Two war dramas directed by Clint Eastwood. 'Flags of Our Fathers' (2006) is based on the book by James Bradley and Ron Powers. In February 1945, even as victory in Europe was finally within reach, the war in the Pacific raged on. One of the most crucial and bloodiest battles of the war was the struggle for the island of Iwo Jima, which culminated with what would become one of the most iconic images in history: five Marines and a Navy corpsman raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi. But the surviving flag raisers had no interest in being held up as symbols and did not consider themselves heroes; they wanted only to stay on the front with their brothers in arms who were fighting and dying without fanfare or glory. 'Letters from Iwo Jima' (2006) is based on the book 'Picture Letters from Commander in Chief' by Tadamichi Kuribayashi. The island of Iwo Jima stands between the American military force and the home islands of Japan. Therefore the Imperial Japanese Army is desperate to prevent it from falling into American hands and providing a launching point for an invasion of Japan. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe) is given command of the forces on the island and sets out to prepare for the imminent attack. General Kuribayashi, however, does not favour the rigid traditional approach recommended by his subordinates, and resentment and resistance fester among his staff.

Clint Eastwood's completion of the Iwo Jima saga. Here the action is seen from the Japanese point of view and the film is based on the book 'Picture Letters from Commander in Chief' by Tadamichi Kuribayashi. The island of Iwo Jima stands between the American military force and the home islands of Japan. Therefore the Imperial Japanese Army is desperate to prevent it from falling into American hands and providing a launching point for an invasion of Japan. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe) is given command of the forces on the island and sets out to prepare for the imminent attack. General Kuribayashi, however, does not favour the rigid traditional approach recommended by his subordinates, and resentment and resistance fester among his staff.

The Tokyo region is the most populous metropolitan area in the world and a place of extraordinary vitality. The political, economic and cultural centre of Japan, Tokyo also exerts an enormous international influence. In fact the region has been pivotal to the nation's affairs for centuries. Its sheer size, its concentration of resources and institutions and its long history have produced buildings of many different types from many different eras. This is the first guide to introduce in one volume the architecture of the Tokyo region, encompassing Tokyo proper and adjacent prefectures, in all its remarkable variety, The buildings are presented chronologically and grouped into six periods: the medieval period (1185-1600), the Edoperiod (1600-1868), the Meiji period (1868-1912), the Taisho and early Showa period (1912-1945), the post-war reconstruction period (1945-1970) and the contemporary period (1970 until today). This comprehensive coverage permits those interested in Japanese architecture or culture to focus on a particular era or to examine buildings within a larger temporal framework. A concise discussion of the history of the region and the architecture of Japan develops a context within which the individual works may be viewed. Over 500 buildings are presented, from 15th-century Buddhist temples to 20th-century cultural buildings, from venerable folk houses to works by leading contemporary architects of Japan such as Kenzo Tange, Fumihiko Maki, Arata Isozaki, Hiroshi Hara, Toyo Ito and Riken Yamamoto as well as by foreign architects such as Sir Norman Foster, Peter Eisenman and Steven Holl.

Bull City Summer: A Season At The Ballpark unites a group of artists and documentarians (Hiroshi Watanabe, Alec Soth, and Hank Willis Thomas) around the 2013 season of minor league baseball in Durham, North Carolina, evoking an atmosphere described by The New York Times as "lazing out on the porch of a summer's night and meditating to your favorite ball team." Alec Soth (b. 1969) is a photographer born and based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His photographs have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the 2004 Whitney and São Paulo Biennials. Soth has been the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship (2013). In 2008, Soth started his own publishing company, Little Brown Mushroom. Soth is represented by Sean Kelly in New York, Weinstein Gallery in Minneapolis, Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco, and is a member of Magnum Photos. Hank Willis Thomas is a photo conceptual artist working primarily with themes related to identity, history and popular culture. He received a BFA in Photography and Africana studies from New York University and his MFA/MA in Photography and Visual Criticism from the California College of Arts. Thomas has exhibited throughout the U.S. and abroad, including the International Center of Photography, Galerie Michel Rein in Paris, Studio Museum in Harlem, Galerie Henrik Springmann in Berlin, and the Baltimore Museum of Art, among others. Thomas’ work is in numerous public collections including The Museum of Modern Art New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Brooklyn Museum, The High Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Hiroshi Watanabe Born in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan in 1951, Hiroshi Watanabe graduated from the Department of Photography of Nihon University in 1975. Watanabe moved to Los Angeles, where he worked as a production coordinator for Japanese television commercials and later co-founded a Japanese coordination services company. Watanabe obtained an MBA from the UCLA Anderson Business School in 1993. Two years later, however, his earlier interest in photography revived, and Watanabe started to travel worldwide, extensively photographing what he found intriguing at each moment and place. As of 2000, Watanabe has worked full-time at photography.