japansociety
Japan Book Review

Volume 1 No. 3 May 2006

Editor: Sean Curtin
Managing Editor: Clare BarclayThis issue provides you with another great selection of stimulating
reviews, this time covering everything form the Chrysanthemum
Throne (Enigma of the Emperors) to the Chrysanthemum itself(Garden Plants of Japan). We also have two griping books (Flyboys and To
the Kwai and Back) for the regular memoirs section as well as fourthought-provoking books on Japanese social issues (Family and Social
Policy in Japan; Multicultural Japan; Brokered Homeland and Art andNature: Healing).
You will find many more fascinating reviews, which space does not permit us to print, on our website. The website is rapidly expanding and continuously being updated with new material. We will soon also be launching a trial on-line book tie-in series call Japan Perspectives, where we hopeto highlight books in a specialized field. More on this next issue.
Finally, we appreciate all the comments, suggestions and requests you
have made. Keep them coming in. We greatly value your input and takeyour views into consideration as we continue to develop and improve thebook review project both in print and on-line.
Sean Curtin
New reviews: www.japansociety.org.uk/reviews.html
Archive reviews: http://www.japansociety.org.uk/reviews_archive.html

Contents(1) Enigma of the Emperors(2) To The Kwai - And Back; war
Drawings 1939-1945(3) Family and Social Policy in Japan(4) Garden Plants of Japan(5) Multicultural Japan: Palaeolithic to
Postmodern(6) Flyboys: A True Story of Courage(7) Brokered Homeland:Brazilian Migrants in Japan

Japanese(8) Art and Nature: Healing - Design for
health in the UK and Japan

Enigma of the Emperors: Sacred
Subservience in Japanese History,
by Ben-Ami Shillony
Global Oriental, 2005, ISBN 1-901903-34-6, 312 pages (including
index and bibliography), £45.
Review by Sir Hugh Cortazzi
This well-researched and scholarly study by Professor
Shillony of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem will interest
not only students of Japanese history but also all thoseconcerned for the future of the imperial institution in Japan.
The book, which evolved out of earlier research firstpublished in Japanese under the title of Haha Naru Tenno,
covers the political, cultural and religious background to the'emperor' system in Japan from mythological times down tothe present day. I have put the term 'emperor' in quotes as
whatever else they were Japanese 'emperors' were neverequivalent to emperors in China or Russia. Nor were they everemperors in the Roman sense of the term 'imperator' or
generalissimo.
Professor Shillony emphasises that, "The political weaknessof the Japanese emperors was balanced by the extraordinary
stability of their dynasty. The effete emperors occupied anjapansociety

Japan Book Review: May 2006

unchallenged throne. An emperor could be deposed, exiled oreven murdered, but his institution could never be abolishedand his family could not be replaced (page 81)."
He concludes that the "strange survival" of the dynasty wasdue to the fact that Japanese emperors combined sanctity with
passivity to such an extent that they were too subservient torule, but too sacred to be deposed (page 273)." These
conclusions are based on his study of how the emperors
behaved over the centuries.
The author has much to say about the divinity of theemperors. He points out that in Japan the 'kami,' which is
generally translated as god, were transcendental beings. The
term could be applied to any dead person, object or natural
phenomenon. He notes the differences between the divinity
ascribed to Japanese emperors to that ascribed to thepharaohs in ancient Egypt and notes the stress laid in Europe
on the 'divine right of kings' resulting from their claim to be
God's representative on earth carrying out His orders. The
emperor in Japan was not the representative of the kami but"an intermediary between the people and the gods." He wasvenerated but not worshipped. However his body was
regarded as "sacred and neither knives nor scissors could beapplied to it." This seems to have been one of the causes of thehigh rate of infant mortality in the imperial family down to
the twentieth century.
Shillony discusses in detail the occasions on which women
were ruling empresses. There seem to have been shaman
queens in early times but the first person to hold the title oftenno was the empress Suiko in 593. Between that time and770 six women were titular empresses, but the last of these,
Koken-Shotoku, was a controversial figure and there no
titular empresses until the Tokugawa era. One reason for thiswas the influence of Confucian attitudes adopted by theJapanese; these gave precedence to men and led to malechauvinism which is still a strong element in Japanese culture.
We tend to think that Japanese emperors since the end of
the sixth century have always been called tenno but as
Shillony points out various different terms have been usedover the ages. The old Japanese title was sumera mikoto.
According to the Yoro code of 718 tenno was to be used inimperial rescripts, tenshi in ceremonies, kotei incorrespondence with 'barbarians' and heika in addressing theemperor. At the beginning of the Meiji era the term mikado
was in general use when the English title of emperor was
adopted to give the Meiji emperor an equivalent status to thatof the sovereigns of China, Russia, Germany, France (at thetime of Napoleon III) and Britain (Queen Victoria had beenproclaimed Empress of India).

