No More Bashing

This study considers the current economic relationship between the United States and Japan. Bergsten and Noland (both Institute for International Economics) along with Japanese economist Ito (Hitosubashi U.) argue that Japan no longer poses a unique economic threat to the United States and that the U.S. should begin treating Japan like any other major economic power. Among the topics covered are the resurgence of the American economy, the decline of the Japanese economy, resolving disputes through the WTO, and international finance. c. Book News Inc.

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.

The special language of poor-bashing disguises the real causes of poverty, hurts and excludes people who are poor, cheapens the labour of people who have jobs, and takes the pressure off the rich. Swanson, a twenty-five year veteran of anti-poverty work, exposes the ideology of poor-bashing in a clear, forceful style. She examines how media "poornography" operates when reporters cover poverty stories. She also reveals how government and corporate clients use poor-bashing focus groups. To make the book even more useful Swanson includes key chapters on the history of poor-bashing.

As the influence of the United States in Asia declines with the end of the Cold War, America must look more to brains than military might in achieving our objectives in the region. But after repeatedly allowing Japan - our closest ally in Asia - to mislead us intellectually and psychologically, how well are we prepared to deal with less friendly emerging powers like China and India? Based on three decades of on-the-spot observation and participation in Japan, Ivan Hall's provocative work draws the reader into a world of intellectual manipulation and gullibility, false images, emotional blackmail, financial beguilement, and fatuous expectations. It illuminates the many ways that American ideological hubris and Japanese pleading for special treatment combine to deprive our trans-Pacific dialogue of the honesty, openness, and plain common sense of our trans-Atlantic intellectual ties with Europe.

If your knowledge about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is fed primarily from the mainstream media from your local newspaper, the Associated Press wire, or maybe the New York Times or the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, or FoxNews - chances are that you are sadly mislead and gravely misinformed about the Middle East crisis. The short essays in this book will open your eyes to some basic realities that have been safely kept away from you by a timid media unwilling to show you the harsh realities daily suffered by the Palestinian people and will illustrate through some startling examples how the media has repeatedly and systematically downplayed Palestinian suffering. The book will help you gain a better understanding of the subtle ways your opinions, feelings, and perceptions of the conflict are manipulated, and hopefully put you on guard next time you open your newspaper or turn on your radio or television.

A heavy cloud passed swiftly away before the wind that came with the night, and far in a clear sky the evening star shone with pure brightness, a gleaming world set high above the dark earth and the black shadows in the lane. In the ending of October a great storm had blown from the west, and it was through the bare boughs of a twisted oak that Ambrose Meyrick saw the silver light of the star. As the last faint flash died in the sky he leaned against a gate and gazed upward; and then his eyes fell on the dull and weary undulations of the land, the vast circle of dun ploughland and grey meadow bounded by a dim horizon, dreary as a prison wall. He remembered with a start how late it must be; he should have been back an hour before, and he was still in the open country, a mile away at least from the outskirts of Lupton. He turned from the star and began to walk as quickly as he could along the lane through the puddles and the sticky clay, soaked with three weeks' heavy rain. He saw at last the faint lamps of the nearest streets where the shoemakers lived and he tramped hurriedly through this wretched quarter, past its penny shops, its raw public-house, its rawer chapel, with twelve foundation-stones on which are written the names of the twelve leading Congregationalists of Lupton, past the squalling children whose mothers were raiding and harrying them to bed. Then came the Free Library, an admirable instance, as the Lupton Mercury declared, of the adaptation of Gothic to modern requirements. From a sort of tower of this building a great arm shot out and hung a round clock-face over the street, and Meyrick experienced another shock when he saw that it was even later than he had feared. He had to get to the other side of the town, and it was past seven already! He began to run, wondering what his fate would be at his uncle's hands, and he went by "our grand old parish church" (completely "restored" in the early 'forties), past the remains of the market-cross, converted most successfully, according to local opinion, into a drinking fountain for dogs and cattle, dodging his way among the late shoppers and the early loafers who lounged to and fro along the High Street.

The essays in this collection examine Sino-Japanese political relations given the phenomenon of ‘a rising China and a stagnating Japan’. Questioning whether their relationship is one of cooperation or conflict, the book reviews China and Japan’s bilateral ties to see whether they have deepened and broadened despite differences in outlook, national interest and political systems. Adding a new perspective to the Sino-Japanese political relations discussion, the book looks beyond the interactions of central governments to examine the role of NGOs, local governments and sub-regional linkages. The contributors adopt a range of analytical approaches and explore case studies including the Taiwan issue, Japanese Official Development Policy towards China and joint fishery management in the East China Sea. With perspectives from the US, Russia and Malaysia, the book yields new insights into this complex and multifaceted relationship and is a welcome addition to the current literature.

There is no better reading sensation than feeling the end of your hair raised in a nail-biting suspense. Here's presenting you our biggest ever supernatural collection to give you many hours of pleasurable and just enough eerie reading experience: Contents: Edgar Allan Poe: The Masque of the Red Death The Murders in the Rue Morgue... H. P. Lovecraft: The Call of Cthulhu The Dunwich Horror... Henry James: The Turn of the Screw... Mary Shelley: Frankenstein... Arthur Conan Doyle: The Hound of the Baskervilles... Bram Stoker: Dracula The Jewel of Seven Stars... Gaston Leroux: The Phantom of the Opera Washington Irving: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow... Robert Louis Stevenson: Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde... James Malcolm Rymer: Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street H. G. Wells: The Island of Doctor Moreau Richard Marsh: The Beetle Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: Carmilla Uncle Silas... Nikolai Gogol: Dead Souls... Rudyard Kipling: The Phantom Rickshaw... Hugh Walpole: Portrait of a Man with Red Hair All Souls' Night Robert E. Howard: The 'John Kirowan' Saga The 'De Montour' Saga Cthulhu Mythos M. R. James: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary A Thin Ghost and Others Wilkie Collins: The Haunted Hotel The Dead Secret... The Woman in White Guy de Maupassant: The Horla... E. F. Benson: The Room in the Tower The Man Who Went Too Far... Nathaniel Hawthorne: The House of the Seven Gables Rappaccini's Daughter The Birth Mark... Ambrose Bierce: Can Such Things Be? The Ways of Ghosts Some Haunted Houses Arthur Machen: The Great God Pan... William Hope Hodgson: The Ghost Pirates Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder... M. P. Shiel: Shapes in the Fire... Ralph Adams Cram: Black Spirits and White Grant Allen: The Reverend John Creedy... Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto William Thomas Beckford: Vathek Matthew Gregory Lewis: The Monk Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey Charlotte Brontë: Jane Eyre Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights Charles Dickens: The Mystery of Edwin Drood Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray Marie Belloc Lowndes: From Out the Vast Deep