Very well documented essays about the East, although most of the articles are treating already out-of-date items. Still they will continue to be essential reading for historians.

In his ironic style, he unveils the lies and double-talk of political and industrial leaders. E.g. Sony's Akio Morita's statement that 'today's Japanese do not think in terms of privilege', while he almost disowned his son, when he wanted to marry a popular singer.
Other targets are Benazir Bhutto, Cory Aquino, Imelda Marcos and most of all the imperious leader of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew.

I recommend nevertheless the autobiography of Yew 'From first world to third', because it is an essential read in order to understand what's happening in China today. Lee Kuan Yew is Jiang Zeming's best friend.

Buruma is a very perceptive observer and reader. His analyses of writers like Yuhio Moshima, Mircea Eliade or Junichiro Tanizaki, or movie directors like Nagisa Oshima or Sayajit Ray are brilliant.
This book is to be put on the same high level as the works of Simon Leys on China.

Sceptical of all talk of "asian values" (profound "culture differences" used to justify the denial of human rights), Buruma is a clear-sighted observer of the East. Buruma describes the phases that Western visitors to Japan tend to go through; an initial phase of delight oft succeeded by rage, and ultimately leading to a sort of near manic-depressing rapidly-alternating hatred/love of the East. Buruma, while obviously retaining a great love and respect for Eastern culture combined with a deep scepticism about "asian values", is unseduced by either extreme. The book opens with essays on individual figures, such as Yukio Mishima (it is impossible to take Paul Schrader's 'Mishima' seriously after Buruma's curt dismissal of its portentious bombast) and Wilfred Thesiger (again, one sees this oft-romanticised figure anew, as a misogynistic, rather sinister worshipper of racially pure noble savages) It closes with a section of essays devoted to Japan, on topics as diverse as Michael Crichton's Black Rain, the Hiroshima peace industry, the treatment of black American baseball players in Japan and the continuing echoes of Pearl Harbor.

I found Buruma's collection very absorbing, especially helpful to someone living out East (Hong Kong and Singapore), as I was in the late 90's. The Singapore essay, "The Nanny State of Asia," is an extremely perceptive look behind the official facade of Harry Lee Kuan Yew's police state. If you plan to visit/live in S'pore, the things the locals won't dare discuss with you (out of fear) are dealt with here. Even if you're just travelling from the armchair, this is a well-written and (again) extremely absorbing read.

As someone who lived out East I rank this up with Christopher Lingle's Singapore's Authoritarian Capitalism and Stan Sesser's The Land of Charm and Cruelty (another great essay collection on various Asian countries) as books helpful to the Westerner trying to learn about the region. Buruma's God's Dust has more essays on Asia, including S'pore. For Singapore, I also recomend Francis Seow's A Prisoner in Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore, and Paul Theroux's Saint Jack (a Singapore novel set in the Seventies but (I found) remarkably up to date in the attitudes it records of both locals and expats).

Buruma's style has always been one of immediacy, providing the reader with a sense of the author's own intimate knowledge and devotion to the subject matter. "Wages of Guilt" is no exception: Buruma provides a thought-provoking and thorough examination of the deeply felt guilt over WWII crimes felt in Germany and the unique perspective of the Japanese toward their activities during the Pacific War (1939-1945). Buruma is particularly adept at discussing the latter, as his previous book, "Behind the Mask," displayed a remarkable insight into Japanese cultural mores. Here the author provides interviews and intriguing observations in his quest to discover how two diverse cultures could be guilty of such horrific crimes -- and how they have learned to deal with their past. Recommended for students of military history, philosophy, or for just trying to understand the human condition. David R. Bannon, Ph.D.; author "Race Against Evil."

Ian Buruma takes a look at the various ways in which the people of Germany and Japan have dealt with the legacy of the atrocities committed by their countries during World War II. His book was especially timely in the case of Germany because he began writing it shortly after the unification of the Federal Republic and the GDR, when discussion of Germany's past was widespread both at home and abroad. Buruma is also well qualified to comment on Japan because he lived there for many years and speaks the language.

To summarise, the "The Wages of Guilt" finds that the German people, at least in the western part, have been more ready to come to terms with their war legacy than the Japanese. There are Nazi sympathizers and Holacaust deniers aplenty in Germany, but they seem to be confined to the fringes. In Japan, however, rightist elements remain powerful and the official line is to portray the war as an economically driven power struggle in which any excesses committed by the armed forces occurred in the heat of battle, thus denying any similarity to the behaviour of the Nazis. Moreover, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are viewed as atrocities on par with any act committed by the Axis powers; racism and a perverted scientific curiosity are among the motives attributed to America in its decisions to drop the bombs. Buruma explores the efforts to re-examine the war through the prism of German and Japanese reactions to Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Nanking, the war crimes trials, etc. and the result is a troubling and thought provoking meditation on the power of history and the psychology of escape. Check this one out, it's worth a look.

