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Culture clash, survival and hope in 'pachinko'.

Jean Zimmerman

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In fiction we seek a paradox, the familiar in the foreign, new realities that only this one particular author can give us. Pachinko , the sophomore novel by the gifted Korean-born Min Jin Lee, is the kind of book that can open your eyes and fill them with tears at the same time.

Pachinko, for those not in the know, is one of the national obsessions of Japan, a dizzying cross between pinball and a slot machine, wherein small metal balls drop randomly amid a maze of brass pins. There's a comic feel of Rube Goldberg to the device, but the final effect is oddly mesmerizing. The urge to play can quickly become an addiction, and of course the game is a perfect metaphor for the ricochet whims of fate. Owning pachinko parlors becomes a way for the clan depicted in the novel to climb out of poverty — but destiny cannot be manipulated so easily.

We are in Buddenbrooks territory here, tracing a family dynasty over a sprawl of seven decades, and comparing the brilliantly drawn Pachinko to Thomas Mann's classic first novel is not hyperbole. Lee bangs and buffets and pinballs her characters through life, love and sorrow, somehow making her vast, ambitious narrative seem intimate.

"History has failed us, but no matter," she writes in the book's Tolstoyan opening sentence, hinting at the mix of tragic stoicism that is to come. During the second decade of the 20th century, as Korea falls under Japanese annexation, a young cleft-palated fisherman named Hoonie marries a local girl, Yangjin, "fifteen and mild and tender as a newborn calf." The couple has a daughter, Sunja, who grows to childhood as the cosseted pet of their rooming house by the sea in Yeong-do, a tiny islet near the Korean port city of Busan.

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As a shy, vulnerable adolescent, Sunja is the prey of a formidable middle-aged gangster named Koh Hansu. With features that make him look "somewhat Japanese," and elegant Western-style fashions such as "white patent leather shoes," Hansu embeds himself deeply into the remainder of Sunja's life. He's a Godfather, but also something of a fairy godmother. Most importantly, he provides a financial buffer when the family relocates to Osaka, Japan.

Lee deftly sketches a half-familiar, half-foreign but oftentimes harsh new world of a Korean immigrant in imperialist Japan. Sunja gives birth out of wedlock to Hansu's son, her shame erased at the last minute by marriage to a patrician, good-hearted pastor. The entwined destinies of the gangster's bastard and a second child, the son of a preacher man, become an engine that drives the story forward.

Amid the nightmare of war, the people of Osaka deal with privations. "City children were sent alone to the country by train to buy an egg or a potato in exchange for a grandmother's kimono." Sunja and her beloved sister-in-law Kyunghee have set themselves up in business making the flavorful national specialty of Korea, kimchi. Pickled cabbage serves as mode of survival, rising to symbolic importance alongside the pachinko game itself, organic and homey where the other is mechanical and sterile.

The cultures, Korean and Japanese, clash. Sunja's son, Mozasu, who owns pachinko parlors, will level with his best friend over fried oysters and shishito peppers, in a passage that lies at the heart of these characters' dilemmas: "In Seoul, people like me get called Japanese bastard, and in Japan, I'm just another dirty Korean no matter how much money I make, or how nice I am."

Lee is at her best describing complex behaviors and emotions with unadorned, down-to-earth language. "Isak knew how to talk with people, to ask questions, and to hear the concerns in a person's voice; and she seemed to understand how to survive, and this was something he did not always know how to do." There are horrors in Pachinko — a lengthy prison term is marked by gruesome torture — but the core message remains ultimately one of survival and hope.

"Pachinko was a foolish game," Lee writes, "but life was not." The reader could be forgiven for thinking that the reverse might also be true. This is honest writing, fiction that looks squarely at what is, both terrible and wonderful and occasionally as bracing as a jar of Sunja's best kimchi.

Jean Zimmerman's latest novel, Savage Girl, is out now in paperback. She posts daily at Blog Cabin .

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It is part of the mystery of Japan that even in the age of mass tourism it remains unsullied as a place of the imagination. A 21st-century visitor to the canals of Venice, the beaches of Australia or the savannahs of Africa will find it impossible to formulate an original thought or observation. But in Japan every arriving foreigner is able to imagine himself treading virgin territory.

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The Definitive Genki Textbook Review The quintessential review for the quintessential Japanese textbook

November 3, 2015 • words written by Michael Richey • Art by Michael Richey

Learning Japanese is an undertaking. Learning as a beginner can feel near impossible. There's so much to the language. Where do you start? If you ask students of Japanese, the answer you'll almost unanimously get is "Genki."

Genki is a two volume Japanese textbook published by The Japan Times in 1999. It was revised and updated into a second edition in 2011. It was written by Eri Banno, Yoko Sakane, Yutaka Ohno, Chikako Shinagawa, and Kyoko Tokashiki. Shortly after its release, the Genki textbook became a popular choice for Japanese university classes across North America. It's gained quite the following and remains a popular choice even for those in the self-learning community. Countless students and teachers swear by it. But is there a real reason for this devotion? Or is the Genki textbook outdated hype? To find out, let's dig into the second edition of Genki I and its accompanying workbook.

Who Is Genki For?

Depending on your situation Genki may or may not be right for you. This chart will give you a quick idea of whether or not it will suit your needs.

Genki is for:

• Absolute beginners
• Classroom learners
• Really motivated self-learners
• Beginners who have started learning Japanese but gotten frustrated
• People who want to take the JLPT level 5 or 4
• People who want efficient learning
• People who are intimidated by language learning

Genki is not for:

• Unmotivated self-learners
• People who want to learn kanji

Genki is meant for people who want a foundation for becoming fluent in Japanese. If you want useful words for your vacation in Japan, Genki won't teach the words you'll need in a short enough study time. It's designed for university classrooms. People using the Genki textbook with the assistance of professors and classmates will get the most out of it. This means self-learners have to be highly motivated. Even then, many exercises are group work, which are difficult to do alone. Self-learners will also need to figure out some way to check their work .

