Japan Crisis

Some of the cruelest deeds of Japan's war in Asia did not occur on the battlefield, but in quiet, antiseptic medical wards in obscure parts of China. Far from front lines and prying eyes, Japanese doctors and their assistants subjected human guinea pigs to gruesome medical experiments in the name of science and Japan's wartime chemical and biological warfare research. Author Hal Gold draws upon a wealth of sources to construct a portrait of the Imperial Japanese Army's most notorious medical unit, giving an overview of its history and detailing its most shocking activities.

What happens when a young woman’s spontaneous trip turns into a lifelong adventure in Japan? At just 24, Suzy left behind her familiar life in Israel, chasing the allure of the Far East. What began as a brief escape to Thailand—quickly turned into a bold leap into the unknown. There, she became a hostess in Tokyo, married a local businessman in a traditional Oriental marriage, and bravely adapted to Japanese culture, balancing stark contrasts between Israel and Japan. This autobiography offers more than a tourist’s view of Japan, revealing the real challenges of cultural adaptation, ...

On March 11, 2011, a powerful earthquake sent a 120-foot-high tsunami smashing into the coast of northeast Japan. By the time the sea retreated, more than eighteen thousand people had been crushed, burned to death, or drowned. It was Japan’s greatest single loss of life since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. It set off a national crisis and the meltdown of a nuclear power plant. And even after the immediate emergency had abated, the trauma of the disaster continued to express itself in bizarre and mysterious ways.

In the weeks after Japan finally surrendered to the Allies to end World War II, the world turned to the question of how to move on from years of carnage and destruction. For Harry Truman, Douglas MacArthur, Chiang Kai-shek, and their fellow victors, the question of justice seemed clear: Japan’s militaristic leaders needed to be tried and punished for the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor; shocking atrocities against civilians in China, the Philippines, and elsewhere; and rampant abuses of prisoners of war in notorious incidents such as the Bataan death march.

On a clear spring day in 1995, five members of a religious cult unleashed poison gas on the Tokyo subway system. In attempt to discover why, Haruki Murakmi talks to the people who lived through the catastrophe, and in so doing lays bare the Japanese psyche. As he discerns the fundamental issues that led to the attack, Murakami paints a clear vision of an event that could occur anytime, anywhere.

Spooks and magic, a mystic invitation, and an ancient monster on a killing spree… Free on Kindle Unlimited! It’s Halloween in Kyoto—the city of ghosts, fairies, gods and goddesses—where magick rules. Mandy and Rick Rowling are preparing to go back home to New York. But before they go, the god of thunder summons Mandy and Sara Abe, a local detective and sorceress, handing them “a small and easy” assignment to finish before the Rowlings leave this mystic city. A monster strikes during a fundraiser that Rick, Mandy, Sara, and her fiancé are attending. Once the mayhem begins, the ...

Robert Pirsig’s book of 1974, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, took the world by storm, selling over five million copies. When asked how he would account for this, Pirsig said that Zen was a “culture-bearing book”; that he just wrote down what he was thinking, and it turned out that everyone else was thinking the same thing. And what they were thinking was that our Western, scientific, rational mindset was making us crazy. In The Crisis of Our Time, Morris Berman argues that the source of this was the loss of the oral-poetic, or sensuous-mythological, tradition, that was ...