In the last forty years there have been no male children born
into what has become a very limited imperial family. This has
made it necessary to consider the possibility of a female
eventually once again becoming the tenno as a reigning
empress. This would not require a constitutional amendment
but it would require a change to the Imperial House Law. At
present imperial princesses cease to be 'imperial' when they
marry and for some Japanese the adoption of a matrilineal lineof succession instead of a patrilineal could be a sticking point.
It would also lead to the end of the unreasonable pressure
apparently still being placed by Household officials on the
Crown Princess to produce a male heir.
Professor Shillony considers that the most important issue
for the continuance of the imperial institution is to ensure its
continued relevance for Japanese people. The present Emperor
in 1977 while he was Crown Prince declared (page 261);"When we look at the tradition of the imperial family, we seethat it is mainly a tradition of gakumon (learning) and not ofbu (fighting). Very few emperors donned military uniform. I
would like to continue this tradition…The phenomenon ofsymbol emperors is not a post-war creation. In my view, theemperors have been symbols since antiquity." This may wellbe the case, but at least the emperor should be accepted by theconstitution as 'head of state' as in practice he has been byforeign countries to which he has paid state visits. A 'symbol'
also needs to be able to fulfil a meaningful role and not be
totally hedged about by imperial household bureaucrats.
Shillony thinks that the imperial family might regain
relevance through its support for the protection of theenvironment and he suggests that: "The archaic rites of theJapanese emperor [e.g. in relation to Japan's rice culture],
which for a long time have been a source of embarrassment tomodern-minded Japanese, may in the future appear as asymbolic ceremony of paying tribute to mother nature."
Perhaps so, but while we do not need or want to see theimperial family becoming a more frequent source of scandal
and gossip as has happened to the royal family in Britain,
Japan's imperial institution would benefit from a more open
culture.
A beginning was made when the present Crown Prince
stayed in Britain as a student at Oxford from 1983-85. This
showed him how ordinary people lived and enabled him togain a better understanding of the world around him. His
memoir Thames to tomo ni, which I have translated and which
will be published in English by Global Oriental later this year
under the title The Thames and I, reveals his natural humancharm and sense of humour. Perhaps it was this fact which led
the Household to delay for many years permission for atranslation.

Shillony points out that the continuation of the imperial
dynasty depended on the birth of sufficient sons in the family.
"To avert biological extinction, the emperors had to haveaccess to many noble and fertile women (page 57)." Even sosometimes the succession was remote, although the ancestral
chain was never apparently broken.

We are currently looking for members who would like to join
the review team. If you are interested in becoming a reviewer
please send your name and subject are to:

The Meiji Emperor had fifteen children by various
concubines but only five survived. The Showa Emperor was
not prepared to follow his grandfather's example and thepractice thus ended in the twentieth century. After the Second
World War the collateral branches of the imperial family,
which could provide a successor, were abolished.

We would particularly like to hear from those members withthe following areas of specialization:
Arts, Business, Education, Film, History, History of Trade
Relations, Photography, Political Diplomacy, Translation

2

WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE A REVIEWER?