Genki Textbook Contents

Conversation and Grammar Section

The Conversation and Grammar Section is the bulk of the textbook. It's the primary reason you buy Genki. It's made up of 12 chapters or "lessons" which teach grammar points and offer exercises to reinforce what you learn. Below is a breakdown of every concept Genki I teaches:

Japanese Writing System Introduction

1: New Friends

• noun(1)のnoun(2)

2: Shopping

• これ　それ　あれ　どれ
• この / その / あの / どの + noun
• ここ　そこ　あそこ　どこ
• noun じゃないです

3: Making a Date

• Verb Conjugation
• Verb Types and "Present Tense"
• Time Reference
• Frequency Adverbs
• The Topic Particle は

4: The First Date

• Xがあります / います
• Describing Where Things Are
• Past Tense of です
• Past Tense of Verbs

5: A Trip to Okinawa

• 好き(な) / きらい(な)
• 〜ましょう / 〜ましょうか

6: A Day in Robert's Life

• Describing Two Activities

7: Family Picture

• メアリーさんは髪が長いです
• Te-forms for Joining Sentences
• verb stem + に行く
• Counting People

8: Barbecue

• Short Forms
• Informal Speech
• 〜と思います / 〜と言っていました
• verb のが好きです
• Past Tense and Short Forms
• Qualifying Nouns and Verbs and Adjectives

10: Winter Vacation Plans

• Comparison between Two Items
• Comparison among Three or More Items
• adjective/noun + の
• adjective + なる
• どこかに / どこにも

11: After the Vacation

• noun A や noun B

12: Feeling Ill

• 〜なければいけません / 〜なきゃいけません

You may notice chapter names don't indicate what you learn. Rather they explain what is happening to Mary and her friends. This allows the authors to teach grammar points in the order they want, rather than shoehorning them into arbitrary "categories." The categorization should fall on your teacher if you have one. If you don't, it's not a problem. Figuring out the "categories" of grammar concepts is less important than learning how to use them well.

Reading and Writing Section

The section after Conversation and Grammar is Reading and Writing. There is a corresponding Reading and Writing chapter for each Conversation and Grammar chapter. That's twelve chapters in each section, for a total of twenty-four. Each Reading and Writing chapter teaches 14-16 kanji and comes with a wealth of exercises that strengthen your writing skills. We'll talk more about that section later on.

The Genki Textbook Style

The Genki textbook doesn't exist to entertain. It's a teaching tool. The style keeps you engaged but doesn't detract from its educational purpose.

The lessons and exercises are all in English. Other Japanese textbooks "immerse" with directions in Japanese. But at the elementary stage, this only hinders the learning process. You should learn Japanese in your native language so you understand what's being taught. Otherwise you'll misunderstand instructions and practice poorly.

Genki's writing is wonderfully concise. The information written is the information needed to start understanding the grammar point. No wordy explanations to overwhelm or lull you to sleep. But it's not so vague you can't understand the point at all. Bear in mind Genki is an elementary Japanese textbook. The explanations are intended to get you using grammar concepts quickly. You will need other texts, like the Dictionaries of Japanese Grammar , to dig deeper once you've completed Genki I & II.

The sentence structure and word choice are informal. But there is almost no break in the educational tone. The adherence to facts and instruction ensures you don't waste time reading anything unnecessary. But writing in the casual voice gives the illusion that it's "down to earth." This makes it easier to fight through the dense material.

Genki Art and Illustrations

Genki's art is one of its strengths. It perfectly complements the lessons and exercises without becoming the center of attention. Some textbooks try to attract customers with flashy manga-style illustrations. But these books mostly fail because their art is more engaging than the material. Genki knows what it wants to be and its educational focus is reflected in the illustration style.

To be honest, I had mixed feelings about the art at first. Sometimes I'd find myself charmed by the illustrations. Other times, not as much. I couldn't quite put my finger on it until I looked closely at the dialogue illustration on page 209.

The Genki textbook's main characters (on the left) are more iconic while the nameless "supporting cast" (on the right) has slightly more expressive features. There's a reason for this, though. The main characters are meant to represent the reader. The less definition they have visually, the more easily you can see yourself in their shoes. And that's exactly what happens as you continue to study.

Though you may not find the art particularly interesting at first, you spend a lot of time with it. And because the spirit and function of the art is tied so closely to the material, your time and effort translates to a connection with the art, and by proxy the main characters.

Of course, Genki gives Mary a break from her iconographic role with various activities. In practice exercises, Mary gets to do all sorts of fun things, which round her out as a character. And your connection with her makes you feel rounded out as you learn.

Even if it takes some time for you to connect with Mary and Takeshi, the sub-characters' expressions will give you a giggle and kickstart your connection to the illustrations. Carlos, where have you been all my life?

I realize the design differences between main and non-main characters is slight. The overall artistic approach to Genki is uniform and consistent. It's that rare kind of cute illustration that isn't trying too hard to be cute. It is what it is, and it's bound to charm you with its authenticity. The illustrations overall do a great job of connecting you with the material and helping you learn. The Genki textbook wouldn't be the same without them. If you don't like the art at first, those feelings will most likely wash away as you're drawn in by the immersive material.

The Genki Textbook Progression of Teaching

In many ways, Genki perfectly enacts the "+1 principle" Koichi has written about before . You want to work on something that's +1 above your current ability level. +2 or more will take more effort or be out of your grasp.

But studying "what comes next" means always building on what came before. Using enough effort to learn, but not exerting so much you want to quit. It's a tough balance. How do you know what's +1 above your current ability level? How do you know what's too much or too little struggle? Genki solves this problem.

If you follow the Genki textbook, you'll always be on track. It teaches what you need to know and cuts the fat. The best example of this: the near absence of romaji. The first two chapters feature romaji to give students enough time to learn hiragana and katakana ( a few hours is all you need ). Then romaji is dropped and Genki forces you to move ahead.

It would have been nice if Genki treated furigana the same as romaji, gradually cutting it. Furigana is present throughout the book for all kanji. This acts as a crutch and disables any potential kanji reinforcement that could accompany reading and grammar exercises. Even a calculated removal of furigana would have been fine, removing what the reader should know by a certain point.