This book is quite eye opening. It compares the memory and guilt of WWII in modern Germany and Japan. It looks at how the Germans of today and the Japanese of today look at their countries role in WWII and responsibilty for many atrocities. Readers will be shocked to see how many people in Japan show no remorse or understanding for their role in WWII. While, Germans tend to carry an intense amount of guilt for the war. This makes for some thought provoking reading. And unfortunately, as much as I love Japan and Japanese culture...my visits to Hiroshima confirm the thesis of this book

Ian Buruma's lively writing style, familiar to readers of the New York Review of Books and the Far Eastern Economic Review, comes to the fore in this wonderful look at a variety of Asian countries. He manages to isolate scenes and trends that characterize the tension between the traditional and the modern in several Asian nations (or indeed nations in formation). The non-Asian writer on Asia is at times less forgiving, and at others brings a fresh view, but always provides insights that few other books or writers seem to produce. God's Dust lets the seasoned Asia dweller feel that she is developing her own unique perspective on life in Asia, and at the same time gives those who have never experienced Asia's intricacies and contradictions an opportunity to experience more than a travelogue or a soon-to-be-proven-wrong business trends bestseller would deliver.

A young man succeeds in what he always dreamed of: slip into China's forbidden city and participate in the power plots inside it. He becomes head of the emperor's secret service and lover of the empress. A thriller with a surprising end.
A fascinating novel about the mysterious Chinese power circle around the reigning emperor.
A masterpiece.
I also recommend a French novel with the same themes: 'La Vallée des Roses' by Lucien Bodard.

Like coconuts, Voltaire believed that English free institutions could and should be transplanted everywhere. This has special appeal to Americans who also hold strongly to this belief about their political institutions. Bunuma's book ranges to other Anglophiles up to Isaiah Berlin, taking in other figures like the soured -philes who turned into -phobes like Kaiser Wilhelm and Karl Marx.

The book sparks like an intellectual firecracker - varied characters like Voltaire, Alexander Herzen, Nicklaus Pevsner, inhabit the pages. Overall the book will fascinate anybody who might even have just a minor interest in the history of ideas.

The book is at his best when covering Bunuma's own experiences and those of his own family - his greandparents were German Jews who moved to England early in the 20th century. These were remarkable people - in the 1930s, they took in 12 Jewish refugee children, yet in 1945 at the first family Christmas after the war, they shared their Christmas meal with two German prisoners-of-war from the local camp.

Sadly, examples of forebearance and humanity like this are all too scarce now in a world where violence and brutality seems to be daily celebrated in the mass media. Bunuma's anglophile love of English commonsense and pragmatism leads to fear for the future of English liberalism. In an acute observation, he recalls how the liberal Kingdom of Bavaria became the breeding ground of Nazism.

His account of a Tory party conference and the perversion of old English values that went on, is scary. However, personally I feel his fears may not come to pass, since I write after the wipeout of the Tory party in the recent English election (2001). But anyone who has encountered a squad of English football fans on the rampage will know exactly where Bunuma is coming from.

As an Irishman, I can relate to Bunuma since his juvenvile favourites of English public schoolboy adventures exactly mirror my own. While recognising English hypocrisy aboout class boundaries and its former exploitative Empire, I can see where British stubborness made the difference between liberty and those who sought to destroy it. For Britain to lose the great tradition of tolerance exemplified by Locke, Burke, Mill and Orwell would be an awful tragedy. Thanks to Bunuma, that may now be much less likely.

This is simply a delightful book,in which Dutchman Buruma (whose grandparents were German Jews who fled Germany)intertwines his and his family's experiences with England with the experiences of many Anglophiles and Anglophobes. It makes for a very easy, rewarding reading. Buruma talks about many Europeans who loved or hated (and frequently loved and hated at the same time) England. First he deals with that most acute of observers, Voltaire, and his question of why can't the world be more like England?, the land of liberty, the rule of law, tolerance and restraint. Marx, Pevsner, Herzen, Kaiser Wilhelm II and many other politicians, philosophers and artists are portraited here in their relationship with these crucial island.
The book is fast, sharp, funny, erudite, full of interesting anecdotes, and most of all a book about ideas and attitudes. it is one of the best books I've read recently and it is totally recommended.

