A bridge of words : views across America and Japan / Hiroaki Sato.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sato, Hiroaki, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Civilization.

Japan--Civilization.

Japan.

United States--Civilization.

United States.

Sato, Hiroaki, 1942---Friends and associates.

Sato, Hiroaki.

Genre:

Essays.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (234 pages)

Place of Publication:

Berkeley, California : Stone Bridge Press, [2022]

Summary:

"This anthology of over 60 of Sato's commentaries reflect the writer's wide-ranging erudition and his unsentimental views of both his native Japan and his adopted American homeland. Broadly he looks at the Pacific War and its aftermath and at war (and our love of it) in general, at the quirks and curiosities of the natural world exhibited by birds and other creatures, at friends and mentors who surprised and inspired, and finally at other writers and their works, many of them familiar--the Beats and John Ashbery, for example, and Mishima--but many others whose introduction is welcome"-- Amazon.

Contents:

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright

Contents

Foreword

Author's Note

I. Wars and Consequences

Shattering the Mirror That Distorts Japan

War Perspective of Poets Oceans Apart

Was Pearl Harbor Really a Surprise?

Old Prejudices Burn Bright in a War Account

Doing One's Duty in a Desperate Situation

Gyokusai or "Shattering Like a Jewel"

Creator of "Go for Broke"

Debunking America's "Good War" Myth

The Japanese Sword I

The Japanese Sword II

Air Raids

Great Tokyo Air Raid Was a War Crime

Indiscriminate Bombing and Legal Judgment

Unending Ruthless Air Raids

Condemnation Attributed to "Utter Nonsense"

Comfort Women

Redaction of a "Comfort Women" Story

Censorship Distortion of "Comfort Women"

Sex-Slave Wrangling Misses Human Picture

"Comfort Women" Question Is Far from Black and White

The War on Terror

Blunderbuss Followup to the Invasion of Iraq

Terrorism Brouhaha, Then and Now

Indefensible Costs of Military One-Upmanship

A Breed Apart

II. Birds and Other Animals

The Gall of Those Gulls

Bird Bashing

To Keep the Fairway Fair

Emotion Trumps Logic in Whaling Debate

Depredation of Species That Get in Our Way

"Good Old Days" Dispensed with Body Counts

No Country for Millions of Canada Geese

The Transient Rasping That Captivates the Poets

"Where to Go to Survive the Day?" the Corbies Say

Invasives

Rooting Out the Purplish, Yellow Perils

Don't Destroy That Invader, It Was Here First!

Anthropocentric Bent of "Alien" Fish

Don't Exterminate the Zebra Mussels, Ruffes, or Gobies!

Seagulls

III. Teachers and Friends

Lindley Williams Hubbell / Hayashi Shūseki

Eleanor Wolff

Ronald Homer Bayes

Michael O'Brien

Herbert Passin

Earl Miner

Robert Anthony Fagan

Kyoko Iriye Selden

Burton Watson

Rand Castile.

John Ashbery

Michi Kobi

Bong-san I

Bong-san II

IV. Talking about Books and Such

An Unnaturally Smooth Naturalization?

The ABC's of Life

Drinking in Mr. Cavett

Kissing Encounters

Panties Talk

Results of Carnal Prohibition Are No Surprise

Genji: The Long and the Short of It

Genji's Poetry of Spirit Possession

Shining a Light on Turkish-Japanese Ties

From the Outside Looking In

Bedfellows of Those "Lax," "Insular" Japanese

"Gaijin" Putting Down Roots in Japan

Remains of the Occupation Mentality

The Answer, My Friend, Is Blowing in the Wind

Zen and the Art of Beatnik Haiku

The Complexities of "They" versus "Xe / Xim / Xir"

Reflecting on History

Japan's First Embassy to Washington

Japan's Close Encounter with the West

Undergoing the Third Degree in Prewar Japan

Looking Back at Seventy Years Before the War's End

Returning from Taiwan after Japan's Defeat

Going with the Flow in a Japanese Trade Office

Books by Hiroaki Sato

Index

Back Cover.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes index.

ISBN:

9781611729580

1611729580

OCLC:

1345587676