After finishing Genki I and II, you'll need to go back to learn nuances the series skips. But that's a good thing. The Genki textbook doesn't waste your time teaching you every way to conjugate verbs all at once. It teaches you enough to keep you moving forward. You get efficiency rather than completeness.

Genki Textbook Features

The chapters in the Conversation and Grammar section follow a predictable structure. You'll tackle new information in each chapter, but you'll always know how to tackle it. No surprises except the target information. This is helpful for establishing a study groove.

Here is the order you'll attack each lesson:

Grammar Explanations

Inserted in main sections of each chapter are breakout boxes of information. They are:

Expression Notes

Culture notes, useful expressions.

Genki's dialogues are the first point of contact with new material. First you'll see three (or more) dialogues in Japanese. Next the English translations of those dialogues. Like this:

メアリー：　すみません。いま　なんじですか。 たけし：　じゅうにじはんです。 メアリー：　ありがとう　ございます。 たけし：　いいえ。 Mary: Excuse me. What time is it now? Takeshi: It's half past twelve. Mary: Thank you. Takeshi: You're welcome.

It may seem counterintuitive to start reading full sentences of new material before seeing a vocab list or grammar explanation. But there's a reason.

The dialogues are made up of two things:

• Information you've already studied
• Information you're about to study

In reading the dialogues, your mind makes a distinction between the stuff you know and the stuff you don't. Each time you get stuck, it'll most likely be new information. If you don't turn the page to reference the vocab or grammar explanations, you have to look at the corresponding English translation. This lets you fill in knowledge gaps through deduction, rather than being told the answer. A little struggle is a great way to kickstart your brain as you begin a new lesson. Of course, none of this works if you skip ahead and look at the vocab and grammar sections.

The authors did a great job of working with the elementary grammar and vocabulary to create memorable situations. Each dialogue uses only concepts from previous lessons while introducing new concepts. That can't be easy to write. Recurring characters and a continuing story in the dialogues shows creativity. Even though the stories are simplistic, you still find yourself making connections with the characters and situations, which makes the learning more enjoyable.

The dialogues are easy to understand if you study the material well. This gives you that feeling of accomplishment when you understand what you're reading. They are written in standard and polite Japanese, so there are few curveballs.

The situations are all collegiate. By which I mean, the characters and scenarios revolve around college life. Over the course of the series, you get to know Mary and Takeshi. Mary is an exchange student studying in Japan. Takeshi is a Japanese college student. The two meet, go on dates, and fall in love. In between their romantic A-story, various B-stories take place. Like Takeshi going on vacation with his friend Robert. Or Robert forgetting his textbook and getting scolded by Mr. Yamashita.

One of the biggest complaints I've seen in Genki textbook Amazon reviews is the series' focus on college life. The dialogue and exercise scenarios center around travel, homework, and dating. But considering the target audience, the decision makes sense. It may annoy you, but it shouldn't be a deal breaker, considering the quality of lessons you get.

After the dialogue comes the vocabulary list. Each one has a dark gray border so they're easy to find when flipping through the textbook.

Vocabulary is divided into:

• い-adjectives
• な-adjectives
• irregular verbs (if applicable)
• adverbs and other expressions

The vocab list columns are divided into hiragana, kanji, and English translation. This is great for good old fashioned column-covering cram sessions (though we recommend SRS).

Bear in mind that some terminology used may differ from other books or resources. If you've learned these concepts from other books or classes, be aware of the multiple names. い-adjectives may be called keiyoushi 形容詞 （ ） or simply "adjectives." な-adjectives may be called keiyou doushi 形容動詞 （ ） or "adjectival nouns." u-verbs and ru-verbs may be called "ichidan" and "godan" verbs, respectively. Whatever terminology you prefer, The Genki textbook uses the names it uses. It may take some mental switching, but it won't hurt you to learn different names for the same ideas.

A common complaint I've seen in a Genki textbook review or two is that the vocab feels random or disorganized. I'm sure the word choice was purposeful, but I do agree a few odd vocabulary words pop into each list.

It's tough to say exactly which words are "the most basic." But you can quantify which are "most used." And that should give an idea of which words and kinds of words should be taught first. With this in mind, take a look at some of the vocabulary from Genki chapter 1.

• major (as in college major)
• college, university
• international student
• anthropology

Again, this points to Genki's college-centric approach. But it also shows a focus on teaching vocab based around dialogues. Rather than teaching the most used (or useful) words, it teaches vocab which fits into the dialogue situations.

Overall this is a minor gripe. The "odd" words are the minority, and most vocab are basic and useful. So you're not forced to learn lots of specialized words. Just a little.

The total number of vocabulary in both Genki volumes is 1700. A great start, which is the goal of the Genki series. They are a foundation on which you'll build your lifelong Japanese study.

In the end, you're using the Genki textbook for grammar. Vocabulary learning is its own challenge and no set of textbooks is going to fill that role. Learn the Genki vocab words because they'll help you learn the grammar it teaches. But supplement with spreadsheets full of Japanese words to learn the vocab you want to know.

Genki's trademark efficiency is best displayed in the way it teaches grammar. Genki gives you only what you need to know to understand and start using the grammar. There are few, if any, peripheral distractions. Genki assumes you will eventually, throughout your lifetime language learning journey, become an advanced Japanese user. This means whatever details they don't teach now, you will learn some time down the line. Their focus is giving you enough to start using the language without overloading you.

Some complain Genki teaches grammar as "this is just the way it is in Japanese." Though I've never seen these words in the Genki textbook, I understand the complaints. The grammar explanations are concise and complete, but they don't elaborate. They teach the point, how it works, and give an example (maybe two). Those looking for reasons "why" will get the impression "this is just the way it is in Japanese." It's not an overt message. More an inferred attitude, a side effect of the streamlined approach to teaching. This may be frustrating, but it's important to accept at this stage. The "why" of language is linguistics and not Genki's focus. Learn the "how" first. Most people don't understand the "why" of their native tongue, but use it fine. Focus on the task at hand and then ask a linguist about the "why" later on.

