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Historical Japan Biographies:
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If anyone wants to read a true crime book about the way the Japanese judicial system works especially with cases involving murder and rape I highly suggest reading:
https://www.amazon.com/People-Who-Eat-Darkness-Tokyo/dp/0374230595
A while back, I spent a week in what's widely considered the 'bad part of town' in Tokyo -- up around Minami-senju, Kita-senju, the area once known as Sanya, the subject of the famous book "a man with no talents" (https://www.amazon.com/Man-No-Talents-Memoirs-Laborer/dp/080144375X).
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Shit was charming as hell. As low-income areas in the world go, it was nicer than most of San Francisco's yuppie areas. I saw maybe one daytime alcoholic. That's about it.
I'm not sure why you picked Tokyo, but you're making an easy project very hard for yourself.
It's combination of both what you're saying and what yordles_win is saying. Read Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. Hirohito had a much bigger role in the events of WWII than most American historians like to admit ... BUT he also was frequently circumvented towards the end of the war and at the very end, it was the army that negotiated with America, and not the emperor.
Actually, his book points out that the donors did give a lot to the hospital and had a much shorter than average wait. Great book: https://www.amazon.com/Tokyo-Vice-American-Reporter-Police/dp/0307475298
I’m an organ donor and believe in it, but the system has been manipulated at times.
For those who don't get the reference, this is Hiroo Onoda, who was stationed on a remote island during WW2 and refused to believe that Japan had lost the war, so he continued holding out until they finally convinced him the war was over. Fascinating story with some troubling parallels to certain people today. Here is his book: No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War
http://www.amazon.com/People-Who-Eat-Darkness-Tokyo/dp/0374230595
There's a whole market for foreigners working as hosts/hostesses. Why do you think it's not legal to be a host/hostess as a foreigner? Maybe not as your main job, but I doubt it's explicitly illegal, and even if it is it's not like that's stopped the prostitution trade.
I don't know if this is contemporary enough for you but this is my favourite book on Tokyo: Tokyo Underworld - Robert Whiting
It's apparently non-fiction but even if it's embellished it's an amazing read that really explains how areas like Roppongi developed in the post war period. Probably one of the best books I've ever read.
I recommend a book for you. Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris
https://www.amazon.com/Theodore-Rex-Edmund-Morris/dp/0812966007
The man was bigger than life.
To this posting topic:
"In the history of mankind many republics have risen, have flourished for a less or greater time, and then have fallen because their citizens lost the power of governing themselves and thereby of governing their state; and in no way has this loss of power been so often and so clearly shown as in the tendency to turn the government into a government primarily for the benefit of one class instead of a government for the benefit of the people as a whole."
Theodore Roosevelt - Square Deal 1903
As a destroyerman myself, I highly recommend "Japanese Destroyer Captain" by Tamaichi Hara.
Japanese Destroyer Captain: Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, Midway - The Great Naval Battles as Seen Through Japanese Eyes https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CW0T4HQ/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_70MC1FYMK4GMYXBH527G
He was one of Japan's most successful destroyer commanders in WWII and helped pioneer long range night torpedo tactics before the war.
The obvious book from the American perspective is "Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors" but that's just one of the best history books period!
Yes he did.
In Onoda's book detailing his experiences, he mentions how his brother came to Lubang after the war to look for him. But Onoda thought he was a double or was being forced to do this.
The captain of the cruiser Yahagi, Captain Tameichi Hara, beat the odds and survived the war. His memoirs Japanese Destroyer Captain are an excellent read and glance into a side of the war most westerners don't hear about.
Not really sure about US Navy, but there are quite a few on the Japanese Navy that could be turned into a mini-series.
Japanese Destroyer Captain comes to mind for me - https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Destroyer-Captain-Tameichi-Hara-ebook/dp/B00CW0T4HQ
Read a short book called "Mutsui's Story". You can get it on Amazon pretty cheap. It's the story of a low-ranking samurai who dips into the black market, spends a bunch of time in the red light district, and so on. Also, it's an autobiography, so it's right from the source!
https://www.amazon.com/Musuis-Story-Autobiography-Tokugawa-Samurai/dp/0816512566
Damn, was looking forward to my epistemic mangling.
In any event, the guy wrote a book where he talks about his war.
Here's the article about Marcos' pardon that talks about him ambushing a Filipino patrol in the 70s and a farmer saying that they were shot at every year.
Is your objection literally just that I didn't put the sources that wikipedia cites or are easily googleable into a reddit comment? Why were you so insistent before?
This book in particular I think an excerpt came through my news feed with either a bitcoin or Japan tag, then I saw who the author was, I'm a fan of his work, yadda yadda. Tokyo Vice is a great read, totally recommend it.
For other obscure books in the Amazon e-books (programming generally for me) I either do a search for something ("shell scripting" or something), then see what happens. Amazon isn't my #1 source for tech books, but their small author program has some good content.
Tokyo Vice
ake Adelstein is the only American journalist ever to have been admitted to the insular Tokyo Metropolitan Police Press Club, where for twelve years he covered the dark side of Japan: extortion, murder, human trafficking, fiscal corruption, and of course, the yakuza. But when his final scoop exposed a scandal that reverberated all the way from the neon soaked streets of Tokyo to the polished Halls of the FBI and resulted in a death threat for him and his family, Adelstein decided to step down. Then, he fought back. In Tokyo Vice he delivers an unprecedented look at Japanese culture and searing memoir about his rise from cub reporter to seasoned journalist with a price on his head.
https://www.amazon.com/Tokyo-Vice-American-Reporter-Police/dp/0307475298
>Are you trying to say that the US is more centralized and top-down oriented than fascist dictatorships/Imperial Japan was?
