then, the geekier parts kick in with sections on society today, the world of manga and anime (what would a book about geeks and Japan be without discussing manga and anime?), modern music and media, and finally travel in Japan in general and in Tokyo in specific.

One of the book's strong suits is its handling of Japanese aesthetics and values; for example ideas such as wabi-sabi (the art and beauty of imperfection) and omotenashi (hospitality), which are found in everything from architecture to interpersonal relationships. Of course, Japan's two major religions of Shinto and Buddhism are discussed, including how they coexist and still influence festivals and daily rituals.

While most of the book is fun and entertaining, there are a few places that dip into the darker side of Japan; for example, suicides and their aftermath, especially for those who cease their existence by jumping in front of trains in Tokyo. Sometimes, their families are fined up to ¥100 million "to cover the cost of cleaning services and delays across the lines."

There are only two possible "issues" about the book, and both are pretty insignificant.

First, since the book was published in 2010, there are a few things that are a bit dated. Tsukiji, long known as the place for 5 a.m. trips to see the active fish market, has closed down. Also, while listing "current" singers and groups, the names Orenji Renge and Kumi Koda among others are mentioned. Today's young and hip probably don't know these names. Also, Yamamba and other short-lived fashions are a bit out of date.

Second, while an impressive number of subjects are covered, none are covered in depth, as no section extends beyond one page. Still, that is a little like criticizing McDonalds for not serving gourmet food: that's not the purpose of the whole thing.

Even self-declared Japanophiles can learn something from the book. After all, who among us can quickly explain the difference between gothic, amaloli, classic, wa, qi and erotic lolitas?

Overall, this book never disappoints.

A Geek in Japan is one of a series of books by Tuttle Publishing. There are also similar looking and similarly laid out "Geek" books about Korea, Thailand, China and Indonesia.

Review by Marshall Hughes, author of Rural Reflections: What 11 Years in Provincial Japan Taught Me.

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The Mad Kyoto Shoe Swapper

Japan Book Review: The Mad Kyoto Shoe Swapper and Other Short Stories

The Mad Kyoto Shoe Swapper and Other Short Stories

by Rebecca Otowa

ISBN: 978-4-8053-1551-4
Tuttle Publishing, 2020
160 pp; hardback

Short stories that are written about Japan by non-Japanese with decades of experience living in the Land of the Rising Sun are sometimes a mixed bag, but more often than not interesting to read and ponder. Rebecca Otowa's latest work fits in the “interesting to read and ponder” category.

Otowa, the author and illustrator of this book, melds a variety of locales and eras with her own life experiences in telling 13 well-crafted stories. The stories, all of which are set in Japan, range in length from eight to 18 pages.

Most of the stories are set in modern times, although there are stories set in the 1950s, the 1940s and one which is set in the early 17th century. A few of the stories are based on Japanese history and/or Otowa's family history.

Perhaps the reason she can write in such broad strokes covering such ground is her own life story. Otowa was born in America, studied Japanese language and culture in Australia, moved permanently to Japan in the late 1970s, obtained an M.A. in Japanese Buddhism and has been married for 40 years to a 19th generation heir to a Japanese country estate.

Included in the writing are stories touching on hoarding, suspected murders, regret at helping continue generational family abuse, suicide and a 15-year-old's desperate arranged marriage to a 32-year-old war-ravaged solder suffering from PTS. There are also a ghost or two mixed in some stories. Although it is difficult to narrow her themes to just a few, fears of ageing and hardships for Japanese women are themes readers will see more than once.

Otowa's deep knowledge of and experiences with Japan and its culture and people give her a special insight and allows her to write with such depth. People who know Japan well will appreciate this book most, although knowledge of Japan is not necessary to learn and enjoy. Her readers, with their varying levels of knowledge about Japan, will understand the books at different levels.

The usually-clever endings to the stories will alternately lead the reader to feel surprise, disappointment, sadness and at times, wistfulness. The writing is tight, with no red herrings or superfluous characters.

Review by Marshall Hughes, author of Rural Reflections.

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We'll Prescribe You a Cat

Japan Book Review: We'll Prescribe You a Cat

We'll Prescribe You a Cat

by Syou Ishida

ISBN: 978-0-593-81874-9
Penguin Random House LLC, 2024
297 pp; hardback

Five patients who are struggling with life's difficulties find their way one by one to the mysterious Nakagyo Kokoro Clinic for the Soul in the back streets of Kyoto. Each meets the same seemingly uncaring receptionist and not-mentally-all-there doctor, and each of the five is given a two-week "prescription" of a cat to solve their problems. Insightful readers can perhaps glean some of this just from the title of the book.