Genki does however dissect grammar, but only when necessary. A good example is the breakdown of "〜なければいけません/〜なきゃいけません" on page 273. This grammatical phrase is essentially the Japanese equivalent of "must" in English. Genki could have taught the grammar, explained it means "must," and left it at that. Instead, it digs in and explains the components:

"なければ and なきゃ mean 'if you do not do…' and いけません means 'you cannot go'; なければいけません and なきゃいけません therefore literally mean 'you cannot go not doing…' with the double negatives giving rise to the affirmative sense of the mandate."

Beyond the grammar explanations, it's assumed you'll better understand the grammar through exercises and the workbook. It's also assumed you'll have a teacher to give you extra example sentences and explanation. So there aren't many example sentences in the grammar explanations. All the more reason for self-learners to get the workbook and be proactive with services like HiNative .

Though Genki's teaching approach is streamlined, it strives to be complete in parts. Case in point, the footnotes. Not all explanations have them, but when the show up, they can be revelatory. An example of this is the explanation of 〜と思います/〜と言っていました on page 193. After the example sentence "(私は)たけしさんはメアリーさんが好きだと思います" (I think Takeshi likes Mary), there is a footnote which explains how to render this idea in the negative. There are two ways, but one is more common in Japanese. For English speakers, it's more natural to say "I don't think Takeshi likes Mary." So the reader may assume rendering "〜とおもいます" (to think) in the negative would accomplish their goal. It would, but it sounds wonky to the Japanese ear. Instead, the Genki textbook advises the sentence "I think Takeshi doesn't like Mary." Clarifications like this are sprinkled throughout the book in footnotes, and make the learning experience more complete.

A minor gripe made against Genki's grammar explanations is it doesn't teach "real Japanese." Meaning it doesn't teach Japanese the way people speak it. This is true, but that's a good thing. It's important to learn language well before you learn it "naturally." Colloquial and informal language is definitely more fun, but it's not a good foundation for a beginner. That being said, if you want to learn some colloquial and "real" Japanese along with Genki, check out Japanese the Manga Way . Keep in mind studying two books at once might slow you down.

Practice Exercises

Genki's amazing grammar explanations would be nothing without the exercises to back them up. Exercises are repetitive enough to reinforce key points, but varied enough to keep students engaged. Put in the time and these exercises will go a long way toward packing learned grammar and vocab into your brain.

There are many different types of exercises in the Genki textbook. Some you might see are:

• translate/conjugate the word/sentence
• answer the questions
• read the dialogue with a partner
• ask questions with a group
• look at the chart and make a sentence/describe something/ask questions
• look at the picture(s) and make a sentence/describe something/ask questions
• fill in the missing information with a partner's corresponding chart
• talk to the class
• sing a song
• combine parts of speech/grammar points together

Though most exercises follow similar structures, they're not formulaic. And each lesson bends the structure to work uniquely with the target concept. This way you're grappling with new material in a familiar way, giving you some sort of muscle memory in unfamiliar territory.

The illustrations help mix up the practice process. Whatever your opinion of the art, it serves an important purpose in the exercises section. Rather than pages of words, questions, and charts, there are exercises using pictures at least every other page. The illustrations are part of the tasks and make them more engaging and memorable.

If you're an audial learner, Genki's got you covered. There are audio icons next to select lessons. These have corresponding audio files on the CD provided. The audio components are mostly listen and repeat versions of the exercises, but there are a few songs for childlike learning. Some readers may be tempted to skip these, but they offer necessary listening practice. Especially when first learning Japanese, it's important to hear examples from native speakers. Even better is the chance to listen and repeat. Big kudos to Genki for recognizing this and providing a solution.

As for the content of exercises themselves, they can be concrete or abstract. From "conjugate into this form" or "describe what is happening in the picture." Students build hard language skills, then use them to express themselves.

One of the drawbacks of the exercises for self-learners is the lack of an attached answer key. When you're learning by yourself it's important to check your answers to make sure you're not learning information incorrectly. While sold-separately Genki answer key may be an easy way to accomplish this, there are other ways. Try out Lang-8's Hi-Native service to check answers you're not sure about. Ask questions in Japanese learning communities.

The Genki answer key available as a separate book could be worth buying. If you go the answer key route, be aware that it is written for teachers who read Japanese fluently. So the entire thing is in Japanese and uses kanji you may not know. As an elementary learner, this makes checking answers much slower, but not impossible.

There are enough exercises in each lesson to give you a firm foundation with new grammar (if you do them all and do them well). But for self-learners, the effectiveness of the exercises is cut down by a significant amount. Since the book is aimed at classroom Japanese learning, a big chunk are "pair work" or "group work." Some can be finagled into practice for self-learners, but most will have to be skipped entirely.

Several types of breakout boxes featuring additional information supplement the lessons. The Expression Notes are the only type of breakout box that isn't listed in the table of contents.

Expression Notes offer clarification on uses and the nuances of Japanese. For example, Expression Note 8 explains the verb 遊ぶ (to play) is used for "spending time pleasantly" but not for instances like "to play tennis" or "to play games." Expression Note 4 explains 行く (to go) is used for movements away from the speaker while 来る (to come) is used for movements toward the speaker.

There are only 11 Expression Notes total.

• Page 36 – おはよう/ありがとう, さようなら, すみません, いいえ, いってらしゃい/いってきます/ただいま/おかえりなさい
• Page 46 – あの, はい/いいえ, そうですか, Pronunciation of は, Numbers, Giving one's telephone number, せんせい, さん, Referring to the person you are talking to
• Page 67 – (〜を)ください, (〜を)どうぞ, On the pronunciation of number words, Big numbers
• Page 94 – 行く/来る, ちょっと
• Page 113 – Xの前, えっ/あっ
• Page 136 – 忙しい/にぎやか(な)
• Page 155 – 遅く/遅い, どうも, お
• Page 175 – 遊ぶ, 知る/わかる
• Page 197 – 〜する
• Page 236 – Using が and けど at the end of a sentence to indicate intention
• Page 257 – は in negative sentences, だけ, に, ドライブ, 夢, には

These are a nice addition. They anticipate new learner assumptions about Japanese and help to flesh out idiosyncrasies.

