Memoires of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

Sakamoto seen the history between Japan and United States as she studied the effects of WWII, which motivated her to write her book after meeting a Japanese man named Harry Fukuhara, a retired United States army kernel in Japan. As she learns about Fukuhara’s family story, she felt that she should share it with the world because it is a wonderful story that tells how a Japanese American family were caught between two worlds. The story tells the true story of a family who were later separated due to WWII. Before WWII, Japan declared war with China as the Japanese attempt to take over Manchuria, Indochina, and China. Although, the U.S. believes WWII began in 1941 when Pearl Harbor was attacked, but Japan believes that WWII began in “1937 when China decided she would not submit tamely to Japanese aggression” (Morton, pg. 183).

Japanese American families were sent to internment camps located at a desert in Utah almost in less than 24 hours during World War ll. It was supposed to be luxurious and a dream, yet it was the complete opposite. In the book, When the emperor was divine, Julie Otsuka describes each character and their stories through different points of views. She tells their story by recounting each of the main character's emotional experiences while showing the life of Japanese Americans and how they were labeled in others eyes. Otsuka writes not only about the venture of being taken to an internment camp, but how each character changes in the process. Through each person comes a story and why they changed into somewhat the opposite of their

Two bombs named “Fat man” and “Little Boy” forced the Imperial Japanese Government into surrendering on August 15, 1945 to the Western Allies. After WWII, Japan under Western Occupation was opened up to the world. With the Supreme Command of Allied Powers (SCAP) in control Japan was repaired and its old institutions were replaced with democratic policies. Japan had to learn democracy and with the aid of Western thinkers Japan had a new constitution. In the book Learning to Bow, Bruce Feiler is sent to Japan to teach Japanese students about American values, customs, and its language. In what became more of a learning lesson, however, the author was able to understand what it truly meant to be Japanese. Feiler is able to understand what it means to be Japanese through his immersion into Japanese society and by comparing his Americanized ideals with that of Japan, he is able to better understand the vast similarities and differences between these distant countries.

The autobiography illustrates personal experiences of discrimination and prejudice while also reporting the political occurrences during the United States’ involvement in World War II. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the United States government unleashed unrestrained contempt for the Japanese residing in the nation. The general public followed this train of thought, distrusting the Japanese and treating them like something less than human. In a country of freedom and justice, no coalition stepped up to defend the people who had lived there most of or all of their lives; rather, people took advantage of the Japanese evacuation to take their property and belongings. The government released demeaning propaganda displaying comical Japanese men as monsters and rats, encouraging the public to be vigilant and wary toward anyone of Japanese descent. The abuse of the Japanese during this period was taken a little too lightly, the government apologizing too late and now minor education of the real cruelty expressed toward the nation’s own citizens. Now we see history repeating itself in society, and if we don’t catch the warning signs today, history may just come full

The Japanese-American author, Julie Otsuka, wrote the book When the Emperor was Divine. She shares her relative and all Japanese Americans life story while suffering during World War II, in internment camps. She shares with us how her family lived before, during, and after the war. She also shares how the government took away six years of Japanese-American lives, falsely accusing them of helping the enemy. She explains in great detail their lives during the internment camp, the barbed wired fences, the armed guards, and the harsh temperatures. When they returned home from the war they did not know what to believe anymore. Either the Americans, which imprisoned them falsely, or the emperor who they have been told constantly not to believe, for the past six years imprisoned. Japanese-Americans endured a great setback, because of what they experienced being locked away by their own government.

In Pearl Harbor and the Coming of the Pacific War by Akira Iriye, the author explores the events and circumstances that ended in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, an American naval base. Iriye assembles a myriad of primary documents, such as proposals and imperial conferences, as well as essays that offer different perspectives of the Pacific War. Not only is the material in Pearl Harbor and the Coming of the Pacific War informative of the situation between Japan and the United States, but it also provides a global context that allows for the readers to interpret Pearl Harbor and the events leading up to it how they may. Ultimately, both Pearl Harbor and the subsequent Pacific War between

Consistent with Japanese propaganda the nationalist leaders held belief that Japan was “the leader, protector and light of Asia”. However, this perception of liberation from colonial rule was a façade as the civilians of occupied nations experienced harsher treatment under the Japanese than they did under the colonial authorities.

officials eventually began to recruit these internees into the American army. Not only was WWII a war about political alliances and geographical sovereignty, but it was also a war about race and racial superiority throughout the world. Propagating this idea, Dower (1986) argues, “World War Two contributed immeasurably not only to a sharpened awareness of racism within the United States, but also to more radical demands and militant tactics on the part of the victims of discrimination” (War Without Mercy: p.5). In elucidating the racial motivations and fallout from WWII, Dower helps one realize the critical role that race and racial politics played during the war and are still at play in our contemporary world. An analysis of this internment process reveals how the ultimate goal of the U.S. internment of Japanese Americans and the United States’ subsequent occupation of Japan was to essentially “brainwash” the Japanese race into demonstrating allegiance to America.