The patients consist of a troubled elementary school girl, two floundering businessmen, a hard-charging working woman and a young geisha; each with their own sets of challenges. All five are puzzled and a little apprehensive about their unique "medicine," and things go haywire for a few of them before the cats' magic starts to work.

Western readers familiar with the Japanese concept of yokai (often defined as a class of supernatural entities and spirits in Japanese folklore) will see a bit of that in the book, especially in the last two of the five chapters. That out-of-norm storytelling is part of the charm of the book.

The cats (Bee, Margot, Koyuki, Tank and Mimita, among a few others) do the magic, but most of the stories are focused on their short-term owners. The cats don't speak or use telepathy or magic.

Being a cat lover will likely raise the chances of readers enjoying the book, although being a feline fanatic is certainly not necessary to be amused by Ishida's writing. The book was originally written in Japanese and some might complain that a few things get fuzzed up in the translation. Perhaps some of that can be explained by people who don't get the yokai concept. Offbeat and quirky are words frequent used by Westerners when discussing Japanese fiction, and both are appropriate for this book.

Originally written for adults, children can also enjoy the book as it is an easy read because even though it checks in at almost 300 pages, the book size is only 5.2 by 7.25 inches (13.2 cm by 18.4 cm).

The book is gaining international acclaim, and the back cover claims that plans are in place for the book to be published in 17 languages. To date, it has been published in English, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and Polish.

I wonder how cats say "meow" in Polish.

There is a follow up to this book called, We'll Prescribe You Another Cat.

Review by Marshall Hughes, author of Rural Reflections: What 11 Years in Provincial Japan Taught Me.

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The Final Martyrs Book Review

Japan Book Review: The Final Martyrs

The Final Martyrs

by Endo Shusaku

ISBN: 0-8048-1956-4
Tuttle Publishing, 1993
199 pp; paperback

Final Martyrs is a collection of 11 Shusaku Endo short stories (11 to 30 pages) written between 1959 and 1985. In this collection, Endo, best known as the author of Silence (later turned into the Martin Scorsese movie of the same name), touches on his oft-used themes such as loneliness, illness, fear of aging, spiritual doubt, divorce and the martyrdom of Christians, particularly in Japan.

As is the case in many of his books, Endo's heroes are often the weakest and most cowardly of us all. At the very least, they are usually badly flawed and living in sad, hopeless situations. However, upon final review, it turns out that the weakest among us are sometimes the strongest, no matter how wretched their lives have become.

Endo's stories often have an autobiographical nuance. He was lonely as a child of divorce living in China, was hospitalized for three years as an adult (split between France and Japan), had a lung removed as a result of tuberculosis and died at 72, which is 13 years younger than the average Japanese at death.

The titular Final Martyrs story and The Last Supper will possibly be the most emotional stories for the reader; the first is a story of Christian martyrs in Japan and the second is a brutal World War II tale.

As for his take on aging, two of the stories are about older men and their sexual yearnings. One is entitled A 50-Year-old Man (partly about a 50s man who joins a dancing studio knowing that he is completely out of place) and the other in entitled A 60-Year-old-Man (about an elderly man who is tempted by a flirtatious high school girl).

Endo sometimes uses the same character in multiple books, and he does so again in this collection. Readers who have read Sachiko (see review here) will recognize the name and story of Father Kolbe, a real-life Catholic priest who served in Japan before being killed at Auschwitz.

Like in a number of his books, the endings of these short stories can leave the reader angry, filled with hope for the world or just plain confused. Often called the Japanese Graham Greene, Endo is a master storyteller. This book will not let down Endo fans.

Review by Marshall Hughes, author of Rural Reflections: What 11 Years in Provincial Japan Taught Me.

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Norwegian Wood by Murakami Haruki

Japan Book Review: Norwegian Wood

Norwegian Wood

by Murakami Haruki

ISBN: 978-0375704024
Vintage, 2000
298 pp; paperback

While Death is an ever-present companion in Murakami's fiction, lurking just out of sight of the mundane world (and often down a well), the dark, impenetrable wood of suicide is peculiar to Norwegian Wood, perhaps his most famous novel. Its date of publication, 1987, puts it inside the speculative economic 'bubble' period in Japan. 1987 seems to have been a particularly angst-filled time for Japanese postmodern writers, for in the same year Banana Yoshimoto published her first novel Kitchen. While this does not deal with suicide, it mirrors Norwegian Wood's focus on the struggles of those whom Death leaves behind in the mundane world, to carry on living as best they can, and to make sense of life and death in any way that works for them.