This is what happens when you edit out the end of the sentence. It was a dictatorship with a MENTAL DEFECTIVE at the helm. Thus there was a total break down in chain of command. Read Bix's book Hirohito for more.
Learn to read for comprehension, not snip out bits that catch your eye.
Musui's Story - autobiography of a 19th-century samurai who spent his life drinking, whoring and fighting around Japan while defending the common people.
The Confessions of Lady Nijo - autobiography of a 15th century imperial consort who got kicked out of the capital for cheating on the emperor with half the town and became an itinerant nun.
Not exactly a serial killer story, but People Who Eat Darkness covers the disappearance and murder of a British woman in Tokyo. It's eventually revealed that the murderer is a serial rapist, and a fair amount of time is devoted to his background and thinking.
The Devil in the White City covers one of the first modern serial killers in Chicago, and is being made into a movie.
I saw the title here and assumed it was about a film adaptation of the excellant Theodore Roosevelt biography by Edmund Morris, and thought, how could this not get made?
I'm currently working my way through People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Parry. Parry is an editor of The Times of London, based in Japan, who recounts the murder of Lucie Blackman, a British hostess who mysteriously vanished from Tokyo. The book gives you a better idea of the roles of a hostess, life as a "gaijin," and the attitude of police investigations into crimes involving foreign victims. There's some Yakuza mentioned in this non-fiction, but it's mainly factual details about the investigation into finding her murderer. This story happened in 2000; book was published in 2011.
Adding on to this if you wanted to read a book on the historical aspect of how integrated it all is, check out Tokyo Underworld. I had to read it for one of my seminar courses and boy was it a bit telling. The Yakuza are involved in so much.
This book is a very thorough treatment. If you're not that interested, here is a page with the text of a pretty decent lecture about it by a respected scholar (even if the web page's formatting/font is horrifyingly bad).
If you weren't really even that interested, TLDR is we really can't know. We have to kind of guess based on his public actions. They are inconclusive due to how he actually wielded his Imperial Power (very indirectly), but still leaning toward "didn't want war but it was taken out of his hands." He probably could have tried more to oppose the junta, but we don't know what threats passed behind closed doors. The big problem is that the combined Japanese/US occupation government had every reason to cover up incriminating evidence and so avoid the domestic unrest that would come from indicting a man that many thought of as a god. Any evidence that might have survived is under the tightest wraps you can think of by the Imperial Household Bureau of the current Japanese govt.
Two posts? I'll drop it all into one post for you.
>I'm really not sure what you are trying to say
You're not sure what I'm trying to say when I talk about a GOP bastion state becoming a non-GOP bastion state when we're talking about the GOP shrinking?
You're not sure how the GOP's failure to succeed is related to their demographic shrink?
>OFWG don't think they are more important than other people
In before a pedantic argument about exercising votes to limit other peoples freedoms are exercises in personal opinion.
>You are clearly so angry you are almost unhinged.
Of course I'm angry. The government sucks and won't be fixed meaningfully in my life time. I genuinely doubt that our current rendition of congress will change. I can't blame OFWG's exclusively for that. But I can say that a large portion of people put in congress who aren't put there by the OFWG's are simply "Anyone not them."
>You just want white men over 30 to die or change their opinions and feelings
I would hope you understand how gradually becoming a minority does tend to limit your ability to speak as a majority.
>Die
political organizations do die. Although the two parties seem immortal, their voting blocks aren't. There was a time when the KKK was a rights group and a significant factor in elections. I recommend Truman as a reference to a huge swath of once powerhouse voting blocks that are all dead.
>That's just the kind of image the NRA needs.
The NRA needs a dramatic image change. It's an organization that's for gun rights that's commonly associated with Charlton Heston, R Lee Ermey and Ted Nuget.
Notice any similarities?
How crazy are you (still) about pro-wrestling? Does it extend to Japan? [eg. Riki Dozan & this book which reveals much of his life including his ties with organized crime and his North Korean heritage ]
Last Summer I read Jake Adelstein's Tokyo Vice, right after Ronson's Psychopath Test, actually. The two are quite different, not just in subject matter; I found Ronson's neuroses endearing, while Adelstein's subtle narcissism sometimes nagged at me. I would say both are in the same ballpark though, page turner journeys on fascinating subjects, by authors with relatable voices.
Have you read Herbert Bix's Hirohito biography? It makes a very strong case for how underhanded the Imperial government was (especially Emperor Hirohito, who has historically been regarded as "just a figurehead" in the WWII Japanese military system) and how uninformed the Japanese people were.
Edit: Just looked at the username... Crafty, but either way, Bix's Hirohito bio is an informative, if incredibly dense, read.
A Man With No Talents: Memoirs of a Tokyo Day Laborer by Oyama Shiro. This book provides a different perspective on Japanese society. It's written by a man who got a degree, became a salary man and realized that he hated everything about it. He quits and becomes a day laborer. By the time he has written this book he is in his fifties I believe. Anyway, give it a try. It's a short book and easy to read.
David McCullough writes very interesting history books. Truman was a really good read in particular.