For those interested in the Culture Notes, they are listed in the Table of Contents, unlike the Expression Notes. These breakout boxes attempt to explain some of Japan's culture along with the language. There is one Culture Note per chapter. They include:

• Greetings and Bowing
• Japanese Names
• Japanese Currency
• Japanese Houses
• Japanese National Holidays
• Japanese Festivals
• Japan's Educational System
• Kinship Terms
• Foods in Japan
• Japanese Traditional Culture
• Public Transportation in Japan
• Japanese Climate

It only makes sense to teach culture with language. They go hand in hand. On the whole, the Culture Notes are nice snippets of Japanese life that vary in their usefulness. "Japanese Currency" and "Kinship Terms" are useful, the latter being the most useful of all. The rest are great introductions. Use them to fuel further cultural research as you study the language.

The third type of breakout box is the most practical. Useful Expressions are exactly as the name suggests. They are lists of extra vocabulary and set phrases that will help in daily life. Even the college-centric lists such as "In the Classroom" and "In Japanese Class" contain words everyone should know.

Beyond simply listing words, some boxes contain helpful clarification or organization. For example, the "Colors" breakout box divides the Japanese color words into い-adjectives and nouns. It explains that い-adjective colors become nouns by dropping the い and noun colors need の to connect to other nouns. This is not something immediately apparent to beginners.

Here is a list Useful Expressions sections throughout the book:

• In the Classroom
• Days/Weeks/Months/Years
• At the Post Office
• Parts of the Body
• At the Station
• In the Japanese Class
• Health and Illness

Though I did say Genki isn't for tourists, I would recommend vacationers take a look at the Useful Expressions, if they have a copy of the Genki textbook available to them. Memorizing all these would be helpful during a 2–3 week trip to Japan, especially when paired with a list of vital Japanese vocabulary .

My only complaint is there's not more Useful Expressions boxes. They're handy and it wouldn't be too hard to come up with a few more lists. When you consider there is a "Culture Notes" breakout box in every chapter, it's strange that some chapters don't have a Useful Expressions box.

Genki's Reading and Writing section shouldn't be skipped. A mere 60 pages long, it's not much practice. But what you get is an emphasis on play and experimentation which will benefit the most motivated learners.

Each lesson in Reading and Writing corresponds to a chapter of the Conversation and Grammar portion. As you work through each chapter, you should flip to the back and complete the Reading and Writing lesson of the same number.

The first two lessons are kana. Lesson one practices hiragana and lesson two practices katakana . As I mentioned before, it's nice that Genki makes you learn kana so quickly. With mnemonics you can learn both writing systems in mere hours. The exercises in the first two chapters of this section will reinforce what you learn.

Chapters 1 and 2 jump straight into the practice exercises. Again, it's assumed you'll have an instructor to teach you the kana. Self-learners will have to use the kana tables on pages 24–26. There are also kana charts under the front and back covers.

Lessons 3 through 12 are all kanji. A list of kanji is presented in charts across two pages. It's assumed you will memorize them, put them in a flashcard deck, or do whatever. There are 14–16 kanji per lesson. Stroke order is shown but not taught. There is little handholding, so you'll have to make a plan to teach yourself the material before starting the practice exercises. If you want to practice writing kana or kanji, you'll have to purchase the separate workbook or use your own graph paper.

The kanji given to the reader to memorize are cherry-picked. They're useful and common, grouped into categories like "Daily Life," "Travel," and "The Folktale Kasajizo." Some sets are more useful than others. The progression of building on previous concepts seen in the grammar section is absent in the kanji section. You're expected to learn through cramming. Using rote memorization to force kanji into your brain isn't necessarily a bad idea. Just an inefficient and outdated one. Still, cramming these kanji may be worth your while. Assuming you keep up with the grammar lessons and learn the kanji required, the practice exercises in the Reading and Writing section are a powerful tool. Armed with knowledge, you get a chance to play with the language in a more creative way than in the grammar section.

Many exercises are similar to those in the rest of the book. Match this with that. Fill in the blank, etc. But there are a few which shine especially bright.

There's a katakana word search on page 295. When you're learning how to read kana, this is a great way to scan for characters and identify them. Going in different directions helps loosen up that brain.

There's no mention of radicals, but the Genki textbook does introduce the concept with a "kanji combination" exercise. You're presented a certain number of kanji and told to combine them to create new ones. This tests your kanji knowledge and encourages you to research and make connections.

Maps and charts return in this section. But this time you're writing full sentences to describe actions or information in your own words.

Some of the best exercises are the reading comprehension. When you start learning Japanese, reading is generally a waste of time. You don't know enough kanji and grammar, so you'll be constantly pausing to look up concepts you don't know. But if you've been keeping up with the lessons, the reading practice presented will only use Japanese you know.

Not only is the reading itself wonderful practice. You're asked questions based on the passages. Having to intake, process, and output all in Japanese is great experience and hard to find as a beginner. The CDs add listening and speaking practice to the mix. All the reading comprehension in these sections have corresponding audio files.

Similar to this are open-ended writing assignments that challenge your ability to form sentences and encourage self-expression. Things like:

You are organizing a party. Write a flyer about the party. Be sure to include: what kind of party it is, what time it starts, where it is held, what to bring, how to get there, and so on.

Language learning gets fun when you can express yourself properly. And getting small chances to do this early on is valuable. This is a self-guided section. Self-learners with low motivation will have trouble. But those that push through and do the work will get the most out of it.

We're finally at the end of the textbook. And the end of a textbook means indexes! Beautiful indexes full of vocabulary. If you're looking for words to put into an SRS flashcard deck, here they are.

There's a Japanese-English (さくいん1) index and an English-Japanese index (さくいん2). A nice feature of both is the way it indicates your position in the index. There's a hiragana syllabary above the Japanese-English index and an alphabet above the English-Japanese index. Both are grayed out except for the particular letter or character covered on the page.

This is a minor feature but one that gives a more modern feel to the analog practice of looking things up in a book.