Norwegian Wood

Tōru Watanabe, the I-narrator of Norwegian Wood, inhabits two time periods in this story - the framing world of the late '80s, in which he is a financially successful, yet emotionally adrift, author, and his earlier, eventful university years. The bulk of the novel takes place in the late 1960s, when, as a young adult, he has been reunited with childhood friend Naoko, the suicide of whose boyfriend in high school has left her mentally unstable. Watanabe finds his feelings for this girl rekindled, but when she leaves Tokyo to enter a sanatorium near Kyoto he finds himself drawn into the world of the offbeat Midori, who is the vital, worldly foil to Naoko's ethereal, tenuous existence. In the unconscious push and pull between these two poles, the immortal lyrics of the Beatles' Norwegian Wood gain their purchase: "I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me." For Watanabe is in thrall to both females, and in a sense they represent two basic human responses to extremity: the death urge and the sex urge, Thanatos and Eros. The emotionally crippled Naoko cannot internalise sexual experience, while Midori thrives on it, even if most of it takes place in her fevered imaginings.

Indeed, the novel aroused comment in Japan for both its frank treatment of suicide and depiction of youthful sexual fumblings, the latter of which has surely enlightened a whole generation of high-school students in Japan. Some might argue that this novel created the inflexible mould for Murakami's subsequent treatment of female characters: their sexuality is rarely left unexplored in his later works, and an uncharitable critic could argue that much else of them is. (None of his novels, for example, has had a female voice: Sputnik Sweetheart, ostensibly focusing on female protagonist Sumire, still has a male narrator as a framing device.)

Norwegian Wood, as I have already suggested, is different from Murakami's other novels to date, and not only in terms of its subject matter. Unlike his previous, fourth novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, whose narrative alternates between worlds of fantasy and 'reality', this work purposely does not employ the occult as some balance to the jazz-and-whiskey Tokyo urban jungle that characterises Murakami's take on modern 'internationalised' society. The late-60s setting - a time of soul-searching for Japan's student elite, under the influence of European and American intellectuals - reveals much about Murakami the writer as a young man. He pointedly prefers Fitzgerald and Chandler to Ōe and Mishima, rejecting the aesthetic of his fellow countrymen, and regards personal philosophical enquiry as inherently superior to social revolution, as the latter is, for him, inevitably self-undermining and hypocritical. (The 'other' Murakami, Ryū, explores similar themes in his bitingly funny social critique 69.)

Watanabe may never be able to fathom the depths of Naoko's despair, but he makes a sincere attempt to understand her. In a similar way, perhaps, Murakami never quite explains the enigma of what it means to live in a postmodern, seemingly arbitrary, ideologically vacant society, but in this his fifth novel he refines his still-ongoing examination of the millennial human condition. In this sense, Norwegian Wood is a reasonably significant late-20th-century novel, and in terms of what it reveals about Murakami the writer, an important one for his fans.

Review by Richard Donovan.

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The Snow Woman and Other Yokai Stories from Japan

Japan Book Review: The Snow Woman and Other Yokai Stories from Japan

The Snow Woman

by Noboru Wada

ISBN: 978-4-8053-1758-7
Tuttle Publishing, 2024
286 pp; paperback

If you are familiar with the words kappa, yamamba, enma and yurei you will likely enjoy Noboru Wada's 2004 The Snow Woman. If not, well, you may enjoy this book anyway, especially if you know just the word yokai. Yokai are Japanese ghosts, goblins or other supernatural beings. They can appear in many forms, including animal-like figures, humanoids or, sometimes, inanimate objects. They can quickly change form and are associated with supernatural phenomena and/or feelings of agitation or trepidation.

This book is a collection of 77 traditional short yokai stories, mostly from the old Japanese province of Shinano, now called Nagano Prefecture. The purpose of most of the stories seem to be to entertain or maybe perplex readers, although some of the stories have clear, moral teachings like Aesop's Fables.