This has to be one of the most delightful books I have read in recent years. When I picked it up, I thought it was going to be about the American obsession with all things British in popular culture. You know, the glut of Jane Austen movies, Masterpiece Theatre, BBC productions, etc. But that's not what this book is about at all. It is a highly refinded examination of European attitudes toward England as found in the writings of politicians, political philosophers, and artists and as reflected in the experiences of Buruma himself.

I was thoroughly impressed by Buruma's ease in discussing the political ideologies of the 18th and 19th centuries. I was also particularly delighted to read the chapter that discusses the lives and work of Nikolaus Pevsner and F. A. Hayek, two favorite authors from my college days. Buruma is a lively and engaging writer who is sure to please anyone with the least bit of curiosity about the past and with a love of England and what it represents in its deepest and most profound senses.

As with all of Buruma's other writing, this is a brilliant book, well-written and convincing. The strength of his writing lies in his appreciation of, and his craving for the intricacies and idiosyncracies that make up the Asian lifestyle. In this book, he gets down and dirty, even enduring the squalid conditions of rural Chinese life to live with a family whose Christian matriach runs an underground 'Church'.

My primary grouse with Bad Elements can perhaps be encapsulated in this very episode: I was very much looking forward to hear Buruma's views on the underground Church movement in China, and was expecting as much, but he chose to present the internal conflict within the above-mentioned matriach's family instead, whose children (like the Communist government) think that she's dabbling in the occult. Buruma loses the opportunity to discuss much of the issues he so tantalizingly mentions: an interview with a senior Chinese dissident falls through because the writer misses him as he passes quickly through the turnstiles of the Beijing underground, for instance.

This book strikes one as more of a work of travel writing, with plenty of pointed perspectives and unexpected opinions emerging from both the writer, the landscapes through which he passes and, of course, the people he meets. As such, this isn't quite as academic, nor does it provide as much in-depth historical/sociological research as some readers might expect. Another word of caution: while Buruma is mostly accurate in his descriptions, he does tend to neglect details - titles, place names, translations. Still, he does correctly observe that Lee Kuan Yew is, indeed, Senior Minister, the title he's held ever since stepping down from Prime Ministership. In Buruma's earlier The Missionary and the Libertine, Buruma actually makes the jarring mistake of addressing the man as Head Minister, a position which doesn't quite exist in Singapore.

Buruma's views are informative, but don't expect much objectivity here: he never shifts from his position that the CCP is 'morally bankrupt' (a phrase he uses a lot), and fails to provide balanced commentary of a wide array of issues, ranging from Tibet to the Tiananmen Massacre. Anyone or anything associated with the CCP is hence rendered malignant.

That said, Bad Elements is a great read. It will keep you up at night, just to get through all the details the writer so willingly provides! As complementary reads, I would suggest Ian Gitting's China Through the Sliding Door, a journalistic (if somewhat dry) account of reporting from China over the last 4 decades and Jan Wong's China, a witty work of non-fiction that manages to paint a sympathetic picture of the sufferings of the Chinese people under the CCP. Gitting's book is a masterpiece for its unapologetic objectivity and amazing detail.

The thread connecting the chapters in this book, several of which are adapted from Buruma's previously published writing, is the author's journey from free Los Angeles and thereabouts to unfree Beijing. At each stop along the way Buruma interviews dissidents or former dissents from Chinese societies. Their stories do seem to blend into each other after a hundred pages or so. There's the childhood of relative prosperity, the youthful recognition of a corrupt society, and the public expression of defiance, followed by arrest, imprisonment, and usually torture. The grisly repetition of fiendishly cruel punishments would be macabre if it weren't for Buruma's personal explanation for his curiosity: he wants to know if he and his generation in Europe could have borne such trials.

It is the personal element that makes this book as captivating as it is. We hear not only each dissident's words but also Buruma's reactions to them and sometimes arguments against them. His long experience in Asian affairs and understanding of Western and Asian societies make his thoughts as illuminating as the stories of the dissidents themselves. The book is not a travelogue but has elements of one. He meets old friends and strangers, eats new foods, and ruefully observes changes in urban landscapes. His brief descriptions of Singapore, Taipei, Hong Kong and other cities on his route capture them in their essence.