The Japan Society, Swire House, 59 Buckingham Gate,
London, SW1E 6AJ Email: culture@japansociety.org.uk

japansociety Japan Book Review: May 2006

To The Kwai – And Back; war Drawings
1939-1945by Ronald Searle,
Souvenir Press, April 2006, 192 pages, ISBN 0285637452, £25.
Review by Sir Hugh Cortazzi
Ronald Searle, the creator of the girls of St Trinians and oneof the ablest and most famous British cartoonists, was aprisoner of war of the Japanese from February 1942 to August
1945. With determination and courage he managed to keep arecord in drawings of his years of suffering as a prisoner in
Singapore and on the Burma-Siam Railway. He describes thesketches in this book as "the graffiti of a condemned man,intending to leave a rough witness of his passing through, but
who found himself - to his surprise and delight - among thereprieved." These drawings selected from the originals which
he succeeded in bringing home are now part of the collectionof the Imperial War Museum in London. They are harrowing
and moving.
Ronald Searle's narrative is spare and restrained. The story
begins with his joining the army as a volunteer in April 1939 as
he realised that war with Nazi Germany was inevitable. He
was a sapper in the engineers and remained a private soldier
to the end. His unit was sent to Singapore where he arrived on
13 January 1942. They were untrained and unequipped forjungle warfare. His unit was ordered forward to destroy
everything in front of the advancing Japanese forces. It was, hesaid, "a scorched arse policy" and the Japanese "moved
forward to chop into small pieces all the wounded that had tobe left behind." Singapore which had suffered from "years of
inept, incoherent and chaotic political and militarymismanagement" by the British lay at their mercy but theJapanese forces showed no mercy. "It is estimated that 20,000
Chinese alone were shot or beheaded during the first few days
after capitulation." Searle drew two gruesome sketches ofsevered heads on poles and on shelves. (See drawings on
pages 66 and 67).

japansociety Japan Book Review: May 2006

The first few months in prison camp were bad. They weremade to wear armbands with an inscription in Japanese which
Searle was told meant "One who has been captured in battle
and is to be beheaded or castrated at the will of the Emperor."Food was increasingly scarce (at best 400 calories a day). Flies
swarmed and disease was rife. They were forced to sign anundertaking not to try to escape. The Japanese General incommand of the camps had no intention of abiding by the
Geneva Conventions. Some prisoners were sent to Japan.
Searle was one of a batch of 3,270 selected to work on the
Burma-Siam railway. "Skinny, undernourished, suffering froma variety of tropical skin diseases and deficiency sores" they
were destined to march 160 kilometres into the jungle, to chopa railway through granite mountains and some of the mostdense vegetation in the world…Two-thirds of our group died
before the end of the year." The guards "clubbed those whobegan to fall behind the rest of our ragged column.""The forced marches continued through the nights andmemories of them have become a compression of smells andfeelings; plodding along a glutinous track thick with pitfalls,
faces and bodies swollen and stinging from insect bites andcuts from overhanging branches that whipped back at us." If atroll call the total was short "it meant a thrashing for someone
with the ubiquitous bamboo stick - and being beaten withbamboo is like being beaten with an iron bar." Their "working
methods were barely out of the stone age " and theirconditions were made worse by the flies, the mosquitoes, thelice and the bedbugs and the very inadequate rations.
"Some of our overseers had an extremely primitive sense of
humour. During the noon break on the cuttings, they would
frequently relieve their boredom by calling us into line before
we had barely gobbled down our rice, to watch the torture of
one of us picked at random. The unlucky one might be madeto hold a heavy rock above his head in the full sun, with asharpened bamboo stick propped against his back. If hewavered, which he inevitably did, the bamboo spear pierced
his skin" (see drawing on page 114; also see image overleaf).
"In a tent which housed the dying and where the sketcheson these pages were made, I think I reached rock bottom.
Between bouts of fever I came round one morning to find thatthe men each side of me were dead, and as I tried to prop3

