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    In the Realm of a Dying Emperor

    Japan at Century's End

    Author Norma Field
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    Paperback
    $23.00 US
    Knopf | Vintage
    On sale Mar 09, 1993 | 304 Pages | 9780679741893
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    Offering a provocative and powerful look at Japan's uneasy relationship with its past, the relations between religion and state, and the role of dissent in a conformist society, Field examines the impact of these forces on the lives of three individuals driven to become extraordinary resisters in the year the last Emperor lay dying: a supermarket owner from Okinawa who burns the Japanese flag on the eve of the national athletic games, a widow of a member of the Self-Defense Force who has been deified in state shrines against her wishes, and the mayor of Nagasaki, whose comments about the Emperor's war guilt provoked a nationwide furor.
    Norma Field was born to a Japanese mother and an American father during the occupation of Japan after WWII. She is the Robert S. Ingersoll Distinguished Service Professor in Japanese studies in the East Asian languages and civilizations department at the University of Chicago. She is the author of The Splendor of Longing in the Tale of Genji and the translator of And Then by Natsume Sōseki. View titles by Norma Field
    "Well-researched, well-observed and completely absorbing...an important and necessary book." -- The New York Times Book Review

    "Remarkable...a vivid, taut, graceful piece of writing...with enormous power."-- James Fallows, The Atlantic

    "Marvelous...Field uncovers a Japan rarely seen or acknowledged by Westerners, a Japan of individual expression, active dissent -- even open rebellion."-- Village Voice Literary Supplement

    "Superb...one of the most important books...on Japanese who refuse to conform." -- Ian Buruma, The New York Review of Books

    About

    Offering a provocative and powerful look at Japan's uneasy relationship with its past, the relations between religion and state, and the role of dissent in a conformist society, Field examines the impact of these forces on the lives of three individuals driven to become extraordinary resisters in the year the last Emperor lay dying: a supermarket owner from Okinawa who burns the Japanese flag on the eve of the national athletic games, a widow of a member of the Self-Defense Force who has been deified in state shrines against her wishes, and the mayor of Nagasaki, whose comments about the Emperor's war guilt provoked a nationwide furor.

    Author

    Norma Field was born to a Japanese mother and an American father during the occupation of Japan after WWII. She is the Robert S. Ingersoll Distinguished Service Professor in Japanese studies in the East Asian languages and civilizations department at the University of Chicago. She is the author of The Splendor of Longing in the Tale of Genji and the translator of And Then by Natsume Sōseki. View titles by Norma Field

    Praise

    "Well-researched, well-observed and completely absorbing...an important and necessary book." -- The New York Times Book Review

    "Remarkable...a vivid, taut, graceful piece of writing...with enormous power."-- James Fallows, The Atlantic

    "Marvelous...Field uncovers a Japan rarely seen or acknowledged by Westerners, a Japan of individual expression, active dissent -- even open rebellion."-- Village Voice Literary Supplement

    "Superb...one of the most important books...on Japanese who refuse to conform." -- Ian Buruma, The New York Review of Books

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