After WWII ended in 1945, xenophobia amongst the white populace, coupled with an inflexible definition of who or what represented “American-ness”, prevented Asian Americans from claiming an American identity. Alongside this exclusion, the post-war period also witnessed the assertion of American identity formed by culture and family in the Issei and Nisei community. This essay will argue that through Ichiro Yamada’s struggle to integrate, Okada’s No-No Boy represents the fracturing belief of a monoracial American identity and the cultural instability found within the narrative. John Okada’s No-No Boy adopts an allegoric strategy in order to foreground the attitudes and lives the Issei and Nisei shaped during their internment and sometimes incarceration, which continued after the war. Moreover, as the novel progresses, Okada examines characters such as Ichiro Yamada, who face the cultural conflicts and form the possibility of an “elusive insinuation of promise” of belonging in post-war America (221). Additionally, the racial slurs and violent attacks by other Japanese and non-Japanese Americans that befall him highlight the divisions within American society. A close reading for the free indirect discourse and allegory shows how John Okada uses these literary strategies to suggest the disturbance of American identity.

John Dower's "Embracing Defeat" truly conveys the Japanese experience of American occupation from within by focusing on the social, cultural, and philosophical aspects of a country devastated by World War II. His capturing of the Japanese peoples' voice let us, as readers, empathize with those who had to start over in a "new nation."

The Japanese-American placement in internment camps was wrong and unconstitutional. The Japanese-American people had been living in the United States without question until the uprise of racial prejudice brought on by the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Many Japanese-Americans had been born in America and lived an American life, integrated into American schools, speaking with American accents, and enjoying American culture. But, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Japanese were suddenly seen as threats that needed to be controlled. Without any consent, these Japanese-Americans were placed in internment camps with poor conditions and treated as if they were ticking time bombs themselves.

Japan, forced to rebuild itself from the ashes of defeat, was occupied by Americans in the aftermath of World War II. Although it was commonly perceived through the victors’ eyes, in John W. Dower’s novel, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, Dower summarized his studies of Occupied Japan and the impact of war on Japanese society in the view of both the conqueror and the defeated. He demonstrated the “Transcending Despair” (p. 85) of the Japanese people through their everyday lives in the early stages of the occupation. In chapter three, Dower attempted to comprehend the hopes and dreams – as well as the hopelessness and realities – of the Japanese who were in a state of exhaustion and despair. In chapter four, due partly to the food shortage, crime rates rose as people began to steal. Women turned to prostitution while men turned to the black market. Some Japanese were so desperate that they stripped out of their clothing and exchanged it for food. Dower vividly conveyed the depth of loss and confusion that Japan experienced. On the other hand, Kasutori culture flourished in the 1950s as sexually oriented entertainments dominated the commercial world. In chapter five, the people of Japan turned wartime slogans into slogans for reconstruction and peace. They used witty defeat jokes as a way to escape despair. Even though they were defeated, the people of Japan pushed through the misery and sought to reinvent their identity as illustrated through prostitution, the black market, and “Bridges of Language” (p. 168).

Beauty is an incredibly subjective thing; what might seem appealing to one’s eyes may be horrendously ugly in the eyes of another. However, the status of “beautiful” or “ugly” can be assigned rather objectively when art is examined from the perspectives of different philosophies. The beliefs and values of different philosophies can be used to find meaning and beauty in various art forms, allowing for a more straightforward determination of beauty. Because of the many layers of meaning most paintings entail, they are a perfect example of an art form that can be analyzed by numerous philosophical viewpoints to find meaning and beauty, and Ma Yuan’s painting Walking on a Mountain Path in Spring, which comes from the Song dynasty of Chinese and depicts a sole figure standing in a natural surrounding, is no exception. Ma Yuan’s painting is beautiful because it represents the ultimate achievements for the Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian philosophies.

Humanity as depicted by artists reflects the values of a society. Different ages have held different perspectives on humanity. These varying perspectives are displayed through the creation of each artist, writer, and composer. An era is described by what is produced in it; therefore, the ideas about humanity displayed in each piece of artwork are the same ideas that shaped a particular era. By examining components of the various pieces produced in an era, one can determine the majority view of humanity during that time and trace the shifts in society’s perspective. As time has progressed, art transformed from having specific moral meaning to having purely subjective meaning.

The Chinese insist that the Japanese need to realise like how the Nazis will be remembered for their atrocious treatment towards Jews, the Japanese will be remembered for their inhumane treatment towards the 300 000 civilians that they had “brutally slaughtered and systematically tortured” during the “Asian Holocaust”, as Chang put it in the Rape of Nanking. On the other hand, the Japanese government does not feel the obligation to fully disclose information and results of the incident in their high school textbooks and instead prefer to build a nation of oblivious youth. Given the severe impact of the problems of history on current Sino-Japanese relations, the two states are now encountering an urgent task to eliminate historical mythmaking in national historiography. Thus the debate is sure to continue; both sides have too much invested in the meaning and identity of these now distant events. The divergent tone and focus of these two pioneering volumes illustrate how the gap between Japanese and Chinese positions remains formidable and likely