myself up to get away from them, I saw that there was a snake
coiled under the bundle on which I had been resting my head."
Eventually he was returned to Singapore to the horrifically
overcrowded Changi jail to work on levelling the ground for a
military base or to work in the docks. He managed to escape
the attentions of Kempeitai who had their own prison in
Outram Road, but he was always afraid that his sketches
would be found. Fortunately for him the Japanese were very
frightened of cholera and cholera sufferers helped to hide his
drawings.
Some among the Japanese guards did show a little
kindness. One named Ikeda spotting Searle sketching showed
him photographs of his family and asked for a sketch ofhimself to send to his mother, There was also a Captain
Takahashi, who summoned Searle and three other sappers towork at his house, drew a mother and child in Searle's
sketchbook and confessed that he too was an artist who had
been studying in Paris when he "was called home to this - ah to serve…" He then gave Searle a handful of coloured pencils
and wax crayons. Searle would like to have made contact withhim but had no success.
On 15 August 1945 the Japanese authorities "announced
that although Nippon had agreed to unconditional surrender,
Field Marshal Count Terauchi, Commander-in-Chief of theSouthern Army, did not associate himself with it and intended
to fight on. What we did not know then was that a plan existed
at Count Terauchi's Saigon headquarters to execute all
prisoners in case of invasion." British Forces were indeed
massing for an attack on Malaya, the so-called operation"zipper." Fortunately for all of us sense prevailed, but it was
not until 28 September 1945 that Ronald Searle finally boarded
a ship for home.
There can be no doubting Searle's story. His drawings are avivid testimony of the truth and of the suffering of so many. I
wish that Japanese historical revisionists and Japanesenationalists would read this book. They might then begin tounderstand why we object to Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi and Foreign Minister Taro Aso paying their respects
at the Yasukuni shrine where the Yushukan museum glorifies
war and the Japanese military. They should be remembering
all those who died and suffered during the war including thecivilian dead in Singapore and, of course, in Japan itself.

4

Family and Social Policy in Japan
Anthropological Approaches,by Roger Goodman (Ed),
Cambridge University Press, 2002, 237 pages, ISBN-10:0521016355
Review by Sean Curtin
Anyone interested in Japanese social policy or societal trends
will find this book a stimulating and worthwhile read. It
comprises a collection of eight essays that were originallydelivered at an international academic conference and a wellwritten introduction. Like many conference turn-bookprojects, the scope of the material is fairly wide ranging andthe appeal of the varying chapters will depend on whether thereader is more interested in social policy or applied
anthropology.
Roger Goodman, editor and contributor, writes an excellent
introductory chapter in which he attempts to unify the entire
work and justify the inclusion of every paper. While he doesn't
quite manage the latter endeavor, he does succeed in getting
the book off to a strong start by meticulously framing thesocial challenges that currently face Japan and skillfully
setting them in an international context. He also examines how
anthropology can help us understand social policy better. For
the non-anthropologist, or those unfamiliar with Japanesesocial trends, this chapter is a real goldmine of useful
information. For example, we are reminded: "Japan is rapidly
becoming the world's oldest ever human population." He also
convincingly argues that: "Social and welfare policies in Japanhistorically have been constructed so as to support the mostproductive elements of the society rather than to provide asafety net for those who would not otherwise be able tosurvive."
The main eight chapters offer the reader a broad spectrum of
topics literally ranging from child birth (Carolyn Stevens and
Setsuko Lee) to death (Yohko Tsuji). I personally enjoyed thechapter "Pinning hopes on angels" by Glenda Roberts in which
she examines government policy aimed at reversing Japan's
low fertility rate and public attitudes towards it. We areinformed that many Japanese believe "childrearing isjapansociety Japan Book Review: May 2006

