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A Japanese Mirror by Ian Buruma
Category: Travel Literature
Examining the popular heroes of Japanese films, comics, theatre and television, The Japanese Mirror looks at the dual status of women as both goddesses and she-devils, artificiality and transvestism, the role of the samurai and the gangster, and the modern father-figure as an object of ridicule. Both pa ...Show more
A Tokyo Romance by Ian Buruma
Category: Biography Memoir
When Ian Buruma arrived in Tokyo as a young film student in 1975, he found a feverish and surreal metropolis in the midst of an economic boom, where everything seemed new and history only remained in fragments. Through his adventures in the world of avant-garde theatre, his encounters with carnival acts ...Show more
A Tokyo Romance - A Memoir by Ian Buruma
Category: Travel
When Ian Buruma arrived in Tokyo as a young film student in 1975, he found a feverish and surreal metropolis in the midst of an economic boom, where everything seemed new and history only remained in fragments. Through his adventures in the world of avant-garde theatre, his encounters with carnival act ...Show more
Anglomania: A European Love Affair by Ian Buruma
Category: Culture
With its distinctive history of civil liberties and the delicate balance between social order and the free pursuit of self-interest, England has always fascinated its continental neighbours. Buruma examines the history of ideas of Englishness and what Europeans have admired (or loathed) in England acros ...Show more
Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from LA to Beijing by Ian Buruma
Category: History
Ian Buruma approaches China through the stories of its dissidents: ordinary, brave people who oppose a regime that uses repression in the name of social order. What does dissidence mean in an authoritarian society? And what chance do they have of succeeding in the face of the largest remaining dictators ...Show more
Bad Elements:Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing by Ian Buruma
Category: General Fiction
Travel, politics and society all meet in this eye-opening account of Chinese rebels. 'I believe that Communist Party rule will end in China; sooner or later all dynasties do. But when or how, I cannot say...It was with these questions in mind that I travelled through the Chinese-speaking world betwe ...Show more
Geisha - The Life, the Voices, the Art by Jodi Cobb; Ian Buruma
Category: Social Issue
Here, brought vividly to life, is an icon of Japanese culture and custom--the geisha in her role as human work of art and perfect woman. A hundred years ago geisha numbered eighty thousand; today there are a thousand at most. Happily, Jodi Cobb is able to show us--before they vanish--both the ceremonial ...Show more
George Grosz in Berlin - The Relentless Eye by Sabine Rewald; Ian Buruma (Contribution by)
Category: Art and Design
A penetrating reevaluation of the period in which the German Expressionist George Grosz created his best-known, most searing satirical works This overdue investigation of George Grosz's (1893-1959) most compelling paintings, drawings, prints, and collages offers a reassessment of the celebrated German ...Show more
Inventing Japan : From Empire to economic miracle by Ian Buruma
Category: Politics
The fateful span of Japan's modern history, in which it has undergone as dramatic a transformation as any country has known. The story of modern Japan, from first 'opening' to the West with Admiral Perry's Black Ships in 1853, through World War II, to Japan's emergence as a Western-style democracy an ...Show more