As Japan shifted from an agricultural country before 1950 to an industrialized nation in less time than any other developed country, women felt the pressure of the shift. Husbands worked longer hours, leaving all the household chores and child rearing to their wives while fulfilling their responsibilites as corporate soldiers. The economy was fueled by a diligent, well-educated, low-paid workforce, but gender role division became even more rigid. Household incomes rose and improvement in areas such as diets, transportation, and leisure were made; modern appliances also made it possible for mothers to have part-time jobs. But pollution also rose, as did prices, and crowded living conditions began to impinge on family life. Tanaka, who has spent many years looking back at her country from an American perspective, examines marriage, motherhood, employment, independence, women's movements, and old age for women in Japan over the last 50 years.

In A Place for Apology, author Shu Kishida examines America's foreign policy strategies with Japan. The author contemplates whether or not Japan is America's satellite nation, a question on the mind of many Japanese. Professor Kishida contends that the problematic pattern of American denial and repression of guilt led to an unsuccessful American occupation of Japan after World War II and the disastrous effect of the Tokyo War Tribunal on the Japanese psyche. Japan, as the author sees, suffers from a self-deluded "inner-outer split," which has invited American mistrust. A more balanced relationship is needed to fill the perception gaps between the two nations and resolve longstanding diplomatic tensions. This book, translated by Yukiko Tanaka, offers several intriguing new views for those who contemplate the American-Japanese historical quagmire. In addition, it sheds light on the complexities of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

Set during the U.S. Occupation following World War II, Embracing Family is a novel of conflict -- between Western and Eastern traditions, between a husband and wife, between ideals and reality. At the opening of the book, Miwa Shunsuke and his wife are trapped in a strained marriage, subtly attacking one another in a manner similar to that of the characters in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? When his wife has an affair with an American GI, Miwa is forced to come to terms with the disintegration of their relationship and the fact that his attempts to repair it only exacerbate the situation. An award-winning novel, critics have read this book as a metaphor of postwar Japanese society, in which the traditional moral and philosophical basis of Japanese culture is neglected in favor of Western conventions.

After centuries of repression of the female voice in literature, the Meiji (1868-1912) and Taisho (1912-1926) periods in Japanese history saw important changes in both the way women wrote and the way they were read. However, even the most accepted female writers of these two eras were judged by criteria different from those applied to men, and only the most conservative were praised by the (male) critics. This study of the women who wrote in the modern era examines both famous and now-obscure writers within the context of their moments in time and their influence on later generations of Japanese women writers. Arranged chronologically, the book covers the pioneering women of the early Meiji period, the ethos of reactionary conservatism, the romantic movement in poetry, women writers of the naturalist school, Taisho liberalism, and the new era of literary women. An introduction outlines the various schools of Japanese female writers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as the social and cultural trends that helped produce them. The text is appropriate for both well-read scholars of Japanese literature and newcomers to the works of the "fair ladies of the back chamber, " as these creative and driven writers were once called.

As Japan shifted from an agricultural country before 1950 to an industrialized nation in less time than any other developed country, women felt the pressure of the shift. Husbands worked longer hours, leaving all the household chores and child rearing to their wives while fulfilling their responsibilites as corporate soldiers. The economy was fueled by a diligent, well-educated, low-paid workforce, but gender role division became even more rigid. Household incomes rose and improvement in areas such as diets, transportation, and leisure were made; modern appliances also made it possible for mothers to have part-time jobs. But pollution also rose, as did prices, and crowded living conditions began to impinge on family life. Tanaka, who has spent many years looking back at her country from an American perspective, examines marriage, motherhood, employment, independence, women's movements, and old age for women in Japan over the last 50 years.