'hardship' not 'joy,'" and parents' social wings are clipped morethan their European counterparts because "casual babying
sitting by teenagers or unrelated others is uncommon."Roberts clinically dissects the Angel Plan, a government policy
designed to halt the declining birthrate, and examines its
inbuilt contradictions and the mixed public reaction to it. She
observes, "Through the Angel Plan and through the windowsof its implementation, we can discern a number of conflicting
models of how families should be constructed incontemporary Japan, how couples should interact inproduction and reproduction, and how institutions fromdaycare centres to corporations should behave to respond tothese models." Roberts builds on some of her earlier work,
producing an excellent analysis of maternity policy.
In the chapter entitled "Child abuse in Japan: 'discovery' andthe development of policy' Roger Goodman charts social
awareness and policy surrounding the previously hiddensocial problem, proving some first-rate reference material.
Rather like domestic violence, cases of child abuse in Japan
were extremely 'low' until the concealed social ill was brought
into the public realm. Suddenly, the number of cases
exploded, and the state has struggled to deal with the issue.
On the other hand, the media has vigorously explored thisformerly taboo subject, generating public concern and greaterawareness. Putting the situation in context, and based on
figures for 2000, the author predicts: "The 'discovery' of childabuse is a common experience in many societies. There is little
doubt, looking at the experience of other countries, that the
number of reported cases in Japan will continue to rise
exponentially." Indeed, the number of cases of child abuse hita record high of 32,979 cases during fiscal 2004, a rise
representing an increase of 24 percent, or an extra 6,410 cases,from fiscal 2003 and a 83 percent increase from the 18,000
cases Goodman reports in 2000.
In "Reproducing identity: maternal and child healthcare forforeigners in Japan," Carolyn Stevens and Setsuko Lee
investigate the situation of foreign mothers giving birth inJapan. They analyze health & welfare policies, social
provisions, and immigration regulations. The authors areconcerned that: "Health statistics of foreign mothers and theirchildren in Japan differ from their Japanese counterparts. It is
our contention that legal as well as cultural stresses on theforeign mother in Japan make it difficult for her to access thehealthcare she needs and leads to higher-risk pregnancies."
I found several problems with this approach, chiefly it is notentirely supported by the data which in fact shows infant
deaths for Chinese and Korean mothers, the two largest
groups of foreigners, are in line with those for Japanesemothers, as generally are those for Western mothers. It is
women from developing countries in Southeast Asia that are
at greatest risk, but here various pre-existing socio-economic
factors must be taken into consideration. I do not believe it ispossibly, as the authors do, to simply lump all foreign mothers
together into one group. On the other hand, the concerns theyoutline for certain groups of foreign mothers most definitely
need further research and the authors deserve to becommended for highlighting these neglected issues.
Stevens and Lee also find maternity clinics rather rigid,
regimented and dominated by a doctor-knows-best
philosophy. While I would not dispute that this description
could be applied to quite a number of maternity hospitals, it isdefinitely not valid for all. Nowadays, a key criteria forjapansociety Japan Book Review: May 2006

Japanese and foreign mothers in choosing a clinic is its
philosophy, be it regimented, happy-go-lucky, or something in
between. It is not uncommon for women to switch maternity
clinics a few times until they find one that best suits theirneeds. Practically every maternity clinic now clearly details its
philosophy on its website. In those parts of Japan with a highconcentration of foreigners, such as Hamamatsu with its large
Brazilian community, foreign language information isavailable and some clinics especially cater for the particular
cultural needs of foreigners.
These criticisms aside, this trailblazing paper, like all theothers in this though-provoking volume, raises some criticaland often overlooked issues. There are other cutting edge
papers by Vera Mackie, Leng Leng Thang, Eyal Ben-Ari,
Yohko Tsuji and Victoria Lyon Bestor that unfortunately are
not covered in this review. Generally, anyone interested insocial policy, societal trends or applied anthropology will findthis an invaluable book.

Garden Plants of Japan,
by Ran Levy-Yamamori and Gerard Taaffe,
Timber Press, Portland, Oregon and Cambridge, UK, 2004, 440
pages, including bibliography and index, copiously illustrated incolour, ISBN 0-88192-650-7, price £45.
Review by Sir Hugh Cortazzi
When the Japan Society were preparing the Garden Bequest
Exhibition for Japan 2001, we were conscious of the huge
number of trees, shrubs and plants which had originated inJapan and which had become so popular in Britain. We tried
without success to find a book in English which covered
comprehensively Japanese Garden plants. Horticulturalists
and gardeners, interested in shrubs and flowers of Japaneseorigin, will accordingly welcome this well produced andcomprehensive book. I was at first put off by the price, but I
was fortunately able to buy my copy at a much morecompetitive price through a well-known on-line book seller.

