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Summary:

"This anthology of over 60 of Sato's commentaries reflect the writer's wide-ranging erudition and his unsentimental views of both his native Japan and his adopted American homeland. Broadly he looks at the Pacific War and its aftermath and at war (and our love of it) in general, at the quirks and curiosities of the natural world exhibited by birds and other creatures, at friends and mentors who surprised and inspired, and finally at other writers and their works, many of them familiar--the Beats and John Ashbery, for example, and Mishima--but many others whose introduction is welcome"-- [Amazon]

Table of Contents:

• Machine generated contents note: I. Wars and Consequences
• Shattering the Mirror That Distorts Japan
• War Perspective of Poets Oceans Apart
• Was Pearl Harbor Really a Surprise?
• Old Prejudices Burn Bright in a War Account
• Doing One's Duty in a Desperate Situation
• Gyokusai or "Shattering Like a Jewel"
• Creator of "Go for Broke"
• Debunking America's "Good War" Myth
• Japanese Sword I
• Japanese Sword II
• AIR RAIDS
• Great Tokyo Air Raid Was a War Crime
• Indiscriminate Bombing and Legal Judgment
• Unending Ruthless Air Raids
• Condemnation Attributed to "Utter Nonsense"
• COMFORT WOMEN
• Redaction of a "Comfort Women" Story
• Censorship Distortion of "Comfort Women"
• Sex-Slave Wrangling Misses Human Picture

• "Comfort Women" Question Is Far from Black and White
• WAR ON TERROR
• Blunderbuss Followup to the Invasion of Iraq
• Terrorism Brouhaha, Then and Now
• Indefensible Costs of Military One-Upmanship
• Breed Apart
• II. Birds and Other Animals
• Gall of Those Gulls
• Bird Bashing
• To Keep the Fairway Fair
• Emotion Trumps Logic in Whaling Debate
• Depredation of Species That Get in Our Way
• "Good Old Days" Dispensed with Body Counts
• No Country for Millions of Canada Geese
• Transient Rasping That Captivates the Poets
• "Where to Go to Survive the Day?" the Corbies Say
• INVASIVES
• Rooting Out the Purplish, Yellow Perils
• Don't Destroy That Invader, It Was Here First!
• Anthropocentric Bent of "Alien" Fish
• Don't Exterminate the Zebra Mussels, Ruffes, or Gobies!
• Seagulls
• III. Teachers and Friends
• Lindley Williams Hubbell / Hayashi Shuseki
• Eleanor Wolff
• Ronald Homer Bayes
• Michael O'Brien
• Herbert Passin
• Earl Miner
• Robert Anthony Fagan
• Kyoko Iriye Selden
• Burton Watson
• Rand Castile
• John Ashbery
• Michi Kobi
• Bong-san I
• Bong-san II
• IV. Talking about Books and Such
• Unnaturally Smooth Naturalization?
• ABC's of Life
• Drinking in Mr. Cavett
• Kissing Encounters
• Panties Talk
• Results of Carnal Prohibition Are No Surprise
• Genji: The Long and the Short of It
• Genji's Poetry of Spirit Possession
• Shining a Light on Turkish-Japanese Ties
• From the Outside Looking In
• Bedfellows of Those "Lax," "Insular" Japanese
• "Gaijin" Putting Down Roots in Japan
• Remains of the Occupation Mentality
• Answer, My Friend, Is Blowing in the Wind
• Zen and the Art of Beatnik Haiku
• Complexities of "They" versus "Xe / Xim / Xir"
• REFLECTING ON HISTORY
• Japan's First Embassy to Washington
• Japan's Close Encounter with the West
• Undergoing the Third Degree in Prewar Japan
• Looking Back at Seventy Years Before the War's End
• Returning from Taiwan after Japan's Defeat
• Going with the Flow in a Japanese Trade Office.

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Author/Creator:

Sato, Hiroaki, 1942- , author

Contributors:

O'Brien, Geoffrey, 1948- , writer of foreword

Languages:

English

Language Notes:

Item content: English

Main Work:

A bridge of words: views across America and Japan [by Sato, H.]

Subjects:

Sato, Hiroaki, 1942- — Friends and associates

Birds

United States — Civilization

Japan — Civilization

General Notes:

Includes index.
Description based on print version record.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

ISBNs:

9781611729580 (electronic bk.)
1611729580 (electronic bk.)
1611720788 [Invalid]
9781611720785 [Invalid]

OCLC Numbers:

1345587676

Other Control Numbers:

3387684 (source: EbpS)
[Unknown Type]: ybp303132825