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Chronicles of My Life

Chronicles of My Life PDF Author: Donald Keene
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231144415
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 203

Book Description
"I sometimes think that if, as the result of an accident, I were to lose my knowledge of Japanese, there would not be much left for me. Japanese, which at first had no connection with my ancestors, my literary tastes, or my awareness of myself as a person, has become the central element of my life." In this eloquent and wholly absorbing memoir, the renowned scholar Donald Keene shares more than half a century of his extraordinary adventures as a student of Japan. Keene begins with an account of his bittersweet childhood in New York; then he describes his initial encounters with Asia and Europe and the way in which World War II complicated that experience. He captures the sights, scents, and sounds of Japan as they first enveloped him, and talks of the unique travels and well-known intellectuals who later shaped the contours of his academic career. Keene traces the movement of his passions with delicacy and subtlety, deftly weaving his love for Japan into a larger narrative about identity and home and the circumstances that led a Westerner to find solace in a country on the opposite side of the world. Chronicles of My Life is not only a fascinating tale of two cultures colliding, but also a thrilling account of the emotions and experiences that connect us all, regardless of our individual origins.

Chronicles of My Life

Chronicles of My Life PDF Author: Donald Keene
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231144415
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 203

Book Description
"I sometimes think that if, as the result of an accident, I were to lose my knowledge of Japanese, there would not be much left for me. Japanese, which at first had no connection with my ancestors, my literary tastes, or my awareness of myself as a person, has become the central element of my life." In this eloquent and wholly absorbing memoir, the renowned scholar Donald Keene shares more than half a century of his extraordinary adventures as a student of Japan. Keene begins with an account of his bittersweet childhood in New York; then he describes his initial encounters with Asia and Europe and the way in which World War II complicated that experience. He captures the sights, scents, and sounds of Japan as they first enveloped him, and talks of the unique travels and well-known intellectuals who later shaped the contours of his academic career. Keene traces the movement of his passions with delicacy and subtlety, deftly weaving his love for Japan into a larger narrative about identity and home and the circumstances that led a Westerner to find solace in a country on the opposite side of the world. Chronicles of My Life is not only a fascinating tale of two cultures colliding, but also a thrilling account of the emotions and experiences that connect us all, regardless of our individual origins.

My Life Between Japan and America

My Life Between Japan and America PDF Author: Edwin Oldfather Reischauer
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 392

Book Description


Kiyo Sato

Kiyo Sato PDF Author: Connie Goldsmith
Publisher: Millbrook Press
ISBN: 1728411645
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 147

Book Description
"Our camp, they tell us, is now to be called a 'relocation center' and not a 'concentration camp.' We are internees, not prisoners. Here's the truth: I am now a non-alien, stripped of my constitutional rights. I am a prisoner in a concentration camp in my own country. I sleep on a canvas cot under which is a suitcase with my life's belongings: a change of clothes, underwear, a notebook and pencil. Why?"—Kiyo Sato In 1941 Kiyo Sato and her eight younger siblings lived with their parents on a small farm near Sacramento, California, where they grew strawberries, nuts, and other crops. Kiyo had started college the year before when she was eighteen, and her eldest brother, Seiji, would soon join the US Army. The younger children attended school and worked on the farm after class and on Saturday. On Sunday, they went to church. The Satos were an ordinary American family. Until they weren't. On December 7, 1941, Japan bombed the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The next day, US president Franklin Roosevelt declared war on Japan and the United States officially entered World War II. Soon after, in February and March 1942, Roosevelt signed two executive orders which paved the way for the military to round up all Japanese Americans living on the West Coast and incarcerate them in isolated internment camps for the duration of the war. Kiyo and her family were among the nearly 120,000 internees. In this moving account, Sato and Goldsmith tell the story of the internment years, describing why the internment happened and how it impacted Kiyo and her family. They also discuss the ways in which Kiyo has used her experience to educate other Americans about their history, to promote inclusion, and to fight against similar injustices.