"Bad Elements" is informative, horrifying, inspirational, and even funny at times. Anyone with an interest in Chinese culture, Asian politics, or modern history will find it enlightening.

For decision-makers in companies which are either doing business in China now or are planning to, this is a must read. Buruma examines various "bad elements" in China and elsewhere whose intransigence and (in several instances) corruption create serious barriers to communication and cooperation as well as to commerce with the western world. Viewed as a global market, the People's Republic of China offers business opportunities which are almost comprehensible. For those of us in democratic societies in which dissent is not only possible but protected by law, it is difficult to grasp the nature and extent of suppression of human rights which we so easily take for granted. Among dissenters, opinions vary as to the pace of reform by which to establish such rights. At one point in this brilliant book, Buruma discusses Dai Qing who can be described as a "go slow intellectual." She advocates patience and prudence, confident of eventual reforms. "One sees what she means, but the analysis is flawed. On the contrary, the raw emotions, the latent hysteria, the pent-up aggressions seething under the surface of Chinese life are the result of living a lie. As long as people speak cannot freely, nothing can be exposed to to the light of reason, and raw emotions will take over." Over the centuries, social reform in China has never been easy and often traumatic. After conducting interviews with several dozen "mavericks" and then reflecting upon what they have shared with him, Buruma seems skeptical that significant social reform can be achieved, given the opposition of various "bad elements." He may be right. There is also the possibility that one totalitarian dynasty will simply give way to another. In that event, to what extent will suppression of dissent be sustained? To what extent will such a new dynasty be more willing and able to accommodate new technologies, notably the Internet? Buruma asks these and other critically important questions. He and we await answers which will indeed have global implications: positive, negative, or more likely both.

A House for Mr. Biswas, is not so much the story of Mr. Biswas, but of the South Asian extended family - its turmoil, gossip, reunions and joys. Naipaul is unerringly accurate when describing the extended Indian family: the competition between parents over the successes of each other's children; the power of money and elder authority; the elevation of boys over girls in terms of future possibilities and education.

Mr. Biswas is a heartbreaking and frustrating character. His mistakes, his ignorance, flares of tempers, and his valiant attempts at tryng to become independent from his mother's family turn him into a three dimensional character - one that you can both love and hate. His family is also well developed and complex - from his wife Shama to his young son, Anand, struggling under the weight of familial expectations.

This book didn't receive a four star review because it doesn't always capture your full attention. This is not the type of novel you spend all weekend reading. It is the type of novel that you read for a half hour to twenty minutes before going to bed, it's good but it's not enough to keep you up all night unable to put it down.

The second criticism I have of the book is its rushed ending. The novel itself has an interesting structure, in that we learn the future of Mr. Biswas, backtrack and then follow the course of his life up until his death. However, those few pages at the beginning of the novel are the same as what you receive at the end - a rushed and incomplete rendering of Mr. Biswas's dream - a house of his own. Also, the reader after several hundred pages is expected to remember the details from the beginning that Naipaul neglects to reiterate at the end. Considering the tremendous detail that accompanies the rest of the book one has to wonder if this was a planned theme: the realization of a dream isn't all that fulfilling; or was it simply laziness on the part of the author? That dilemma is for you to resolve.

A House For Mr. Biswas, the acclaimed novel by Nobel prize-winning author V.S. Naipaul, reads like an epic and is clearly the work of an accomplished writer. Naipaul's depiction of one man's life, beginning with his birth in rural Trinidad at which time he is labeled as "cursed" by the local holy man, is an extraordinary account of an ordinary man and his struggle to provide for his family. So why does this book, filled with beautiful prose, memorable characters, and heart-wrenching events, feel like it is about 200 pages too long?

Mohun Biswas, an ethnic-Indian born in Trinidad in the early 1900s, abruptly marries into the Tulsi family, and his life is from that point on dominated by his controlling mother-in-law, Mrs. Tulsi, and Seth, her brother and head of the Tulsi household. The Tulsi family provides him with housing and various jobs, ranging from managing their dry goods store to supervising their farm, but they also provide him with constant harassment and grief. Mr. Biswas longs for the day that he can own his own home, and his pursuit of this goal is the novel's persistent theme which gives it its epic quality.

A House For Mr. Biswas is, ultimately, a finely crafted novel. Naipaul's powerful, moving prose beautifully depicts the struggle, pain, and sorrow of one man's life; at the same time he paints a calm and full portrait of the ethnic-Indian experience in rural Trinidad. In many ways, this book does for rural Trinidad what John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath does for Salinas, California. It's only flaw, perhaps, is that the book's length feels somewhat forced, as if Naipaul believed that a 600-page novel would more powerfully depict his character's tragic nature than, say, a 400-page novel. The truth is that Naipaul's prose is so robust, and his characters so genuinely human, that A House For Mr. Biswas achieved the status of epic long before its final page.