The entries of the Japanese-English index are kana, kanji, English, and section marker. There's a section legend at the beginning of the index to let you know which symbols represent which section. The English Japanese index is similar, with the major exception being the order of the entries. In this case it's English, kana, kanji, and section marker.

Map of Japan

This is exactly as the name describes. A map of Japan with each prefecture listed in kanji. There are some pictures too, which are okay for tiny black and white pictures printed in a textbook. Could be a useful tool if you're stuck on an airplane without internet access or something. Otherwise, check online for better maps with better features.

Just when you think this textbook is out of material, it surprises you. The Numbers chart is handy, though incomplete. Japanese has a ton of counters that change the reading of the number depending on what you're counting. いち (1) can change to ひとつ, ひとり, いっかい, いっぽん, and lots of other things. This chart tells you how to render one through ten for 37 different categories of things. For those confused by counters, seeing them all lined up in chart form could help break the concept down into more understandable pieces.

Verb Conjugation Chart

The Genki textbook gives you one final gift before signing off, a verb conjugation chart. Like the numbers chart, this is super helpful but even more useful.

For those struggling with verb conjugation, this chart lines everything up for easy study. It doesn't provide every verb conjugation. Only those introduced in this book. But for a beginner these are great foundational conjugations to practice. Trying to tackle the entirety of conjugations at once is too much. Master these and you'll have an easier time with basic conversation. From there, you'll be more than able to tackle the conjugations in the Genki 2 textbook.

The Genki Textbook Look and Feel

The physical makeup of the Genki textbook may seem trivial, but it's a lot of little things that impact learning in their own way. Your first impression of the textbook will probably be its nice glossy cover. When you pick it up, it feels heavy for a paperback. Considering the density of information inside, the weight is welcome.

The cover design is okay. It's close to clean and modern, but still feels early 2000s. Remove the outlined "げんき" logo, rearrange some of the text elements, and it would feel less dated.

Inside is a nice mix of fonts, serif fonts being the most dominant. It's academic, but other font styles paired with illustrations let you know the learning will be fun. Some pleasure with your pain (and gain).

The majority of the Japanese text is set in what Genki calls "textbook" font. It closely resembles handwriting. This is great because you'll be doing so much writing in the exercises.

Everything is black and white. No distracting colors, which is a big plus. It sucks when a language book confuses "engaging" with "colorful."

The photos are competent and high enough resolution. Unfortunately, their small size destroys their impact. Photos are mostly used for Culture Notes breakout boxes. Without the pictures, the Culture Notes would feel much hollower. So the photos are necessary, despite their shortcomings.

Genki's information is well organized, especially considering its density. Columns and sections make the knowledge easy to navigate. The margins and alignment offer plenty of white space. Visual appeal aside, Genki's design invites you to write in the pages. And those who take notes, highlight, dog-ear, and doodle will learn the most. Though some have advocated for a Genki textbook pdf, I think it's a bad idea. It might be handy to have on an e-reader, but you won't learn nearly as much without physical space to take notes.

Physically speaking, the paper is mid-grade. It won't tear easily, but it's not super thick. The book itself is hard to keep open on a table. You'll find yourself using a heavy flat object to keep it from snapping shut. Bend that spine back as soon as possible for an easier learning experience. The provided CD is stored in the back flap. This makes it tough to flip through the Genki textbook. Take the CD and store it in a safe place, like a jewel case or CD holder. The dust jacket is similarly annoying, always slipping off or popping up during study sections. Remove and store or trash it.

Genki I Workbook

You can (and should) make your own exercises to practice what you're learning. But if you find well-constructed Japanese practice that is perfectly in line with your studies, grab it. The Genki Workbook is exactly that, and worth grabbing.

The Genki Workbook is divided into 2 sections:

• Dialogue and Grammar
• Reading and Writing

The Dialogue and Grammar section is practice for all the grammar in the textbook. Think of it as extra exercises which reinforce the grammar you're learning. The Reading and Writing section of the workbook corresponds with the textbook in the same way. It contains handwriting practice and translation exercises.

At its core, the workbook is a collection of extra practice to help cement the lessons learned in the textbook. And that's wonderful. Doing the workbook in conjunction with the textbook exercises makes your learning concrete. Even better, the exercises in the workbook are different than in the textbook. Mostly because they are open-ended and encourage self-expression.

For example, you get sentence translation exercises. This may sound straightforward. But there's rarely only one correct way to translate a sentence from Japanese to English and vice versa. Also there are exercises like on page 53, "Answer the following questions regarding your best trip." You have to read in Japanese, write in Japanese, and draw from your own personal experience. Once you've learned a fair amount of kanji, you get truly open-ended questions like "Report tomorrow's weather of the place you live" and a big blank space.

There is some reading comprehension, but little beyond individual sentences. There are a few short paragraphs to read and answer questions. Thankfully the Reading and Writing section of the textbook has you covered for reading practice. But it would have been nice to have more in the workbook.

What the workbook lacks in reading comp, it makes up for in listening. Many exercises have corresponding audio files on the included CD. This gives vital listening practice for beginners.

Here's a list of the kinds of exercises you'll encounter in the workbook.

• Translate from Japanese to English
• Translate from English to Japanese
• Conjugate the verbs
• Look at the picture and write about the picture in Japanese
• Answer Japanese questions in Japanese
• Here's the answers, now ask the correct questions
• Write both questions and answers in Japanese
• Listen to the audio clip and choose the correct answer
• Listen to the audio clip and answer questions about it
• Listen to the audio clip and fill in the table
• Read the passage, listen to the questions, and write the answers
• Complete the conjugation table
• Describe what you (did/ate/saw/visited/etc)
• Describe what you think about each thing in the list
• Read the Japanese passage and draw what the passage describes
• Write sentences using the target grammar
• Choose words/grammar from a list and make sentences
• Complete the dialogue
• Describe the person, place, or thing
• Interview a person in Japanese and get their answers in Japanese
• Give advice

The Reading and Writing section of the workbook is small, but worth doing for the writing practice. Each chapter gets two pages, one for kanji/kana practice and one for exercises. The kanji/kana practice pages are meant to be photocopied multiple times for extra practice. So avoid writing in these. The practice exercises for each chapter are the same, one fill-in-the-blank and one translation.