The Snow Woman and Other Yokai Stories from Japan

Don't worry if your yokai vocabulary is lacking - there is a handy glossary at the beginning of the book explaining 27 yokai-related words. If you still don't understand the concept of Yokai, the closest Western equivalent might be of well-told, scary campfire stories. Bring your own s'mores.

While the vast majority of stories deal with old, traditional yokai at some level, a few of the stories seem completely unrelated. For example, there is a story about World War II beheadings which is more macabre than yokai.

Another story also references World War II. Some stories have interesting names, i.e., "The Smelly Priest and the Yamamba" and "The Man Who Could Drink Two Quarts of Soy Sauce." Upon finishing a few of the stories, some readers may mumble, "What the heck was that all about?"

Most of the stories are one to three pages, and only a few stretch to as long as five pages, so if you aren't enjoying a particular story you needn't worry as it will conclude soon. There are also about 25 full-page illustrations which are entertaining.

There is a story that alludes to "ghosts who would stroke people's buttocks," but readers end up having to be satisfied with a story of a ghost who stroked people's faces. Oh, well.

People of all ages can enjoy this book, and no real special knowledge of Japan is needed.

Don't be an onibaba, go out a get a copy of this book.

Review by Marshall Hughes, author of Rural Reflections.

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Onomatope: The Fantastic World of Japanese Symbolic Words

Japan Book Review: Onomatope: The Fantastic World of Japanese Symbolic Words

Onomatope

by Ono Masahiro

ISBN: 978-4-8163-6734-2
Natsumesha Co. Ltd., 2019
208 pp; paperback

Meow….Woof woof….Crash!....Whoosh!
What just happened? Perhaps you imagined a cat and a dog getting in a fight, something falling over and the cat running away.
You concluded this just from reading four onomatope (or more correctly onomatopoeia) words, words that imitate the natural sounds of things. The words sound like what they describe.

Onomatope: The Fantastic World of Japanese Symbolic Words

Those who are already somewhat familiar with the Japanese language might know commonly-used words found in this delightful book, words like perapera (fluent), dokidoki (the heart pounding with excitement) and piipoo piipoo (the sounds of ambulance sirens). All of these are considered onomatope and are found in these pages.

With only a few exceptions, most of the Onomatope are given one page and fit the following format: on the top is the number (of the 201 discussed onomatope), followed by the katakata for the onomatope, followed by the romaji for the onomatope, followed by a cute, near-half-page drawing of the word used in a one-frame cartoon, followed by the kanji definition of the word, followed by that definition in romaji. Then at the bottom are example sentences using the onomatope in Japanese (kanji and kana) and the translation in English.

A greedy reader like me might have liked to have had kana for the kanji in the example sentences, but perhaps that is asking a bit too much.

Contents are divided into 10 categories, i.e., expressions and feelings, body movements, degrees and manners etc. The last chapter is dedicated to sounds, for example sounds that animals make. Did you know that horses say "hihiin" or that elephants say "paoon?" Shaka shaka is the sound that tambourines or maracas make.

To tell the complete, unvarnished truth, some of the words listed don’t really fit the onomatope definition, but readers can work around that. For example, assari is said to be "someone or something being straight forward and plain." Huh?
The book has plenty of spacing and is visually pleasing and, well, "fun."

In case you want to quicky find an onomatope that you previously learned, there is a handy alphabetical index in the back of the book. While not really a text book, this book can certainly be used that way. Its small size (5.8 x 4.1 inches) makes it easy to slide in your pocket and pull out any time.

Review by Marshall Hughes, author of Rural Reflections.

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The Samurai Shusaku Endo

Japan Book Review: The Samurai

The Samurai

by Endo Shusaku

ISBN: 978-1-80533-03-87
Pushkin Press, 1980
368 pp; paperback

Set in the same 1600s era as his more famous book Silence, author Endo Shusaku again weaves a riveting story based on historical people and events. Silence is the more famous of the two stories Endo wrote about Japan's "Christian Century" as it was later turned into a renowned movie by Martin Scorsese.

The Samurai

This story focuses on two main characters. One is a low-ranking rural warrior, samurai Rokuemon Hasekura, and the other is Franciscan friar Father Velasco, who has spent some years proselytizing in Japan. Hasekura, the eponymous samurai who is docile and duty-bound, is plucked out of obscurity to travel to Nueva Espana (Mexico) to try to open trade with Mexico. He hopes that a successful mission will help his clan get back their ancestral lands which they lost while fighting on the losing side of a recent war. Velasco, who is overly impressed with his own piety, will do anything to help Japan become a Christian nation, and to be named bishop of Japan by the Pope. Yes, his motives are sometimes found to be less than pure.