5Charles Nelson of Norfolk (UK) in his foreword quotes theold story of the Japanese gardener who visited Britain long ago
and was shown a Japanese style garden which had just been
completed. He was duly impressed and commented: "We havenothing like this in Japan." The plants were wrong; they were
not Japanese, but European substitutes. In fact, however, as
this book makes clear vast numbers of Japanese trees, shrubs
and plants which have come to Europe from Japan havebecome so ubiquitous in English gardens that we haveforgotten that they are not indigenous to Britain. Perhaps in
the garden which the Japanese visitor saw the plants had beenused incongruously. I don't think that a Japanese visitor would
be inclined to repeat this comment if he/she saw any of thenumerous Japanese gardens so carefully planned and built bymembers of the Japan Garden Society.
In the introduction the authors begin by describing the fourJapanese climatic zones ranging from subtropical to arctic andshowing how these are divided on a map of the Japanesearchipelago. "Japanese botanists estimate that there are
between 5000 and 6000 plants native to Japan," but "a quick
look at the plants used today in gardens of Japan shows thatsome of them are not actually of Japanese origin at all." Manycame to Japan from China and Korea although "a certain
number of garden plants may have existed to a limited extent
in Japan prior to the plants being introduced from China andKorea." The authors stress that "many plants have symbolic
meanings in cultural and aesthetical aspects of life in Japan"
and note the way in which Shinto "helped to preserve Japaneseplants" and trees. The importance of the four seasons inJapanese culture in general as well as in horticulture is
explained. The introduction also includes paragraphs on therole of Japanese plants in gardens, on ancient trees and living
national monuments, and on the traditional Japanese gardenerwith a short note on bonsai.
Japanese trees, shrubs and garden plants are listed inalphabetical order under their Latin names followed by theJapanese names in Roman script and their English names. The
plant family is then shown together with information about
distribution and a description of each plant. This is followedby notes on soil, light, pruning, propagation, hardiness, usage
etc as appropriate. Related plants are described and there arecolour photographs on every page. The largest section (over220 pages) of the book is devoted to trees and shrubs. This isfollowed by sections on climbing plants, herbaceous plants,
bamboo and sasa, grasses, ferns, and finally mosses.
An enthusiast for particular types of Japanese plants such as
Japanese maples (acers) or camellias will find a description ofmost types they are likely to find in say Hillier's catalogues
although the book cannot, of course, include all the detailed
information contained in specialist books on particularspecies.
I knew that many Japanese plants were introduced toEurope by botanists such as Kaempfer, Thunberg, von Siebold,
Fortune and Veitch, and that their names had become part ofthe official nomenclature, but I had not realised that, forinstance, forsythia owes its name to the Scotsman William
Forsyth (1773-1804) superintendent of the Royal Gardens of
Kensington Palace. I had thought that ume, which grows insuch profusion in Kairakuen at Mito and heralds the Japanesespring was "plum" but according to the authors it is reallyprunus mume which should be translated as Japanese apricot.
Ume is written with the kanji bai in the three New Yeardecorations of sho (pine)-chiku (bamoo)-bai.

6Multicultural Japan: Palaeolithic to
Postmodern,
Edited by Donald Denoon, Mark Hudson, Gavan McCormack
and Tessa Morris-Suzuki,
Cambridge University Press, 2001, 302 pages, ISBN: 0-521-003628
Review by Takahiro Miyao
What is Japan? Is Japanese culture unique? How is Japandifferent from the West or from the rest of Asia? When we ask
these questions, we implicitly assume that there is more or lessa monolithic and homogeneous "Japan" in the first place. This
book provides a clear view that Japan has been and is amultiethnic and multicultural nation, and the concept ofJapan's uniqueness and monoculturalism is a relatively recent
artefact.
Interestingly, this is the case not only with the Japanesenation as a whole, but also with its important ingredients suchas the "ie" (family) institution. In Chapter 12, Ueno Chizuko
maintains that this institution is not a unique historicalsurvival from the feudal era, but rather the invention of the
Meiji government. She argues that "the ie institution was madeto fit the model of the modern nation state, which itself wasmodelled on the family structure."
Given this, we can easily understand why the ie institution
was so easily denied by the public after the war and theconcept of "katei" (home) was adopted to refer to the nuclear
family that has been a standard concept in postwar Japan, as
pointed out by Nishikawa Yuko in Chapter 13. As people tend
to confine themselves into their own "heya" (rooms) within"katei" these days, the question is: How can they come out of
their rooms to interact with each other for their well-being aswell as for their society as a whole?
In the concluding chapter, Mark Hudson and Tessa MorrisSuzuki admit that "in a complex world where communications
media, cultural flows and human lives increasingly extend
across national boundaries, debates over diversity andnational identity show no signs of abating." Then, our task is
no longer to prove the obvious fact that Japan is multiethnic
and mutlicultural, but rather to show how to deal with various
problems associated with mutliethnicity and mutliculturarismin Japan.

