Many books about Japan written by foreigners just tend to point out what is different about Japan, and exaggerate them to a sensational degree, so that to a native Japanese reading the book it all sounds quite alien and laughably irrelevant. A guide to Japan written by a Nazi and printed at the NSDAP's Central Printing office in 1944 is a surprising eye-opener in this regard. I've been curious about the book since reading an ad about it in a party publication and I finally found myself a copy recently.
It is titled "Das Geheimnis japanischer Kraft", written by Albrecht Fürst von Urach.
Only after I started to read it, I realized that the book as well as the author were quite well known. Here is Wikipedia on the author, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albrecht_von_Urach
This book of a 128 pages examines Japan's history, geography, religion, social norms, economy, customs and traditions and extracts a pretty coherent picture of Japan primarily as a military force. Like so many other foreigners he could simply not refrain from touching upon the to-a-foreigner bizarre custom of Seppku in the early pages of the book, but I was quite impressed that he didn't just dismiss it as a crazy custom and took pains to explain the background of the sensational Seppuku of General Nogi, the self-sacrifice of the Shanghai human bomb trio, and Tokkotai, etc.
There's even a chapter about how the Japanese that ventured to live in Manchuria (continental Japanese)developed a different mentality from the mainland (island Japanese), something I never read or considered before.
Beside its very intelligent in depth analysis, it is also full of excellent photos that support the multifaceted study of Japan.
If you read German, it is a book I can highly recommend. Here are some of the illustrated pages from the book to give you an idea of the scope.
It is titled "Das Geheimnis japanischer Kraft", written by Albrecht Fürst von Urach.
Only after I started to read it, I realized that the book as well as the author were quite well known. Here is Wikipedia on the author, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albrecht_von_Urach
This book of a 128 pages examines Japan's history, geography, religion, social norms, economy, customs and traditions and extracts a pretty coherent picture of Japan primarily as a military force. Like so many other foreigners he could simply not refrain from touching upon the to-a-foreigner bizarre custom of Seppku in the early pages of the book, but I was quite impressed that he didn't just dismiss it as a crazy custom and took pains to explain the background of the sensational Seppuku of General Nogi, the self-sacrifice of the Shanghai human bomb trio, and Tokkotai, etc.
There's even a chapter about how the Japanese that ventured to live in Manchuria (continental Japanese)developed a different mentality from the mainland (island Japanese), something I never read or considered before.
Beside its very intelligent in depth analysis, it is also full of excellent photos that support the multifaceted study of Japan.
If you read German, it is a book I can highly recommend. Here are some of the illustrated pages from the book to give you an idea of the scope.
Congrats!
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