The reader definitely doesn't have to be a follower of religious history, or really even Japanese history, to be captured by the story. Those that are such followers, might find the real-life complications between the Jesuit and the Franciscan Catholics interesting…and sad.

The samurai and Velasco, who is fluent in Japanese, are the first to set sail from Japan using Japan's untested shipbuilding capability. Both survive the trip, but others do not. Mexico fails to give either Hasekura or Velasco what they want, and their multi-year voyage continues.

As with most of his other books, Endo's writing engrosses the reader with its characters, whether those characters are sympathetic characters or not. The reader must get used to Endo switching between first- and third-person narratives, but will get the hang of it eventually.

There is a helpful and quite interesting seven-page postscript written by Van C. Gessel (the translator of the book from the original Japanese), which discusses how close Endo's characters are to real-life individuals. Don't pass over the postscript.

After a bit of a slow start, readers will be moved by the dilemmas, decisions and disappointments that the main characters (and pretty much all of the auxiliary characters) must deal with. The reader could easily feel sorry for perhaps every character in the book, but life was not easy for many people in 1600s Japan as it was transitioning into the Tokugawa shogunate.

While moving constantly between historical adventure, travel narrative, political drama and varying interpretations of faith, The Samurai is challenging, thought provoking and deep.

Review by Marshall Hughes, author of Rural Reflections.

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Japan Book Review Rural Reflections

Japan Book Review: Rural Reflections: What Provincial Life in Japan Taught Me in 1990-2001

Rural Reflections: What Provincial Life in Japan Taught Me in 1990-2001

by Marshall Hughes

ISBN: 979-8-9925344-1-2
McNay-Garwood Publishing, Tokyo, 2025
233 pp; paperback

Marshall Hughes taught English at Japanese public schools for more than 25 years as well as at educational institutions in South Korea, China and Cambodia. Hughes has a background in professional sports journalism and he has been publishing a large number of book reviews in various online publications including the legendary Japan Visitor as well as currently on the Goods from Japan site - the site on which you are reading right now.

Hughes grew up in the Bay Area, California and spent a good part of the 1980s in Hawaii, working as sports journalist.

Rural Reflections: What Provincial Life in Japan Taught Me in 1990-2001

Feeling restless after too many years playing golf on a public court at his favorite Hawaiian beach, Hughes applied at the JET Programme (Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme), looking for new experiences across the Pacific.

Hughes was hired for his first stint as JET Assistance Language Teacher (ALT) in 1990.

JET ALTs are often placed in quite rural areas and that's exactly where Hughes was sent. He started out in a small town named Yaita in Tochigi Prefecture, a long ride on local trains north of Tokyo.

In Rural Reflections, the recently retired Hughes details the first 11 years of his living and teaching in the Japanese countryside.

After his initial year in Yaita, Hughes continued his work at middle and high schools in a number of small towns in Ibaraki Prefecture. All those towns, including Yaita are still far off the tourist path today. Back in the 1990s, they were absolute backwaters. Surrounded by large rice paddies and with some unremarkable hills beyond them, those towns offered little attractions.

Tokyo fashion items of the time like T-Shirts featuring ridiculously nonsensical English slogans printed on their front certainly made it to those small towns. But that was about it in terms of modern influences.

Hughes' job as Assistant Language Teacher consisted of supporting Japanese English language teachers with their work. Those Japanese teachers had in most cases a rather poor command of English. Hughes's job was to introduce some real native English to the classroom.

His book details how that worked out in practice in rural Japan. In anecdotical style, Hughes recounts a great number of experiences in that field, some very funny, some rather sad.

Hughes' life as assistant teacher in the countryside was rarely exciting. In the book, he does however provide a great deal of interesting observations of how his life, his school work, his relations to the Japanese teachers, to his students etc. played out.

From the banality of school board meetings often led by clueless officials to the large number of rather awkward / strange / boneheaded Japanese teachers he had to work with to both talented and rebellious students, the book provides a lot of anecdotes that bring those years in the Japanese boondocks vividly back to life.

Hughes is clearly very fond of his memories of those days. Some of those memories may have actually been rather troublesome in the day, like him getting excluded from various school ceremonies simply because as a foreigner he was thought not to fit into the picture by some Japanese officials.

