Is Japan Still Number One

"This book tells the story of a small-town Midwestern Jewish boy who went to Harvard and became one of America's best known specialists on Asia, especially Japan. Ezra F. Vogel believes that understanding and a proper perspective come from studying the lan"

A Financial Times “Summer Books” Selection “Will become required reading.” —Times Literary Supplement “Elegantly written...with a confidence that comes from decades of deep research on the topic, illustrating how influence and power have waxed and waned between the two countries.” —Rana Mitter, Financial Times China and Japan have cultural and political connections that stretch back fifteen hundred years, but today their relationship is strained. China’s military buildup deeply worries Japan, while Japan’s brutal occupation of China in World War II remains an open wound. In recent years both countries have insisted that the other side must openly address the flashpoints of the past before relations can improve. Boldly tackling the most contentious chapters in this long and tangled relationship, Ezra Vogel uses the tools of a master historian to examine key turning points in Sino–Japanese history. Gracefully pivoting from past to present, he argues that for the sake of a stable world order, these two Asian giants must reset their relationship. “A sweeping, often fascinating, account...Impressively researched and smoothly written.” —Japan Times “Vogel uses the powerful lens of the past to frame contemporary Chinese–Japanese relations...[He] suggests that over the centuries—across both the imperial and the modern eras—friction has always dominated their relations.” —Sheila A. Smith, Foreign Affairs

"This book tells the story of a small-town Midwestern Jewish boy who went to Harvard and became one of America's best known specialists on Asia, especially Japan. Ezra F. Vogel believes that understanding and a proper perspective come from studying the lan"

The aim of this book is to examine and analyse the phenomenon of ‘Japan-bashing’, from its invention and popularisation in the United States in the late 1970s to the emergence of other national variants, including in Australia and Japan, to its gradual decline in the late 1990s. It is the first major book-length study of ‘Japan-bashing from a multinational perspective, one that attempts to place ‘Japan-bashing’ in its proper historical context and to examine its operation and legacy in the twenty-first century. Despite its importance in the study of discourses about Japan, as well as in understanding broader global changes in the late twentieth century and beyond, the phenomenon of ‘Japan-bashing’ remains largely neglected in published writings. Moreover, it is a far more complex phenomenon than has been assessed thus far. While, on first glance, ‘Japan-bashing’ merely seems to recall other periods in which Japan has been viewed as a dangerous ‘other’ to ‘the West’, such as the Western emphasis on the ‘yellow peril’ from the late nineteenth century as well as Allied anti-Japanese propaganda during World War II, ‘Japan-bashing’ also had its own distinctive characteristics. Moreover, while ‘Japan-bashing’ is often described as a quaint historical, rather than a pressing contemporary, phenomenon, it is actually by no means extinct. The ongoing influence of ‘Japan-bashing’ also has parallels in other ‘bashing’ phenomena, such as ‘China-bashing’. This book will be of interest to scholars and postgraduate students in Japanese studies and international relations.

Everyone knows how to live the good life in Paris, Provence, or Tuscany. Now, Matthew Amster-Burton makes you fall in love with Tokyo. Experience this exciting and misunderstood city through the eyes of three Americans vacationing in a tiny Tokyo apartment. Follow 8-year-old Iris on a solo errand to the world's greatest supermarket, picnic on the bullet train, and eat a staggering array of great, inexpensive foods, from eel to udon. A humorous travel memoir in the tradition of Peter Mayle and Bill Bryson, Pretty Good Number One is the next best thing to a ticket to Tokyo. Includes a new afterword by the author featuring Christmas in Tokyo, fried UFOs, a robotic sushi restaurant, and more. "The layers of the city, its extraordinary food pleasures, its quirkinesses, emerge as the author and his family spend an intense month living in Tokyo and exploring widely...Warning: this book will make you hungry. You'll yearn, as I do, to catch the next plane to Tokyo, so you can get eating." —Naomi Duguid, writer and traveler; her most recent book is BURMA: Rivers of Flavor (Artisan 2012) "This is the book I've been hoping Matthew would write: smart, opinionated, and wickedly funny, crammed with in-the-know tips and observations about visiting Tokyo. From the intricacies of garbage sorting to the chirpy jingle for the local supermarket, the pleasures of pan-fried soup dumplings to the pain of junsai, I laughed, cringed, and got so hungry that I had to eat three bowls of cereal to make it to the end. I love this book." —Molly Wizenberg, author of A Homemade Life and creator of Orangette

A full scale examination of the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War - the events that led to it, the Cold War aftermath, and the implications for the region and beyond.