Not Yo' Butterfly

Not Yo' Butterfly PDF Author: Nobuko Miyamoto
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520380657
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Book Description
Intro -- Relocation, or a travelin' girl -- Don't fence me in -- A tisket, a tasket, a brown and yellow basket... -- From a broken past into the future -- Twice as good -- Shall we dance! -- School daze -- Chop suey -- We shall overcome -- Power to the people -- A single stone, many ripples -- Something about me today -- The people's beat -- A song for ourselves -- Nosotro somos Asiaticos -- Foster children of the Pepsi Generation -- A grain of sand -- Free the land -- What will people think? -- Some things live a moment -- How to mend what's broken -- Women hold up half the sky -- Our own chop suey -- What is the color of love? -- Talk story -- Yuiyo, just dance -- Float hands like clouds -- Deep is the chasm -- To all relations -- Bismillah Ir Rahman Ir Rahim -- The seed of the dandelion -- I dream a garden -- Mottainai : waste nothing -- Black Lives Matter -- Bambutsu : all things connected -- Epilogue.

Speak, Okinawa

Speak, Okinawa PDF Author: Elizabeth Miki Brina
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0525657355
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
A “hauntingly beautiful memoir about family and identity” (NPR) and a young woman's journey to understanding her complicated parents—her mother an Okinawan war bride, her father a Vietnam veteran—and her own, fraught cultural heritage. Elizabeth's mother was working as a nightclub hostess on U.S.-occupied Okinawa when she met the American soldier who would become her husband. The language barrier and power imbalance that defined their early relationship followed them to the predominantly white, upstate New York suburb where they moved to raise their only daughter. There, Elizabeth grew up with the trappings of a typical American childhood and adolescence. Yet even though she felt almost no connection to her mother's distant home, she also felt out of place among her peers. Decades later, Elizabeth comes to recognize the shame and self-loathing that haunt both her and her mother, and attempts a form of reconciliation, not only to come to terms with the embattled dynamics of her family but also to reckon with the injustices that reverberate throughout the history of Okinawa and its people. Clear-eyed and profoundly humane, Speak, Okinawa is a startling accomplishment—a heartfelt exploration of identity, inheritance, forgiveness, and what it means to be an American.

Looking Like the Enemy

Looking Like the Enemy PDF Author: Mary Matsuda Gruenewald
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Book Description
In 1941, Mary Matsuda Gruenewald was a teenage girl who, like other Americans, reacted with horror to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Yet soon she and her family were among 110,000 innocent people imprisoned by the U.S. government because of their Japanese ancestry. In this eloquent memoir, she describes both the day-to-day and the dramatic turning points of this profound injustice: what is was like to face an indefinite sentence in crowded, primitive camps; the struggle for survival and dignity; and the strength gained from learning what she was capable of and could do to sustain her family. It is at once a coming-of-age story with interest for young readers, an engaging narrative on a topic still not widely known, and a timely warning for the present era of terrorism. Complete with period photos, the book also brings readers up to the present, including the author's celebration of the National Japanese American Memorial dedication in 2000.

When Can We Go Back to America?

When Can We Go Back to America? PDF Author: Susan H. Kamei
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1481401459
Category : JUVENILE NONFICTION
Languages : en
Pages : 736

Book Description
"An oral history about Japanese internment during World War II, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, from the perspective of children and young people affected"--

The Ikigai Journey

The Ikigai Journey PDF Author: Hector Garcia
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462921442
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 214

