There are several underlying factors that led to the attack on Pearl Harbor. After Japan invaded Manchuria (1931) the League of Nations (1933) condemned the Japanese for their aggressive action that prompted their delegation to walk out of the organization. Ignoring all previous agreements, the Japanese Government (1936) embarked on a massive expansion of their naval force. In December 1937, while escorting American oil tankers along the Yangtze River, Japanese aircraft sank the USS Panay. Although there was no retaliation the United States State Department made a strong protest. In 1938 Japan closed its “Open Door” policy prompting the United States to renounce its trade treaty with Japan and placed an embargo on metal exports to Japan. In May 1940, with tensions rising throughout the Pacific, Pearl Harbor became the main Pacific base for the United States fleet. In July 1941 the United States placed an embargo on all strategic exports to Japan and froze Japan’s assets in the United States. While WW2 stories are a big part of this book, there are many other events, places and people that are brought to life in this autobiography.

Are the works of contemporary Japanese novelists, as Nobel Prize winner Oe Kenzaburo has observed, "mere reflections of the vast consumer culture of Tokyo and the subcultures of the world at large"? Or do they contain their own critical components, albeit in altered form? Oe and Beyond surveys the accomplishments of Oe and other writers of the postwar generation while looking further to examine the literary parameters of the "Post-Oe" generation. Despite the unprecedented availability today of the work of many of these writers in excellent English translations, some twenty years have passed since a collection of critical essays has appeared to guide the interested reader through the fascinating world of contemporary Japanese fiction. Oe and Beyond is a sampling of the best research and thinking on the current generation of Japanese writers being done in English. The essays in this volume explore such subjects as the continuing resonances of the atomic bombings; the notion of "transnational subjects"; the question of the "de-canonization" (as well as the "re-canonization") of writers; the construction (and deconstruction) of gender models; the quest for spirituality amid contemporary Japanese consumer affluence; post-modernity and Japanese "infantilism"; the intertwining connections between history, myth-making, and discrimination; and apocalyptic visions of fin de siecle Japan. Contributors pursue various methodological and theoretical approaches to reveal the breadth of scholarship on modern Japanese literature. The essays reflect some of the latest thinking, both Western and Japanese, on such topics as subjectivity, gender, history, modernity, and the postmodern. Oe and Beyond includes essays on Endo Shusaku, Hayashi Kyoko, Kanai Mieko, Kurahashi Yumiko, Murakami Haruki, Murakami Ryu, Nakagami Kenji, Oe Kenzaburo, Ohba Minako, Shimada Masahiko, Takahashi Takako, and Yoshimoto Banana. Contributors: Davinder L. Bhowmik, Philip Gabriel, Van C. Gessel, Adrienne Hurley, Susan J. Napier, Sharalyn Orbaugh, Jay Rubin, Atsuko Sakaki, Ann Sherif, Stephen Snyder, Mark Williams, Eve Zimmerman.

Built upon the highly successful volume One Hundred Years of Korean-American Relations, 1882-1982, this book describes Korea’s importance to the United States and the development of the current relationship. The ramifications of this relationship are evident by the facts that South Korea now constitutes America’s seventh largest trading partner and 37,000 American troops remain stationed there on alert. North Korea, however, continues to harbor a deep resentment of the United States and its southern neighbor and maintains the fifth largest standing army in the world, situated just north of the world’s most fortified demarcation line at the 38th parallel.

The ancient wisdom of Hawai’i has been guarded for centuries—handed down through line of kinship to form the tradition of Huna. Dating back to the time before the first missionary presence arrived in the islands, the tradition of Huna is more than just a philosophy of living—it is intertwined and deeply connected with every aspect of Hawaiian life. Blending ancient Hawaiian wisdom with modern practicality, Serge Kahili King imparts the philosophy behind the beliefs, history, and foundation of Huna. More important, King shows readers how to use Huna philosophy to attain both material and spiritual goals. To those who practice Huna, there is a deep understanding about the true nature of life—and the real meaning of personal power, intention, and belief. Through exploring the seven core principles around which the practice revolves, King passes onto readers a timeless and powerful wisdom.

With the warmth and humor we've come to know, the creator and host of A Prairie Home Companion shares his own remarkable story. In That Time of Year, Garrison Keillor looks back on his life and recounts how a Brethren boy with writerly ambitions grew up in a small town on the Mississippi in the 1950s and, seeing three good friends die young, turned to comedy and radio. Through a series of unreasonable lucky breaks, he founded A Prairie Home Companion and put himself in line for a good life, including mistakes, regrets, and a few medical adventures. PHC lasted forty-two years, 1,557 shows, and enjoyed the freedom to do as it pleased for three or four million listeners every Saturday at 5 p.m. Central. He got to sing with Emmylou Harris and Renée Fleming and once sang two songs to the U.S. Supreme Court. He played a private eye and a cowboy, gave the news from his hometown, Lake Wobegon, and met Somali cabdrivers who’d learned English from listening to the show. He wrote bestselling novels, won a Grammy and a National Humanities Medal, and made a movie with Robert Altman with an alarming amount of improvisation. He says, “I was unemployable and managed to invent work for myself that I loved all my life, and on top of that I married well. That’s the secret, work and love. And I chose the right ancestors, impoverished Scots and Yorkshire farmers, good workers. I’m heading for eighty, and I still get up to write before dawn every day.”

In the face of seemingly relentless American optimism, Eugene O’Neill's plays reveal an America many would like to ignore, a place of seething resentments, aching desires, and family tragedy, where failure and disappointment are the norm and the American dream a chimera. Though derided by critics during his lifetime, his works resonated with audiences, won him the Nobel Prize and four Pulitzer, and continue to grip theatergoers today. Now noted historian John Patrick Diggins offers a masterly biography that both traces O’Neill’s tumultuous life and explains the forceful ideas that form the heart of his unflinching works. Diggins paints a richly detailed portrait of the playwright’s life, from his Irish roots and his early years at sea to his relationships with his troubled mother and brother. Here we see O’Neill as a young Greenwich Village radical, a ravenous autodidact who attempted to understand the disjunction between the sunny public face of American life and the rage that he knew was simmering beneath. According to Diggins, O’Neill mined this disjunction like no other American writer. His characters burn with longing for an idealized future composed of equal parts material success and individual freedom, but repeatedly they fall back to earth, pulled by the tendrils of family and the insatiability of desire. Drawing on thinkers from Emerson to Nietzsche, O’Neill viewed this endlessly frustrated desire as the problematic core of American democracy, simultaneously driving and undermining American ideals of progress, success, and individual freedom. Melding a penetrating assessment of O’Neill’s works and thought with a sensitive re-creation of his life, Eugene O’Neill’s America offers a striking new view of America’s greatest playwright—and a new picture of American democracy itself.