- “Across the sea is the land of Japan. With its ancient shrines, sumo wrestlers, Zen masters, capsule hotels, Laughing Festival, fortunetelling birds, haiku masters, phantom foxes, mania for bathing, musical crickets, tea masters, Living National Treasures, Moon Viewing Night, bowing etiquette, Festival of the Dead, dream-eating Baku, samurai films, Fuji pilgrims, and robots, it is unlike anywhere else in the world. Let me tell you about it.”
—Professor Solomon
At last, the unknown Japan. The traditional Japan. The real Japan.
In this erudite yet entertaining work, the Professor explores a Japan of which few of us are aware.
For a tour of a unique culture—a fascinating look at its diverse ways and wonders—join him.
151 pages. Illustrated.
Free download of entire book from Professor Solomon
Buy the paperback from Amazon.com: Japan in a Nutshell
Learning to Bow is a journal written by Bruce S. Feiler during the year he worked as a exchange English teacher in the middle schools of Sano, a rural town north of Tokyo. Mr. Bruce, as he’s called by his students, learns first hand about the Japanese educational system and Japanese culture. However there wasn’t much material that was new to me so I really had to stretch to find something I could say I learned from it and that’s why this paper is so short.
The most interesting insight into Japanese culture for me was the decreased emphasis on self reliance and instead focus on the group thinking. This was well shown in the scene where Mr. Bruce is at the hospital and in traction for a sprained ankle he got during a tennis match. Mr. Bruce is lying in a hospital bed begging to go home to his apartment. But the descion isn’t left to him, his co-workers from the school have to hold a meeting right in the room to decide if Mr. Bruce will be able to survive by himself given his horrible injury.
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Waseda University graduate Haruki Murakami wrote A Wild Sheep Chase in 1981. The book won the Noma Literary Award for new writers, and latter on Mr. Murakami also won a Tanizaki prize for one of his newer novels.1 Sheep Chase is a Fantasy / Detective novel set in early eighties Japan. An interesting thing about this book is that none of the characters have names. They are all referred to by their relationship the main character (my girlfriend, my ex-wife, my business partner), or by they’re profession (the chauffeur, the hotel owner). The two pivotal characters in the book are ‘the boss’ and the narrator.
‘The boss’ was a solider in the Japanese army during WWII who participated in the invasion of China. After the defeat of Japan a US lead war commission brought ‘the boss’ to trial for war crimes, but the charges were dropped when US doctors discovered the he had developed a massive brain tumor and probably only had a few weeks left to live. However after ‘the boss’ was freed he didn’t become ill at all. In fact ‘the boss’, who had only been a barely literate grunt was completely changed:
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