Product Description: In Japan, often the only way to deal with history is to forget it . . . Akira Yoshimura's novel about the American campaign to capture Okinawa deftly reflects the quandary faced by many postwar Japanese whose detestation of the savagery of American troops in the Pacific War was matched only by a sense of betrayal and shame at the conduct of Japanese imperial forces...read more

Orphaned at thirteen, Hikotaro makes his way from Japan to San Francisco, where he soon dreams of returning home, but after being denied passage on Commodore Perry's ship, he returns to the U.S., and then back to his own troubled country. Reprint.

In the morally ambiguous world of post-World War II Japan, Takuya, an officer in the former Imperial Army, becomes a fugitive in his own humiliated, defeated country when he believes that the occupying authorities have discovered his involvement in the execution of American prisoners-of-war. 25,000 first printing.

Product Description: An evocative historical novel with a sting in the tail, Shipwrecks is set in medieval Japan; in a coastal village where a father sells himself into indentured servitude to save his family from starvation. He leaves the responsibility for the family's continuing survival with his nine year old son Isaku...read more

After spending sixteen years in prison for the murder of his wife, Shiro Kikutani adjusts to his freedom and the intensity of life in Tokyo while living with the memory of his crime. Reader's Guide included. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

Recounts the technical and other difficulties overcome by the Japanese to build the world's largest battleship, and tells how it was sunk.

This technohistory, a genre invented by the author, is the history of the production and use of the famous Zero fighter aircraft, the finest dogfighter in the air for most of World War II. Superbly written with an eye to detail and to the poignant and resonant moment, this poetic, highly charged narrative presents World War II from the Japanese point of view. Ultimately more than the history of an airplane―though the Zero is presented with the grandeur due it―this book is an extremely astute presentation of the Japanese character and world view.From a North American standpoint, Zero Fighter makes a number of highly interesting points, having been written for the Japanese market. For example, North Americans are generally not aware of the success of the Zero fighter or of its significance in Japanese minds. Both the superiority of the aircraft in the early stages of the Pacific War and the great stature of Jiro Horikoshi as an aircraft designer (he is to Japan what the designer of the Spitfire is to the U.K.) will come as a revelation to most readers here.Also completely unknown to most North American readers is the story of the transport section at the Nagoya Aircraft Works. This information is woven nicely into the book, and has a great deal to say about the startling quality of Japanese wartime industry: rigid in many ways, while producing a plane of brilliant originality. The book is a moving picture of the patience of the Japanese in the face of adversity, but perhaps most important, Zero Fighter>/i> is Japanese. It is not often that a Japanese book is encountered here that divulges intimate knowledge about such a fascinating subject. There is significant value in this as we enter an era in which the Japanese and American people must share and respect the other's cultural point of view.

Recounts the technical and other difficulties overcome by the Japanese to build the world's largest battleship and how it was sunk