Japan

“Global Exposure in East Asia: A Comparative Study of Microglobalization” by Ming-Chang Tsai

Anthony Giddens and Martin Wolf in London, Thomas Friedman in Washington, Saskia Sassen in New York, John Meyer and Manuel Castells in California … nearly all of the best-known writers on globalization come from the parts of the world that are doing the globalizing, not from the places that are getting globalized.

In Global Exposure in East Asia, Taiwanese sociologist Ming-Chang Tsai tells the story from the other side. People in China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan have been on the front lines of globalization as waves of economic and social change washed over East Asia.

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“Japanese Society and the Politics of the North Korean Threat” by Seung Hyok Lee

Japanese Society and the Politics of the North Korean Threat is a fascinating and well-written study of populism and irrationality in Japan, reminiscent in many ways of Charles Mackay’s 19th-century Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds—illustrated here by the drivers behind the transformation in Tokyo’s attitude to Pyongyang between 1998, 2006 and on to today.

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“A Career of Japan: Baron Raimund von Stillfried and Early Yokohama Photography” by Luke Gartlan

If you turn to page 105 in this book you will see two extraordinary figures standing and facing each other in a colored albumen print from 1872. They both have bare feet; one wears a light-blue three-quarter length robe, rather like an elegant silk dressing-gown, and the other a similar one of a darker color, with what looks a little like a skirt underneath. They have rather serious expressions on their faces, and medium-length thick, dark, dry-looking hair. They both have upturned mustaches, rather in the style affected by Kaiser Wilhelm II, although not quite as extreme, and they look as if they’ve been painted on.

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