Yasukuni and Japanese Flags
Rod Wilson and I visited Yasukuni on August 15 to check out the right-wing festivities, which was a pretty…interesting…experience. It was everything...
Category: War
51st State?
From a formal legal standpoint, the United States never ceded possession of Taiwan [via Simon World], which it took from Japan in 1945, to the Nationalist gover...
Nearing the End Picture Collection
As we approach the 60th anniversary of the end of WWII and Japan’s defeat, a number of Japanese newspapers are beginning to turn out articles and other ma...
Recent Links
These all deserve separate posts, but here are some links I found in the last few days that I wanted to write about but didn’t have time for (perhaps othe...
A Poll on U.S.-Japan Relations
Goyaboy, or “the binary identity fo Gerald Figal,” alerts us to the incredulity of the recent AP-Kyodo News poll meant to take the pulse of the U.S....
Summer Reading Note: Ninja
I’ve finished Stephen Turnbull’s Ninja: the True Story of Japan’s Secret Warrior Cult, and I have good news for current and prospective gradua...
Article Nine on Film
Kei Yamamoto, writing for the citizen newspaper JANJAN, has reviewed the film Japan’s Peace Constitution (邦題 『映画 日本憲法』). The film is directed by John Junk...
Summer Reading Notes: Turnbull
After our discussion of the 1590s wars, I did pick up Stephen Turnbull’s Samurai Invasion: Japan’s Korean War, 1592-1598. The book is a great read, ...
1590s Military Technology Gaps
I recently ran across two separate references to the Hideyoshi invasions of Korea, both of which credited Hideyoshi’s initial success to firearms. That di...
Hinomaru Mystery
Over at H-Japan, there’s a discussion about the Hinomaru, Japan’s national flag. I was intrigued and clicked over to Wikipedia. I knew that the sun ...
The May 15 Incident (1932): Inukai & Chaplin
Hi I’m Tak Watanabe, and I’m new here. (Thanks Konrad for the invite!) I’ll post a self-introduction soon, but in the mean time I wanted to po...