Share

Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms

2010-10-01 History
Download Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms PDF Online Free

Author :
Release : 2010-10-01
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 689/5 ( reviews)

GET EBOOK


Book Synopsis Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms by : Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney

Download or read book Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms written by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney. This book was released on 2010-10-01. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did almost one thousand highly educated "student soldiers" volunteer to serve in Japan's tokkotai (kamikaze) operations near the end of World War II, even though Japan was losing the war? In this fascinating study of the role of symbolism and aesthetics in totalitarian ideology, Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney shows how the state manipulated the time-honored Japanese symbol of the cherry blossom to convince people that it was their honor to "die like beautiful falling cherry petals" for the emperor. Drawing on diaries never before published in English, Ohnuki-Tierney describes these young men's agonies and even defiance against the imperial ideology. Passionately devoted to cosmopolitan intellectual traditions, the pilots saw the cherry blossom not in militaristic terms, but as a symbol of the painful beauty and unresolved ambiguities of their tragically brief lives. Using Japan as an example, the author breaks new ground in the understanding of symbolic communication, nationalism, and totalitarian ideologies and their execution.

Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms

2002-10-01 History
Download Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms PDF Online Free

Author :
Release : 2002-10-01
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 916/5 ( reviews)

GET EBOOK


Book Synopsis Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms by : Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney

Download or read book Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms written by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney. This book was released on 2002-10-01. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did almost one thousand highly educated "student soldiers" volunteer to serve in Japan's tokkotai (kamikaze) operations near the end of World War II, even though Japan was losing the war? In this fascinating study of the role of symbolism and aesthetics in totalitarian ideology, Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney shows how the state manipulated the time-honored Japanese symbol of the cherry blossom to convince people that it was their honor to "die like beautiful falling cherry petals" for the emperor. Drawing on diaries never before published in English, Ohnuki-Tierney describes these young men's agonies and even defiance against the imperial ideology. Passionately devoted to cosmopolitan intellectual traditions, the pilots saw the cherry blossom not in militaristic terms, but as a symbol of the painful beauty and unresolved ambiguities of their tragically brief lives. Using Japan as an example, the author breaks new ground in the understanding of symbolic communication, nationalism, and totalitarian ideologies and their execution.

Kamikaze Diaries

2007-03-01 Social Science
Download Kamikaze Diaries PDF Online Free

Author :
Release : 2007-03-01
Genre : Social Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 921/5 ( reviews)

GET EBOOK


Book Synopsis Kamikaze Diaries by : Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney

Download or read book Kamikaze Diaries written by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney. This book was released on 2007-03-01. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “We tried to live with 120 percent intensity, rather than waiting for death. We read and read, trying to understand why we had to die in our early twenties. We felt the clock ticking away towards our death, every sound of the clock shortening our lives.” So wrote Irokawa Daikichi, one of the many kamikaze pilots, or tokkotai, who faced almost certain death in the futile military operations conducted by Japan at the end of World War II. This moving history presents diaries and correspondence left by members of the tokkotai and other Japanese student soldiers who perished during the war. Outside of Japan, these kamikaze pilots were considered unbridled fanatics and chauvinists who willingly sacrificed their lives for the emperor. But the writings explored here by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney clearly and eloquently speak otherwise. A significant number of the kamikaze were university students who were drafted and forced to volunteer for this desperate military operation. Such young men were the intellectual elite of modern Japan: steeped in the classics and major works of philosophy, they took Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” as their motto. And in their diaries and correspondence, as Ohnuki-Tierney shows, these student soldiers wrote long and often heartbreaking soliloquies in which they poured out their anguish and fear, expressed profound ambivalence toward the war, and articulated thoughtful opposition to their nation’s imperialism. A salutary correction to the many caricatures of the kamikaze, this poignant work will be essential to anyone interested in the history of Japan and World War II.

When My Name Was Keoko

2013-04 Biography & Autobiography
Download When My Name Was Keoko PDF Online Free

Author :
Release : 2013-04
Genre : Biography & Autobiography
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 267/5 ( reviews)

GET EBOOK


Book Synopsis When My Name Was Keoko by : Linda Sue Park

Download or read book When My Name Was Keoko written by Linda Sue Park. This book was released on 2013-04. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A heartwarming tale of courage, resilience and hope from master storyteller and winner of the prestigious Newbery Medal, Linda Sue Park. When her name was Keoko, Japan owned Korea, and Japanese soldiers ordered people around, telling them what they could do or say, even what sort of flowers they could grow. When her name was Keoko, World War II came to Korea, and her friends and relatives had to work and fight for Japan. When her name was Keoko, she never forgot her name was actually Kim Sun-hee. And no matter what she was called, she was Korean. Not Japanese. Inspired by true-life events, this amazing story reveals what happens when your culture, country and identity are threatened.

Flowers That Kill

2015-08-12 Social Science
Download Flowers That Kill PDF Online Free

Author :
Release : 2015-08-12
Genre : Social Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 940/5 ( reviews)

GET EBOOK


Book Synopsis Flowers That Kill by : Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney

Download or read book Flowers That Kill written by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney. This book was released on 2015-08-12. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Flowers are beautiful. People often communicate their love, sorrow, and other feelings to each other by offering flowers, like roses. Flowers can also be symbols of collective identity, as cherry blossoms are for the Japanese. But, are they also deceptive? Do people become aware when their meaning changes, perhaps as flowers are deployed by the state and dictators? Did people recognize that the roses they offered to Stalin and Hitler became a propaganda tool? Or were they like the Japanese, who, including the soldiers, did not realize when the state told them to fall like cherry blossoms, it meant their deaths? Flowers That Kill proposes an entirely new theoretical understanding of the role of quotidian symbols and their political significance to understand how they lead people, if indirectly, to wars, violence, and even self-exclusion and self-destruction precisely because symbolic communication is full of ambiguity and opacity. Using a broad comparative approach, Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney illustrates how the aesthetic and multiple meanings of symbols, and at times symbols without images become possible sources for creating opacity which prevents people from recognizing the shifting meaning of the symbols.

You may also like...