japansociety Japan Book Review: May 2006

Chichi-jima. This book answers many questions. What target
were they after? What were the Japanese doing on a tiny island
about double the size of Central Park in New York? What
happened to those who crash-landed or parachuted out? Why
is it that their whereabouts and eventual fate had long beenclassified in the US governmental archive and that not even
their family members were allowed to know? The answers are
multi-fold, but horrendous to say the least. The Japanese killed
the P.O.W.s in the cruelest possible way.
Does Flyboys generate anti-Japan hate? It could well be. But
war is about hate, the author argues. And hate has neither
national borders nor historical, religious, and racial differencesamong peoples. If the Japanese beheaded U.S. P.O.W.s, then it
was the Americans who napalmed children and women in thecities of Japan. The Japanese may have raped and killedthousands in China, but Americans did the same to Native
Americans and Filipinos, the author writes.
In essence the book's message is: "They were no different fromwhat we were." It successfully articulates why the Japanese
had to be imperialists themselves and why they fought against
the entire world. A thorough, balanced look into Japan's past isevidenced throughout. Still, one has to murmur, what theJapanese did in China and in the islands of the Pacific Ocean
are unspeakable and unjustifiable. And that, for this reviewer,
is the most lasting image of this book, regardless of what theauthor's intentions were.

Flyboys: A True Story of Courage,
by James Bradley,
Little, Brown and Company, 2003, 400 pages, ISBN: 0-316-10584-8

With more than 58 years behind us after the war, memories,
mostly horrendous memories, still linger, only to be revisited
yet again. Many in Japan should read the book and try tounderstand what views Americans and other English speaking
peoples could come to have towards them in years to come.

Review by Tomohiko Taniguchi
This review first appeared on the GLOCOM Platform
http://www.glocom.org/ and is reproduced with permission.
Review by Tomohiko Taniguchi

Tomohiko Taniguchi is an Editor at Large for Nikkei Business
Publications, Inc.

This book is about airplanes, WWII warplanes in particular. As
someone whose fond memories in his boyhood were attached
to model warplanes hung from his ceiling, I found myself
picking up a copy at a bookstore in Singapore.
The book is more than about the war in the Pacific; it tells thestory of how airpower gained supremacy against battleships,
and why and how the US and Japan entered into hostilities.
Former president George H.W. Bush is featured as one of theheroes whose little-told stories came to light for the first time.
Written in an extremely narrative style, the book promises tobe a best seller, in part also because its author, James Bradley,gained national fame in the U.S. for a previous work about his
father, who was one of those thin-faced soldiers who raised the
U.S. flag on top of a blood-covered hill on Iwo-jima.
Flyboys reveals the location where the Japanese shot down thefighter plane flown by the future President of the UnitedStates. It occurred off Chichi-jima, one of the Ogasawara
Islands. Mr. Bush and the author together made a visit to IwoJima where both were photographed as is shown in the book.
It is hence very likely that both the former President and hisson, the current occupant of the White House, will read thisbook with keen interest.
George H.W. Bush was not alone in his mission to attack

japansociety Japan Book Review: May 2006

Brokered Homeland: Japanese Brazilian
Migrants in Japan,
by Joshua Hotaka Roth, Cornell University Press, 2002, 161
pages (Paperback), ISBN: 0-8014-8808-7
Review by Takahiro Miyao
This book might appear to be a short and casual essay on
foreign workers in Japan. However, just reading the first few
pages would make the reader realize that this is a product of7the author's serious field work in Japan for a number of years.
Actually, this reader was left with tremendous satisfaction, on
the one hand, in gaining insight into what may be called
Japan's "Gaijin" (foreigner) problem in general, and"Nikkeijin" (Japanese descendants overseas) problem in particular, and strong frustration, on the other hand, in our inability of accommodating foreign workers due to the failure of oursystem in Japan, as clearly shown in this excellent piece ofwork.
The author focuses on those Japanese Brazilians who identify strongly with Brazil, while settling in Japan, feeling isolated and alienated in their workplace and local communities. By
referring to the samba and carnival boom in Japan, the author
maintains that "Japanese enthusiasm for foreign cultures has
not been matched by an equivalent embrace of foreign workers" in general and Nikkeijin in particular.

ing architecture, whereas enhanced levels of recovery comefrom natural light and water, and an affinity with the environment.
It is difficult to do justice to this carefully crafted selectionof essays in a short review. It is a book to delight in, to dip intoor read from cover to cover, and which has stunning examplesof the art and architecture it refers to. It is solidly grounded onevidence based design, and explores in depth issues and ideason the future of healing environments.
With the projected new spending on health buildings by the
NHS, and with the impetus of the Forum for the Healing
Environment in Japan, the author exhorts the reader to takethis opportunity to bring together patients, architects andhealthcare professionals to influence the design of new facilities and bring a holistic and symbiotic approach.