Genki Audio CD-ROMs

The CDs are indispensable. It's great The Japan Times decided to pack them in with the second edition. They used to cost extra in the first edition, and were in a different file format. The audio clips fill in the listening/speaking gap present with most textbook learning. Though there are many Japanese audio resources available online now, the Genki audio is good quality and the content pairs perfectly with your studies.

The clips are slow and clear for the beginner's ear, but not pandering. They'll challenge elementary listening. Eventually you'll want to find more listening practice. But as a complete beginner, the CDs are perfect.

The audio quality is hit or miss. Sometimes the clips sound like they were recorded in a closet. Sometimes they're perfectly clear. Sometimes they sound like they were exported in low quality and added alongside the high quality clips. I couldn't find a pattern either. Sometimes the English speakers would sound tinny, and sometimes it was the Japanese speakers. In a clip about number pronunciation, one of the numbers was randomly tinny, low quality, and spoken by a different Japanese voice actor than the rest of the numbers in the sequence. Today, podcasters and hobbyists put out high quality audio every day. It makes the Genki CDs seem low quality by comparison.

Quality aside, the voice actors are both male and female, which is great. When you start learning, it's important to hear the differences between masculine and feminine Japanese . And the voice actors vary in age too. The male voice sound anywhere between late twenties to mid-forties. The female voices vary between early twenties to early sixties. Getting such variety from your listening practice make these CDs extra valuable.

Be aware the CDs are not audio CDs. They're CD-ROMs. The first edition CD set was audio CDs. But they were a set of 6 CDs per volume. The Japan Times fit the 6 CDs worth of audio files onto two CD-ROMs, meaning less physical hassle for the consumer. It also means the new CDs won't play in a CD player. They're not made to play files, just store them. So you'll need to put the Genki CDs into a computer, and drag the files into a folder. From there you can do with them as you please. Put them into iTunes. Load them on your phone. Burn them onto an audio CD. Whatever you do, it'll definitely be worth the effort.

People online claim the mp3 files on the CDs are disorganized and hard to sort. Personally, I don't see what the problem is. I popped the textbook CD into my laptop and was presented with 2 folders:

One labeled "Genki1_KaiwaBunpo-hen" for the Conversation and Grammar section and the other labeled "Genki1_Yomikaki-hen" for the Reading and Writing section. Definitely not user friendly, but everything was organized. Inside the folders are the files:

I understand this is confusing at first glance. But the filenames correspond exactly with the audio icons in the textbook. Since the audio was made to be used with textbook, it makes sense. Could they have been organized better? Definitely. But it's not anything that will keep you from finding and using the files.

Full disclosure, I used the Genki CD-ROM on a Mac. I didn't try it on a Windows machine. It's possible accessing the files on Windows is more difficult somehow. If you need help getting the files on iTunes, the Genki website has instructions .

My biggest complaint is that CDs are used at all. Navigating the files and accessing them isn't a problem. It's finding a CD drive that's an issue. Back in 2011 when the second edition was published, CD drives were still a common feature on laptops. But with the advent of tablet computing, access to a CD drive is less and less common. It's nice to have a physical copy of the audio files. But it wouldn't be too difficult include a slip of paper with a key for downloading the files from a cloud. Some kind of access to a member's only Genki textbook download area. Including the CD-ROM was a perk in 2011. Today, not as much. However, it should be noted that most textbooks still come with CDs. So it's not that Genki is "behind" necessarily. It's just that the Japanese textbook world has yet to make a foray into cloud-based computing.

The Genki Textbook Price

Perhaps the biggest complaint people have with Genki is the price. The retail price in the US is $59.99 for the textbook and $29.99 for the workbook. That's about $90 for the first volume. Add another $90 if you're getting Genki II at the same time.

How does this compare to other Japanese textbooks? Here are the retail prices of the first volumes of some of the most popular:

This makes Genki a little pricier than average. But it's a steal when you consider the quality you're getting. You may pay $49 for Japanese for Busy People, but you'll get less than $49 worth of education from it.

If you really want to get a deal on the Genki books, buy them from a retailer in Japan. On Amazon.co.jp the textbook sells for ¥3500 ($29 USD) and the workbook sells for ¥1600 ($13 USD). That's like getting both half off! Of course, this doesn't include shipping. To calculate Amazon Japan's shipping to your country, check out their international shipping page .

The Real Deal

Genki isn't the only Japanese resource you'll ever need. But it can be your primary textbook at the beginning of your Japanese language learning journey. It manages to be simultaneously inclusive and challenging. Its predictable lesson structure and scaffolding progression ensures you're always slowly and surely moving forward. The grammar explanations are such home runs they mostly make up for any shortcomings. Adding the CDs and workbook to your study regimen cements Japanese grammar concepts further than the textbook does alone.

Of course, if you're self-learning, using the Genki textbook will take more effort. It was designed for university classrooms, so you'll need a friend or answer key to check your work. You won't get a ton of example sentences with the grammar explanations, so plan to use other resources to cross reference grammar you have questions about. The vocab lists are fine, but less than you'll need to converse comfortably. Adding massive SRS vocab study will make your conversation more powerful than it would be otherwise.

In the end, it's up to you to decide whether or not Genki is right for you. It's perfect for classroom learning. So if you're thinking of signing up for a Japanese class that uses Genki, jump on it. With some effort, it could be excellent for self-learners too.

Kristen’s Review 9/10

The Genki series was my first Japanese textbook, and I loved it. My entire Japanese-language foundation is thanks to Genki ! But! I used it in a school setting, so I am definitely biased. But but! As I worked my way through it, I saw how students at other school struggled with their textbooks and I can’t tell you how thankful I am that I happened to go to one that chose these books. Whenever someone asks me what textbook they should start with, I point to Genki .

Koichi’s Review 8/10

Genki is probably one of the best beginner Japanese textbooks out there. That said, there aren’t any amazing textbook options out there, so just being pretty decent puts you on the top. Genki is pretty decent, in my opinion. Get the workbook, because it was designed for teachers (who create additional materials for their students to fill in the practice voids).