This is probably the best fiction book I've ever read! I just finished it a week ago and I am ecstatic. Naipaul's prose is superlative, his narrative style beyond comparison with the vast majority of modern and classic writers. Naipaul doesn't fuddle his story with lengthy descriptions of insignificant detail or write so esoterically that no one can understand what he's saying. The tragi-comic story of Mr. Biswas is at times wonderfully hilarious and at other times agonizingly sad. His struggle for economic independence from his well-to-do in-laws produces scenes of touching emotion and rollicking comedy. And throughout, V.S. Naipaul's remarkable ability to write clearly, evocatively, and precisely will keep any reader enthralled. Paul Theroux, who has taken Naipaul as his mentor, wrote that "A House for Mr. Biswas" possesses all the power of Dickensian comedy and even satire without Dickens' lengthy tirades. I believe this book is more powerful and well-written than any nineteenth- (and many a twentieth-) century classic I've ever read. I heartily agree with the other reviewer below that Mr. Biswas kicks butt!

Jodi Cobb's "Geisha" is stunning. It is stunning visually, which anyone can see just leafing casually through it. But it is also a stunning journalistic accomplishment. This is not the first time Cobb has gone behind the closed doors of female society. She did a story for National Geographic, where she is a staff photographer, on Arab women. Like the Geisha book, it was an intimate and loving look at the lives of women usually hidden from us behind veils. The Geisha book gives us way more than the superficial beauty shots that usually pass for a look at Geisha life. We see them (quite literally) with their hair down. Which is, after all, what good journalism does. Enjoy the book just for the art if you like. Cobb takes photos with handheld, 35mm cameras using nothing but available light and makes them look like the work of a Flemish master. But also know that you are getting a glimpse of a world few women -- and no men -- can ever know.

Subtitled, "The Life, the Voices, the Art," this book of exquisite photographs by Jodi Cobb, a National Geographic photographer depicts both the public and the private moments of traditional geisha in modern-day Kyoto and Tokyo. A hundred year ago, there were more than 80,000 traditional geisha in Japan; today there are less a thousand. This vanishing way of life, captured in both words and photographs, will introduce the realities of the very special world to the western reader. We learn the history and understand the fantasy. We see the faces with and without makeup, including some stirring photos of elderly geisha with their white makeup emphasizing every line in their faces. And we hear their voices as they share their life stories. This isn't fiction. This is real. There are 77 full color photographs in this 11.5 x 10.5" book that is just 114 pages long. I read it one sitting, thirsting for more. Highly recommended.

Jodi Cobb's "Geisha" is stunning. It is stunning visually, which anyone can see just leafing casually through it. But it is also a stunning journalistic accomplishment. This is not the first time Cobb has gone behind the closed doors of female society. She did a story for National Geographic, where she is a staff photographer, on Arab women. Like the Geisha book, it was an intimate and loving look at the lives of women usually hidden from us behind veils. The Geisha book gives us way more than the superficial beauty shots that usually pass for a look at Geisha life. We see them (quite literally) with their hair down. Which is, after all, what good journalism does. Enjoy the book just for the art if you like. Cobb takes photos with handheld, 35mm cameras using nothing but available light and makes them look like the work of a Flemish master. But also know that you are getting a glimpse of a world few women -- and no men -- can ever know.

Discovered during the early years of my decade+ in Japan, this book turned over the well-polished stone of Japanese culture and turned the eye of a naturalist on the life below. Though subjective, Buruma is seldom self-serving in his observations and analysis. Japan de-mystified becomes only more fascinating when viewed through this lens. I passed this on to so many expat friends that the book took on a life of its own, eventually passing beyond my own reach. I'm longing to search out a copy just to reread what served as a formative influence for my long stay.

So I picked this one up the other day and tore through it--really engaging speculations going on. Buruma takes you all the way through the myths of Shinto, to every titilating back alley of tokyo, explaining sexual practices all the way. Somehow I felt guilty of participating in a stereotype generating fest...The research is not so wildly apparent, a lot seemed to be straight from the author's point of view. I'll probably still site it in my thesis, but with a grain of salt.

