Useful for students of human-rights questions and Asian history alike.
A controversial Japanese bestseller that uncovers the imperial military’s institutionalization of rape.
Yoshiaki, writes translator O’Brien in her useful introduction, is one of but a few Japanese historians who have challenged the conventional view that their compatriots were unwilling and unwitting victims of a handful of military expansionists who led Japan into WWII. Instead, Yoshiaki suggests, most Japanese went to war willingly and many conducted themselves with appalling brutality, committing crimes that were seldom prosecuted following the Allied victory. Her case in point is the forced servitude of women in military brothels established in Japanese-occupied nations throughout Asia. Much of Yoshiaki’s text is a grim recitation of facts and statistics, with quotations from official documents; it becomes more vivid with the testimonial of women themselves, one of whom recalls the assembly-line quality of the brothel, where soldiers “proceeded in conveyer-belt fashion in an atmosphere of a particular sort of tension.” Yoshiaki notes that the Japanese military established “comfort houses” as a means of placating soldiers who were “perpetually critical, were not respectful toward officers, and were in general resistant to the army’s internal discipline”—a far cry from the widely prevalent view of the wartime Japanese military as an unquestioningly obedient monolith. Serving not only as a “wartime benefit” for soldiers, the institution of sexual slavery was also meant to curb freelance rape. So, Yoshiaki writes, at the urging of citizens who feared rape at the hands of their conquerors, the Japanese government even established brothels for the American occupation forces until the US army issued an order forbidding them in March 1946.
Useful for students of human-rights questions and Asian history alike.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-231-120320-X
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2000
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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