One winter day, Michio Fujiwara, a high school student, finds an oval-shaped medal beside a statue of the Blessed Mary at a church. It is a "Miraculous Medal" of the Immaculate Mary. Fifteen years later, Michio has become a young and spirited artist, painter and sculptor. He creates a replica of Michelangelo's Pieta that is unveiled at a ceremony to open the Museum of the Virgin Mary, and it wins him highest praise. Two years later, however, the statue is vandalized by someone. What is the purpose of destroying the Pieta? Why does Mary in the Pieta keep shedding tears? What was the true grief of Mary as she stood at the foot of Jesus' cross? Mysterious incidents occur one after another in Kyoto and in Italy regarding the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception that hinders the unity of the Christian Church. http: //www.sinkan.jp/radio/radio_1374.html http: //goo.gl/Y5yZk1 https: //goo.gl/JxecRz

Enka, a sentimental ballad genre, epitomizes for many the nihonjin no kokoro (heart/soul of Japanese). To older members of the Japanese public, who constitute enka’s primary audience, this music—of parted lovers, long unseen rural hometowns, and self-sacrificing mothers—evokes a direct connection to the traditional roots of “Japaneseness.” Overlooked in this emotional invocation of the past, however, are the powerful commercial forces that, since the 1970s, have shaped the consumption of enka and its version of national identity. Informed by theories of nostalgia, collective memory, cultural nationalism, and gender, this book draws on the author’s extensive fieldwork in probing the practice of identity-making and the processes at work when Japan becomes “Japan.”

One winter day, Michio Fujiwara, a high school student, finds an oval-shaped medal beside a statue of the Blessed Mary at a church. It is a “Miraculous Medal” of the Immaculate Mary. Fifteen years later, Michio has become a young and spirited artist, painter and sculptor. He creates a replica of Michelangelo's Pieta that is unveiled at a ceremony to open the Museum of the Virgin Mary, and it wins him highest praise. Two years later, however, the statue is vandalized by someone. What is the purpose of destroying the Pieta? Why does Mary in the Pieta keep shedding tears? What was the true grief of Mary as she stood at the foot of Jesus’ cross? Mysterious incidents occur one after another in Kyoto and in Italy regarding the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception that hinders the unity of the Christian Church.

One winter day, Michio Fujiwara, a high school student, finds an oval-shaped medal beside a statue of the Blessed Mary at a church. It is a “Miraculous Medal” of the Immaculate Mary. Fifteen years later, Michio has become a young and spirited artist, painter and sculptor. He creates a replica of Michelangelo's Pieta that is unveiled at a ceremony to open the Museum of the Virgin Mary, and it wins him highest praise. Two years later, however, the statue is vandalized by someone. What is the purpose of destroying the Pieta? Why does Mary in the Pieta keep shedding tears? What was the true grief of Mary as she stood at the foot of Jesus’ cross? Mysterious incidents occur one after another in Kyoto and in Italy regarding the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception that hinders the unity of the Christian Church.

We trace to account of Our Lady of Akita. We follow Mother Mary on a journey again to a far-off place, high up in the mountains, where no one would consider going. We have never really paid much attention to what towns are located where in Japan, other than Tokyo, Nagasaki and Hiroshima

In this dazzling debut collection, Mary Yukari Waters, a remarkably gifted, award-winning Japanese-American writer, opens a window onto a foreign culture as she reveals the universal humanity of her characters. These uncommonly elegant and assured stories explore Japanese society caught between the long shadow of World War II and the rapid advance of Westernization. The women and children who inhabit these crystalline tales have lost husbands and fathers in the war and now face a world dramatically altered by Western influence. In "Aftermath," a mother watches her son play American dodgeball and eat Western food as she desperately tries to keep alive the memory of his father, who was killed in the war. "Since My House Burned Down" depicts a Japanese widow, permanently displaced from her kitchen by her daughter-in-law, reflecting on the deprivations of wartime as the acidic, foreign smell of tomato sauce wafts upstairs. In "Egg-Face," latent hope kindles for thirty-year-old, jobless Ritsuko when a matchmaker arranges for her to meet a handsome young man. And "The Way Love Works"explores favoritism in three generations of women when a Japanese American teenager returns to Japan with her mother. These finely etched portraits of upheaval and renewal, estrangement and reconciliation, provide keen insight into the Japanese experience and sensibility. A virtuoso collection infused with a warmth that invites readers to feel at home in a world that might otherwise seem alien, The Laws of Evening will undoubtedly place Mary Yukari Waters in the company of our most revered writers.