Book Description
In The Ikigai Journey, authors Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles take their international bestseller Ikigai: the Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life a step further by showing you how to find your own ikigai through practical exercises, such as employing new habits and stepping outside your comfort zone. Ikigai is the place where our passion (what we love), mission (what we hope to contribute), vocation (the gifts we have to offer the world) and profession (how our passions and talents can become a livelihood) converge, giving us a personal sense of meaning. This book helps you bring together all of these elements so that you can enjoy a balanced life. Our ikigai is very similar to change: it is a constant that transforms depending on which phase of life we are in. Our "reason for being" is not the same at 15 as it is at 70. Through three sections, this book helps you to accept and embrace that--acting as a tool to revolutionize your future by helping you to understand the past, so you can enjoy your present. Section 1: Journey Through the Future: Tokyo (a symbol of modernity and innovation) Section 2: Journey Through the Past: Kyoto (an ancient capital moored in tradition) Section 3: Journey Through the Present: Ise (an ancient shrine that is destroyed and rebuilt every twenty years) Japan has one of the longest life spans in the world, and the greatest number of centenarians--many of whom cite their strong sense of ikigai as the basis for their happiness and longevity. Unlike many "self-care" practices, which require setting aside time in an increasingly busy world, the ikigai method helps you find peace and fulfillment in your busy life.

Coral and Concrete

Coral and Concrete PDF Author: Greg Dvorak
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824855213
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Book Description
Coral and Concrete, Greg Dvorak’s cross-cultural history of Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands, explores intersections of environment, identity, empire, and memory in the largest inhabited coral atoll on earth. Approaching the multiple “atollscapes” of Kwajalein’s past and present as Marshallese ancestral land, Japanese colonial outpost, Pacific War battlefield, American weapons-testing base, and an enduring home for many, Dvorak delves into personal narratives and collective mythologies from contradictory vantage points. He navigates the tensions between “little stories” of ordinary human actors and “big stories” of global politics—drawing upon the “little” metaphor of the coral organisms that colonize and build atolls, and the “big” metaphor of the all-encompassing concrete that buries and co-opts the past. Building upon the growing body of literature about militarism and decolonization in Oceania, this book advocates a layered, nuanced approach that emphasizes the multiplicity and contradictions of Pacific Islands histories as an antidote to American hegemony and globalization within and beyond the region. It also brings Japanese, Korean, Okinawan, and American perspectives into conversation with Micronesians’ recollections of colonialism and war. This transnational history—built upon a combination of reflective personal narrative, ethnography, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies—thus resituates Kwajalein Atoll as a pivotal site where Islanders have not only thrived for thousands of years, but also mediated between East and West, shaping crucial world events. Based on multi-sited ethnographic and archival research, as well as Dvorak’s own experiences growing up between Kwajalein, the United States, and Japan, Coral and Concrete integrates narrative and imagery with semiotic analysis of photographs, maps, films, and music, traversing colonial tropical fantasies, tales of victory and defeat, missile testing, fisheries, war-bereavement rituals, and landowner resistance movements, from the twentieth century through the present day. Representing history as a perennial struggle between coral and concrete, the book offers an Oceanian paradigm for decolonization, resistance, solidarity, and optimism that should appeal to all readers far beyond the Marshall Islands.

Tokyo Underworld

Tokyo Underworld PDF Author: Robert Whiting
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307765172
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402

Book Description
A riveting account of the role of Americans in the evolution of the Tokyo underworld in the years since 1945. In the ashes of postwar Japan lay a gold mine for certain opportunistic, expatriate Americans. Addicted to the volatile energy of Tokyo's freewheeling underworld, they formed ever-shifting but ever-profitable alliances with warring Japanese and Korean gangsters. At the center of this world was Nick Zappetti, an ex-marine from New York City who arrived in Tokyo in 1945, and whose restaurant soon became the rage throughout the city and the chief watering hole for celebrities, diplomats, sports figures, and mobsters. Tokyo Underworld chronicles the half-century rise and fall of the fortunes of Zappetti and his comrades, drawing parallels to the great shift of wealth from America to Japan in the late 1980s and the changes in Japanese society and U.S.-Japan relations that resulted. In doing so, Whiting exposes Japan's extraordinary "underground empire": a web of powerful alliances among crime bosses, corporate chairmen, leading politicians, and public figures. It is an amazing story told with a galvanizing blend of history and reportage.