His reasoning for this phenomenon is most enlightening.
Instead of taking an easy way out such as blaming Japanesenationalism or racism, he regards "mediating institutions" ascrucial in regulating and affecting, often negatively, the relationship between Japanese and Nikkeijin. In a city where heresided, for example, the illegal system of employment brokers seems to be playing an important role in controlling relations between Japanese and Nikkeijin and, as a result, aggravating rival feelings between them. Thus, many of theJapanese Brazilians working in Japan wish to identify themselves with something Brazilian, away from anything
Japanese, at least as their group symbol, while continue to stay
and work in Japan.

Whether the cash-strapped managers of health services arelistening is another matter, but there is a groundswell of opinion towards promoting wellbeing in its widest sense rather
than merely treating sickness, and this is a timely contribution
to that debate.

Obviously, this is neither a healthy nor a sustainable situation, especially when we expect an increasing number of foreign workers in Japan, because of the low birthrate and rapid
aging of the Japanese population. The most important conclusion: "Mediating institutions such as the employment system
more often than not determine foreign workers' apparent cultural incompatibility with Japanese workplace communities."
This book is highly recommendable, and especially a must
read for those policymakers who are in charge of policies concerning immigration and foreign workers at the local as wellas the national level in Japan.

There are valuable contributions from the highly regarded
physician Shigeaki Hinohara, and from Yasushi Nagasawa,
Professor of Architecture at The Tokyo University, both ofwhom are involved in the awards for the Forum for the
Healing Environment.

Art and Nature: Healing - Design for
health in the UK and Japan,

The scale of this book is enormous, and the Nature of
Health Design Project is Graham Cooper's big undertaking. In
Japan there are 20,500 centenarians and an organisation called"Design for Age." Perhaps the Arts Council of Great Britain
should take that into account in its new Arts health and wellbeing strategy.

by Graham Cooper, Edited by Dennis Sharp,
BookART in collaboration with the Great Britain Sasakawa
Foundation, 2006.
Review by Sandra Lawman
Ted Hughes said: "Art is in general the psychological component of the immune system. As the body tries to heal itself
from any stress or shock or infection, the corresponding harmonic in consciousness is art."
This book not only propounds this philosophy, it also recommends action to improve health architecture in both countries, and the underlying tenet is that a patient's surroundings
should make him or her better rather than worse. Increased
levels of stress and depression are associated with sterile, bor-

8

There are examples of good practice in both countries, suchas the Community Care Centre in Lambeth, the Glasgow
Homeopathic Hospital, Hyogo Rehabilitation Centre in Kobe
and the Sea Ward Stress Care Centre in Ohmuta. The generaltheme is that more of these kinds of facilities are needed.
Editor Dennis Sharp skilfully draws together the examples ofgood practice, and compares and contrasts different facilities.

Some of the differences between the Japanese and British
approaches are articulated, such as the valuing of space by theJapanese, and therefore more creative use of it, and Japanesesensitivity to seasonal changes, arising largely from Shinto
beliefs. The concept of "Shakkei" is referred to, where the distinction between the building and the environment it is in arealmost dissolved, particularly at the Sea Ward Stress Centre.

Art and Nature: Healing, would be a valuable addition toanyone's library, or indeed coffee table. (Books available from:G. Cooper, Harmonie, Peak Hill, Sidmouth, Devon EX100NW)First having taught English in Japan 25 years ago, Sandra
Lawman worked for a major Japanese company for several years in
London before joining an environmental NGO for five years, as well
as being active in local and national politics. She now manages theCharitable Funds of the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust,and has recently undertaken a visit to Japan to study the mental
health service user movement there, courtesy of the Great Britain
Sasakawa Foundation.