JAMES DORSEY

JAPANESE FAVORITE BOOK TO TEACH Snow Country, by Yasunari Kawabata (translated by Edward G. Seidensticker) MUST-READ BOOKS IN YOUR FIELD War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War, by John W. Dower Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon: A Geopolitical Prehistory ofJ-Pop, by Michael Bourdaghs FAVORITE PLEASURE READS Down and Out in Paris and London, by George Orwell (and just about anything by this writer) Collected Works of Tsuge Yoshiharu by Yoshiharu Tsuge MOST RECENTLY READ A Room Where the Star Spangled Banner Cannot Be Heard, by Hideo Levy "I squeeze Snow Country into almost any course I teach on modern Japan. Kawabata, Japan's first Nobel laureate in literature (1968), invariably captivates students with his haiku-like depiction of a pristine Japanese mountain village. The novel is a great way to break down reductive visions of national identity." "Dower's comparison of wartime cultures in Japan and the United States is fabulous, as is the way he incorporates everything from political comics to propaganda tracts." "You just can't beat Orwell for clear thinking and concise, polished prose." "Levy is perhaps the most famous non-Japanese writer working in the Japanese language. He was a professor of Japanese literature before launching his career as a novelist."