Winner of the Kobayashi Hideo Award, this best-selling book by one of Japan's most ambitious contemporary fiction writers lays bare the struggle to retain the brilliance of one's own language in an age of English dominance. Born in Tokyo but also raised and educated in the United States, Minae Mizumura acknowledges the value of a universal language in the pursuit of knowledge, yet also appreciates the different ways of seeing offered by the work of multiple tongues. She warns against losing this precious diversity.

Universal languages have always played a pivotal role in advancing human societies, Mizumura shows, but in the globalized world of the Internet, English is fast becoming the sole common language of the human race. The process is unstoppable, and striving for total language equality is delusional -- except when a particular knowledge is at stake, gained through writings in a specific language. Mizumura calls these writings "texts" and their ultimate form "literature." Only through literature, and more fundamentally through the various languages that give birth to a variety of literatures, can we nurture and enrich humanity. Incorporating her own experiences as a writer and a lover of language, and embedding a parallel history of Japanese, Mizumura offers an intimate look at the phenomenona of individual and national expression.

In Unpredictable Agents, twelve Japanese scholars of American studies tell their stories of how they encountered "America" and came to dedicate their careers to studying it. People in postwar Japan have experienced "America" in a number of ways-through literature, material goods, popular culture, foodways, GIs, missionaries, art, political figures, celebrities, and business. As the Japanese public wrestled with a complex mixture of admiration and confusion, yearning and repulsion, closeness and alienation toward the US, Japanese scholars specializing in American studies have become interlocutors in helping their compatriots understand the country. In scholarly literature, these intellectuals are often understood as complicit agents in US Cold War liberalism. By focusing on the human dimensions of the intellectuals' lives and careers, Unpredictable Agents resists such a deterministic account of complicity while recognizing the relationship between power and knowledge and the historical and structural conditions in which these scholars and their work emerged. How did these scholars encounter "America" in the first place, and what exactly constitutes the "America" they have experienced? How did they come to be Americanists, and what does being Americanists mean for them? In short, what are the actual experiences of Japan's Americanists, and what are their relationships to "America"? Reflecting both the interlocked web of politics, economics, and academics, as well as the evolving contours of Japan's Americanists, the essays highlight the diverse paths through which these individuals have come to be "Americanists" and the complex meanings that identity carries for them. The stories reveal the obvious yet often neglected fact that Japanese scholars neither come from the same backgrounds nor occupy similar identities solely because of their shared ethnicity and citizenship. The authors were born in the period ranging from the 1940s to the 1980s in different parts of Japan-from Hokkaido to Okinawa-and raised in diverse familial and cultural environments, which shaped their identities as "Japanese" and their encounters with "America" in quite different ways. Together, the essays illustrate the complex positionalities, fluid identities, ambivalent embrace, and unpredictable agency of Japan's Americanists who continue to chart their own course in and across the Pacific.

Winner of the Kobayashi Hideo Award, The Fall of Language in the Age of English lays bare the struggle to retain the brilliance of one's own language in this period of English-language dominance. Born in Tokyo but raised and educated in the United States, Minae Mizumura acknowledges the value of a universal language in the pursuit of knowledge yet also embraces the different ways of understanding offered by multiple tongues. She warns against losing this precious diversity. Universal languages have always played a pivotal role in advancing human societies, Mizumura shows, but in the globalized world of the Internet, English is fast becoming the sole common language of humanity. The process is unstoppable, and striving for total language equality is delusional-and yet, particular kinds of knowledge can be gained only through writings in specific languages. Mizumura calls these writings "texts" and their ultimate form "literature." Only through literature and, more fundamentally, through the diverse languages that give birth to a variety of literatures, can we nurture and enrich humanity. Incorporating her own experiences as a writer and a lover of language and embedding a parallel history of Japanese, Mizumura offers an intimate look at the phenomena of individual and national expression.

Using the writings of Pearl Buck and Ruth Benedict, the art of Mary Cassatt and Helen Hyde, the poetry of Amy Lowell, and the performances of white women in "Madame Butterfly," this book examines how white American women-including consumers, artists, writers, revolutionaries, and anthropologists-who were attracted to Asia found new forms of expression, and freedom in their construction of Orientalism. It will appeal to those interested in American Studies, material culture, turn-of-the-century literature, theatre, visual arts, cultural history, and gender studies.

Much has been written about Leonard Bernstein, a musician of extraordinary talent who was legendary for his passionate love of life and many relationships. In this work, Mari Yoshihara reveals the deeply emotional connections Bernstein formed with two little-known Japanese individuals, which she narrates through their personal letters that have never been seen before. Dearest Lenny interweaves an intimate story of love and art with a history of Bernstein's transformation from an American icon to a world maestro during the second half of the twentieth century. The articulate, moving letters of Kazuko Amano-a woman who began writing fan letters to Bernstein in 1947 and became a close family friend-and Kunihiko Hashimoto-a young man who fell in love with the maestro in 1979 and later became his business representative-convey the meaning Bernstein and his music had at various stages of their lives. The letters also shed light on how Bernstein's compositions, recordings, and performances touched his audiences around the world. The book further traces the making of a global Bernstein amidst the shifting landscape of classical music that made this American celebrity turn increasingly to Europe and Japan. The dramatic change in Japan's place in the world and its relationship to the United States during the postwar decades shaped Bernstein's connection to the country. Ultimately,Dearest Lenny is a story of relationships-between the two individuals and Bernstein, the United States and the world, art and commerce, artists and the state, private and public, conventions and transgressions, dreams and realities-that were at the core of Bernstein's greatest achievements and challenges and that made him truly a maestro of the world. Dearest Lenny paints a poignant portrait of individuals connected across cultures, languages, age, and status through correspondence and music-and the world that shaped their relationships.

In the first book to account for the growing prominence of Asians in the world of Western classical music, Mari Yoshihara grapples with the significance of this trend. This is a book about the about the origins of a social and cultural phenomenon, but it is also about the lives and work of individual musicians devoted to their art.