Introduction: Takeyama Michio, 1904–1981, by Richard H. Minear
The Writings
Part I: The War
Ichiko in 1944 (1946)
The End of the War (1953)
White Pine and Rose (1947)
Scars (1949)
Part II: Crisis and Challenge
Germany—New Middle Ages? (1940)
The Younger Generation (1945)
Part III: The Tokyo Trial
The Trial of Mr. Hyde (1946)
Letter to Judge Röling (1949)
Part IV: Turn to the Right
The Student Incident: Observations and Reflections (1950)
Those Who Refuse to Enter the Gate—Thoughts on One Contemporary
Frame of Mind (1951)
Richard H. Minear is professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and translator of Japan's Past, Japan's Future: One Historian's Odyssey.
Readers can see the real picture of what Japan's intelligentsia
experienced and what their thoughts were in those days. The essays
are superbly well translated. A must. . . . Highly recommended. All
levels/libraries.
*CHOICE*
The essays Minear has selected and masterfully translated for this
volume testify to the workings of a splendid mind in search of
understanding a world in turmoil.
*The Japan Times*
Historians now think of World War II not just in terms of
battlefield winners and losers but also as an event that
transformed civilian lives and national societies in profound ways.
Richard Minear brings us one eloquent, thoughtful chronicler of
these transformations, reminding us of the varied and distinctive
ways Japanese people coped with the many meanings of the wartime
and après-guerre eras. Takeyama Michio was cantankerous, elitist,
and contrary but also someone who intelligently and passionately
searched for his own way to make sense of the turbulent times in
which he lived.
*Laura Hein, Northwestern University*
A masterful translation of ten essays by one of postwar Japan’s
most interesting thinkers, this work ought to dispel our simplistic
notions of Japan as a nation of unthinking followers during World
War II. The complexity—and sharp turnings—of Takeyama’s own ideas
are troubling and provocative. And his vivid descriptions of
ordinary people during the war—housewives stealing food to feed
their hungry children, pampered and hedonistic Higher School boys
scandalizing patriotic Hitachi factory workers, soldiers in China
dying of boredom rather than battle—make the war somberly, but
richly, human.
*James L. Huffman, Wittenberg University*
No one has been as assiduous as Richard Minear in pursuing the hard
moral questions of World War II—on both sides of the Pacific. This
portrait of a committed humanist under simultaneous siege by enemy
bombs and his own country's rabid nationalism is both startling and
heartbreaking.
*Jay Rubin, Harvard University*
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