With the distance of the years, Hughes more or less amusingly notes those incidents as peculiarities of Japanese rural life back in the 1990s.

By now, even the tiniest towns in the Japanese countryside try to snatch their slice of pie off the booming foreign tourist industry. There will always be some sort of attraction... the ruins of an old samurai castle or something.

But what actually living in such a town as a foreigner would be like, those e-bike tours arranged by the local tourism promotion office don't reveal.

Marshall Hughes' book fills you in on that. Though he talks about the 1990s, many things may not have changed much since then. Except that everyone is staring at his smartphone now, even in the deepest of the boondocks.

Review by Johannes Schonherr.

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Off the Beaten Tracks in Japan

Japan Book Review: Off the Beaten Tracks in Japan

Off the Beaten Tracks in Japan

by John Dougill

ISBN: 978-1-61172-082-2
Stone Bridge Press, 2023
308 pp; paperback

After traversing the full length of Hokkaido, Honshu (Japan's main island) and Kyushu along the Japan Sea by train, John Dougill has skillfully written about what he felt, saw and experienced during his exploits. His travels are reminiscent of authors Alan Booth, who walked the length of Japan, and Will Ferguson, who hitch-hiked the length of Japan. Each later wrote about his undertaking. Booth's The Roads to Sata (1985) is considered a classic, and Ferguson's Hokkaido Highway Blues: Hitchhiking Japan (1998) is another much-loved book.

Off the Beaten Tracks in Japan

As much as possible, Dougill travelled by local trains, making 30 stops from Wakanai (Hokkaido) in the north to Ibusuki (Kagoshima) in the south. It took him three months as he traveled during the early days of the COVID pandemic.

Mixing food, culture, society and relevant local and national history, Dougill gives the reader a good feel for this part of Japan. Like most travel experiences, the best parts are encounters talking with the local people, whose lives and interests are only tangentially related to the Japan of Pokemon, Kabukicho, skyscrapers, and cosplay.

The cities he explored on his trip often had connections to either China, Korea or, occasionally, Russia, owing to the fact that his trip was along a route which faces those countries.

The writing is breezy and filled with interesting tidbits that even true Japanophiles may not know. For example:

• The first Westerner to teach English in Japan was the evocatively named Ranald (cq) McDonald, who snuck into the country in 1848, a time when foreigners were killed or imprisoned for the offence of entering Japan without permission. He pretended to have been shipwrecked, and was eventually returned to America.
• It is said that shogun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi's love for dogs was a factor in "virtually bankrupting" Japan, a bit of an exaggeration, but an interesting morsel of history nonetheless.
• There are four major gaijin (foreigner) cemeteries in Japan; in Hakodate, Kobe, Nagasaki and Yokohama, all of which were treaty ports.

Dougill's perspective might be a bit different than others who have written about these kinds of travels. Whereas most full-length-of-Japan travel writers are in their 20s and 30s, Dougill was around 60. He quotes sage advice that he had heard: "Write about Japan after three weeks or 30 years."; If you have been in Japan a long time, you'll probably understand and agree with this.

Readers might have two minor quibbles with the book; the first being that there are no captions on any of the more than 20 full-page pictures. The maps showing where the author travelled are, however, helpful. Secondly, the author, as is his right, dips his toes into political pronouncements several times. This is fine if you agree with him, not so much if you don't.

This work isn't just for those who know Japan well. Everybody will enjoy Dougill's adventures and misadventures. The pace of the book is just right, not hurried at all. The reader will feel like he/she is on a relaxing yet educational trip through a fascinating, yet rarely-traveled part of Japan.

Review by Marshall Hughes.

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Sachiko by Shusaku Endo Review

Japan Book Review: Sachiko

Sachiko

by Shusaku Endo

ISBN: 978-0231-197311
Colombia University Press, 1982 (Translated into English in 2020)
411 pp; paperback

Set in 1930s and 40s Japan, Sachiko is another of Endo Shusaku's books infused with raw emotions and thought-provoking prose that captivate the reader.

The titular Sachiko is a young girl who enjoys her days growing up in her Catholic Nagasaki community, playing with her Japanese and American friends. Nagasaki, still the home of Japan's largest Catholic community, has been the Catholic capital of Japan since the 16th century. Of course, since 1945 Nagasaki has been known around the world for something else, something that plays prominently in this book. Except for a brief aftermath chapter, the book ends in 1945.

