This book may be purchased online from Amazon.com Books.

"Molding Japanese Minds shows how extensively and consistently the modern Japanese state has sought to manage social behavior. As with any supurb work of history, one finishes this book with a renewed appreciation of the complexity of the human condition, for this is not a simple story of control from the top. Sheldon Garon's important contribution is to show us how social groups and individuals who were supposed to be on the receiving end of state policy often joined forces with political officials in ways that confound simple division between state and society."
-Andrew Gordon, Harvard University

"Sheldon Garon does exactly what needs to be done in the field of modern Japanese history: he focuses on the most important agency of the prewar Japanese developmental state, namely, the Ministry of Home Affairs. His case studies are marvelously done, magnificently researched, and very provocative."

- Chalmers Johnson, Japan Policy Research Institute

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[It] offers a brilliant examination of contemporary Japan's cultural nationalism, and its cultural isolation in the world, against the backdrop of the author's rich professional life, as a scholar of Japanese history, an administrator of exchange programs, and a teacher in Japanese universities. The book will provoke controversy, but if the controversy produces specific suggestions for the best ways of undermining what Hall calls Japan's 'manipulated dialog' with other countries and establishing the kind of 'cultural and intellectual interchange as conceived of by the rest of the advanced industrialized democracies,' the book will have served its purpose.

My web page on comfort women contains excerpts from my review of this book in Korea Journal 37(2): 136-141 (1997).

This book may be purchased online from Amazon.com Books.

This book may be purchased online from Amazon.com Books.

This book may be purchased online from Amazon.com Books.

In Home was the Land of Morning Calm: A Saga of a Korean-American Family, Connie Kang, a Korean-American reporter for The Los Angeles Times, skillfully blends the life stories of the Kang clan with the narratives of the turbulent political history of her native Korea from the turn of the century to 1994. Chapters 1 through 4 focus on the life stories of her "uncommon ancestors" living in what is now North Korea. The stories read like a historical novel, for Kang deftly interweaves then with the background narratives of the major political events of twentieth-century Korea up to 1950. The book continues with Kang's transnational migratory journies that began in 1951 when she was eight: riding with her mother on the rooftop of the last train for Pusan as refugees of the Korean War; crossing the sea illegally with her mother from Pusan to Tokyo to join her father; relocating with the family to Okinawa where she spent three adolescent years before going to the United States to study journalism; returning to Korea to start an independent life as a newspaperwoman and university professor; and immigrating to the United States as a consequence of her "international marriage" to an Anglo-American journalist.

(Adapted from my review of this book in the
Journal of Asian Studies, 55,[4]: 1019-1020, 1996.)

In Women Struggling for a New Life, Ai Ra Kim, one of the few immigrant ilse (first generation) women pastors serving the Korean Christian churches in the United States, explores the effect of Christianity on Korean immigrant women's lives with a focus on the development of the self in their struggle to adjust to a new social milieu. The study is based on materials gathered from interviews with twenty-two women from three Korean United Methodist churches in New Jersey.

Kim's major contribution in this book is that she provides numerous direct quotes from her interviews, which reveal interesting -- and at times tantalizing -- glimpses into the achievement as well as the plight of ilse women.

(Excerpt from my review of this book in the
Journal of Asian Studies, 55,[3]: 744-746, 1996.)

"A First-rate contribution to the literature in applied anthropology, comparative and cross-cultural management and modernization for the insight it provides on the Korean corporation."
Work and Occupations

"Reared and schooled in South Korea before spending over twenty-five years studying and teaching in the United States, Choong Soon Kim is in an enviable position to 'translate' the culture of a South Korean company for a North American audience. Indeed, The Culture of Korean Industry skillfully combines Kim's ethnographic data with historical research, survey results, and comparative observations. The result is an important contribution to Korean studies."

Journal of Asian Studies

"Kim's study clearly demonstrates the invaluable contribution of industrial anthropology to the analysis of complex societies.... Kim excels in delineating the interrelations between history, kinship, Confucian ethics, gender, values, and the politics of South Korea."

Choice

This book may be purchased online from Amazon.com Books.

This book may be purchased online from Amazon.com Books.

Paperback:
Published by Harpercollins Canada
Publication date: December 1997
ISBN: 0006386164

A landmark book that re-evaluates the picture we have held of Japan over the past half century by examining its culture, customs, and history, and explores the direction now being taken by the country that is considered one of the great wild cards of world affairs.

This book may be purchased online from Amazon.com Books.

This book may be purchased online from Amazon.com Books.

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Last updated 9/13/99 -jb-