Traditionally the Japanese have shunned those not fitting the majority heterosexual mould. Those with a homosexual orientation have always endured an uncomfortable existence in a culture which condones blatant public scorn and ridicule being directed towards them and which doesn't question the pernicious stereotyping of gays. In Japan these traditions have survived into the twenty-first century and remain a deeply rooted part of the national psyche. It was in such a hostile environment that two men, in defiance of the prevailing social norms, saw fit to take a stand and declare that they were...

A discursive battle over how Japan's history should be remembered constitutes the most recent, and perhaps the most explosive, round in a struggle over the legitimacy of different "narrator's" understandings of the past and its focus on the "comfort women" issue. Feminist theorist Chizuko Ueno confronts head on, in her usual lucid and hard-hitting style, the various actors in the debate. She skillfully cuts through the argument of the neo-nationalist "historical revisionists" who have attempted to deny or minimize the reality of the former "comfort women." Ueno's equally biting treatment of...

This is the first English version of Tadao Umesao's classic, published first in Japanese in 1957, with a full description of his "ecological theory" of civilizations of Eurasia. Dividing the Eurasian continent into three major ecological zones consisting of Western Europe, Japan, and the region between them, he shows how the first two are basically similar and demonstrates fundamental differences between Japan and China. In 1964 a jury of ten intellectuals chose this treatise as one of the 18 most influential treatises since 1945 from among more than a hundred which were considered. In 1998,...