The apple of Sachiko's eye is Shuhei, a somewhat mischievous boy who turns into a want-to-be poet during his college days. Playing it close to the vest regarding Sachiko, he nevertheless has future plans, which do not include going off to war.

Sachiko

The third protagonist is a local priest named Father Kolbe, who is based on the tragic/sacrificial real life of Polish Franciscan priest Maximilian Kolbe who spent the years 1930-36 in Nagasaki. In the book, Kolbe has some interactions with the children, but is not an integral part of their lives. His main contribution to Sachiko was a bookmark he gave her with the words, "Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends," a quote from the Bible which is referenced several times later in the book.

Sachiko, Shuhei, the American boys and Father Kolbe go separate ways early in the book, with the Americans returning to America, Father Kolbe returning to Poland and Shuhei going off to college and then, as the World War II situation in Japan gets increasingly desperate, to serve in the military, much to his chagrin. Sachiko and Shuhei's historic Oura Church, a real church built in 1855 and which still stands today, has told him that for Christians to kill is a sin, so he is left perplexed. Sachiko stays in Nagasaki and eventually goes to college, never forgetting her unrequited love for Shuhei.

For much of the book, the chapters alternate between Sachiko's life obsessing over Shuhei and the life of Father Kolbe in Poland. As in many of Endo's books, the reader will wonder how the various characters will eventually tie together. Sometimes Endo's characters tie together, sometimes they don't.

Endo is a master at putting his characters in untenable positions and letting the reader decide if the characters' resulting actions are heroic or spurred by cowardice. Depending on his work, the answer is not always clear. Think of Endo's Silence, which was made into a well-known Martin Scorsese movie of the same name.

As usual in Endo's novels, there are unanticipated turns at the end of this book, and the reader may be left feeling melancholic. The writing is excellent, the characters believable, and the historical references real.

Review by Marshall Hughes.

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Christianity Social Justice & the Japanese American Incarceration

Japan Book Review: Christianity, Social Justice, and the Japanese American Incarceration during World War II

Christianity, Social Justice, and the Japanese American Incarceration during World War II

by Anne M. Blankenship

ISBN: 978-1-4696-2920-9
The University of North Carolina Press, 2016
282pp; paperback

Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was one of the most famous, and infamous, executive orders in American history. The order forced 120,000 mainly West Coast Japanese-Americans, many of whom were born as U.S. citizens, into relocation camps, starting about 10 weeks after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941.

Of course, many books have been written about this dark period of history, many of them "going inside" the camps and telling of the detainees' stories. Anne M. Blankenship's book has a different take. It discusses the reactions of American Christian Churches to Order 9066, which was signed on February 19, 1942. As readers can probably guess, some churches reacted more lovingly and, well, Christian than other churches.

Leading the way, without a doubt were the Quakers (also known as The Society of Friends). They showed the most love and the most courage. Catholics also show fairly well in the book, with Protestants, depending on denomination, running the gamut from nearing Quaker-levels of help to being too afraid of the government to help much at all, or, in a few cases, doing nothing.

Christianity, Social Justice, and the Japanese American Incarceration during World War II

The Quakers quickly answered the calls from the War Relocation Authority (WRA) for teachers to teach in the camps, although other Quakers opposed this because, "That's helping the government and you ought to resist."

The book focuses on five main areas; the backstory which led to the formation of the camps, the organization of the Christian aid before and during the incarcerations, the building of churches in the camps, the experiences in those churches and, finally, what happened when the Japanese were released.

There was quite a battle and quite the infighting as to whether Japanese Christians should go back to their ethnic enclave churches after their release or try to mix with other churches. The congregants, their pastors, the (mostly) white pastors of their former churches and, unfortunately, even the government had their own ideas.

With so much research done on the book - there are 50 pages of notes to go through at the end - there are bound to be some new insights, conceivably even for those who went through the internment. There are likely thousands of the detainees still living, although the youngest of those would be around 80 years old today. I myself have met dozens of the detainees over the years and have friends whose parents were in the camps.

Blankenship's work cannot possibly be called a "light read" and there are no useless tangents, but those interested in this historical chapter of American history will find the book thorough, thought-provoking, educational, if perhaps a little melancholic. Kudos to the author, by the way, for not injecting her opinions into the book. At no point do readers feel they are being proselytized. Readers cannot discern Blankenship's personal viewpoints, whatever they may be.

Review by Marshall Hughes.

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