Buruma serves up a wealth of observations based on his own unique perspective and remarkable insights. Focusing primarily on cultural mores, he delves into subject matter that is by nature impossible to review objectively. Buruma's gift is his ability to write candidly and artfully about cultural generalizations that his trained eye has noticed. Certainly the sexual culture of any nation is difficult to fully discuss in a slim volume, but Buruma's discussions of pop culture and myths is always intriguing. He offers few judgements and challenges the reader with provocative observations. David R. Bannon, Ph.D.; author "Race Against Evil."

This book is totally typical for Ian Buruma, a man who cannot read Japanese comic books without seeing ghosts of militarism ("Japanese Mirror" 1980) and who has defended British colonialism in his columns for The Guardian.

You will find yourself nodding in agreement thoughout the book if you already believe that Japan is intrinsically an evil society populated by people who are a hair trigger away from commiting war atrocities if a gun is handed to them. I cannot imagine what kind of an unhappy childhood he had spent in Japan.

This is an entertaining entry level book which is balanced on the surface. But he paints a century of Japanese history as if it was structurally destined to march into militarism. He neglects to mention that Turkey, Ethiopia, Thailand, Nepal and Japan were the only "colored" nations to remain independant until Pearl Harbor. Nor is there any reference to how close Japan was to becoming another opium infested European colony. He downplays that Japan's military build up was driven by fear of being colonized.

Like so many historians of the "Evil Japan" school, he misses the fascinating story of how Japan's initially defensive military became a fearsome expansionistic force. Analysis of this development is crucial to keeping such things from happening again. But for Buruma, it was destined to be expansionist to begin with. Japan was always evil.

Like all Japan demonizers, he attributes Japan's current ills, both real and imagined, to the fact that Emperor Hirohito was not executed after the Second World War. This bit of scapegoating is as worn out as the Kennedy Assasination. There was supposedly a dark conspiracy that involved Gen. MacArthur and some unnamed Japanese figures (always unnamed) that reached a closed-doors deal to save the Emperor. Like the unknown conspirators of the Kennedy Assasination, these shadowy figures are supposed to be lurking in the back corridors of Japanese power to this day. If they were power brokers in MacArthur's time, they must be quite marvelously venerable by now.

He concludes his book with the predictable alarmist dogma that Japan could become a militaristic nation one more time and threaten the Western world if it does not "confront its past". Apparently, 6 trillion yen in "aid" paid to China as unofficial and voluntary war reparations and some more to other nations - all with the consent of Japanese voters - does not count as confronting its past.

Shortly after the First Gulf War, Japanese professor Shiro Takahashi asked some 300 college students if they would fight for their country if Japan was ruthlessly invaded as was Kuwait. Only one answered that he would. All others answered that they would either surrender or run. Buruma turns around and calls this an "infantile dependence" on American military strength (which it may be), but I wonder how this reality fits into Buruma's picture of a dangerous nation that could plunge into militarism again. He does not seem to see the contradiction.

As long as professional hate mongers like Buruma can pass as experts on Japan, it is prudent that Japan remains in "infantile dependence" and avoid building its own defence capabilities. Who is to say that Japan will not follow the fate of Iraq and be attacked for suspicions of developing "militarist tendancies"?

It takes a detached reader to see how books like this are part of the cause of Japan's curious state in the world. Buruma along with Herbert Bix, David Bergamini, Iris Chang, Ivan P. Hall et al compose one view of Japan, but have you ever seen a book from the opposing camp? The overwhelming tidalwave of Japanophobia disguised as academic tretise shapes opinions on Japan around the world, and consequently shapes Japan. This book is worth reading only as an example of such a force.

As a US Marine in WW2 I naturally tried to understand Japan. I got numerous bits of sometimes conflicting information from numerous books on the subject.

Ian Buruma gives it a continuity that connects it all in a small volume.

I had a bit of trouble remembering the names of Japanese politicians but I recommend it highly for anyone who attempts to understand Japan.

In contrast to Dr. Noguchi, I think Mr. Buruma has, again, shone some well-needed light into those recesses of Japan's past many here would rather forget.

His ability to weave the cultural, intellectual, and political threads of Japan's modern history into a lucid text is nonpareil, particularly in such a brief work.

Rather than bemoan the recent revelatory books by Blix, Dower & Co., Dr. Noguchi might be wiser to re-think the reasons behind Japan's unprecedented brutality from the Marco Polo Bridge in China to Sugar Loaf Hill in Okinawa.

And maybe he might also note that Mr. Buruma's formative years in Japan were adult ones.