Michael’s Review 8/10

When I think of Genki , “solid” is the first word that comes to mind. It covers what you need to know as a beginner and gives you a great foundation. Other books may exceed Genki in a few areas, but very few can offer the overall quality you get here.

Genki I by The Japan Times

• Perfect for beginners
• Easy-to-predict lesson structure
• Scaffolding progression
• Clear, concise grammar explanations
• CD and Workbook reinforce learning
• Not designed for self-learners
• No way to check work

Overall Rating

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What the Tokyo Trial Reveals About Empire, Memory, and Judgment

By Ian Buruma

In Nuremberg, in the fall of 1945, twenty-two high-ranking Nazis were put on trial before a group of judges from Allied nations. A year later, twelve of the defendants were sentenced to be hanged, and seven received prison sentences. Few people, even in Germany, felt particularly sorry for the condemned men, who had caused so much death and destruction all over Europe. But there were reservations about a trial in which the victors prosecuted the vanquished. Winston Churchill, for one, would have preferred to shoot the Nazi leaders and be done with it. (Stalin thought that killing fifty thousand Germans might do; even Churchill was a little put out by that.)

Instead, the London Charter was created to try the top Nazis for crimes against humanity (a new concept) and crimes against peace (another new idea), along with conventional war crimes. Crimes against humanity meant murder, extermination, enslavement, and other such acts against a civilian population, or persecution on religious or racial grounds. Planning and waging a war of aggression counted as crimes against peace. The aim in creating these laws was to set norms for the future. But critics of the Nuremberg proceedings quickly objected to the use of retroactive justice—punishment by laws that hadn’t existed when the crimes were committed. They also noted that, before Nuremberg, political leaders had not been held personally responsible for acts of state, however cruel and aggressive they may have been.

Hypocrisy was another issue raised by critics. German leaders were accused of killing large numbers of defenseless civilians, but what about the eradication of entire cities by Allied bombing? And how was one of Stalin’s hanging judges, who presided over some of the bloodiest Soviet show trials, entitled to try Germans for crimes against humanity?

Discover notable new fiction and nonfiction.

If the Nuremberg trial was questionable in some respects, the trial of Japanese wartime leaders in Tokyo (which resulted in seven men hanged, sixteen imprisoned) was far more dubious. John Dower, the finest American historian of modern Japan, called the Tokyo trial “a murky reflection of its German counterpart.” On a visit to Japan in 1946, the eminent U.S. diplomat George Kennan dismissed the proceedings as “political trials.” Charles Willoughby, General Douglas MacArthur’s intelligence chief in Tokyo, thought that the proceedings were “the worst hypocrisy in recorded history.” And Radhabinod Pal, the trial’s Indian judge, didn’t think that any of the defendants should be found guilty, because he viewed a trial conducted mostly by representatives of colonial powers as illegitimate.

The International Military Tribunal for the Far East, as the Tokyo trial was officially called, lasted longer than the trial in Nuremberg—it stretched from May, 1946, to November, 1948—and was on a far grander scale. Where the Nuremberg judges came from four countries, the Tokyo judges came from eleven: the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, China, the Philippines, the Netherlands, France, New Zealand, India, and the Soviet Union. The Tokyo trial was also more of an American affair than the tribunal in Germany had been. Japan was under Allied occupation until 1952, but control was almost entirely in the hands of General MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers ( SCAP ). And, if the ferocious Allied destruction of German cities was a point to be skirted in Nuremberg, the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not to mention the incendiary bombing of many other Japanese cities, cast even greater doubt on the legitimacy of Allied judgment of Japanese war crimes.

Illegitimate or not, as Gary J. Bass points out in his exhaustive and fascinating book “ Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia ” (Knopf), the Tokyo trial had serious consequences that continue to play out to this day. Placing the trial firmly in the context of colonialism, racial attitudes, the Cold War, and post-colonial Asian politics, Bass argues, quite rightly, that the trial “reveals some of the reasons why a liberal international order has not emerged in Asia.”

It is impossible to imagine a mainstream German politician openly disparaging the Nuremberg trial as mere foreign propaganda, or paying tribute to convicted war criminals in a place of worship. Yet several Japanese Prime Ministers have done just that with regard to the Tokyo trial. The late Shinzo Abe , for example, prayed at the imperialist Yasukuni Shrine, in Tokyo, where major war criminals are glorified and monuments set among elegant gardens honor such notorious wartime organizations as the Kempeitai, the rough Japanese equivalent of the Gestapo. One reason Abe and some of his predecessors have done so—provoking Japanese liberals as much as other Asians—is their desire to overturn what right-wing nationalists like to call the “Tokyo-trial version of history.” They believe that Allied propagandists, and the Japanese leftists who parroted them, imposed a “masochistic” view of the past on Japan, and unfairly accused the country of waging an aggressive war and committing worse atrocities than other nations.

The version of history offered by the Tokyo trial was a little skewed. The proceedings followed the example of Nuremberg, as though the war waged by Japan had been an Asian mirror image of that waged by Germany. Indeed, many Westerners at the time thought that the Japanese were even worse than the Nazis. Racial prejudice had something to do with this belief. Bass quotes an Australian newspaper: “The Jap has not a soul to think in terms of decency.” But the attack on Pearl Harbor also contributed, as did the treatment of Western prisoners of war, which was more severe than the usual German handling of P.O.W.s (as long as they weren’t Soviet soldiers). Bass quotes some startling statistics. In 1944, a third of Americans wanted Japan to be “destroyed as a political entity”; thirteen per cent thought all Japanese people should be killed.

These were just the views of ordinary Americans responding to opinion polls. Henry L. Stimson—the wartime U.S. War Secretary, who had blocked Jewish refugees from coming to the United States as late as 1944 and who, after the war, saw no reason to prosecute the Nazis for what they had done inside Germany—was appalled by the “horrible pictures of the way the Japanese are treating our poor Air Force boys when they get hold of them.” These boys, of course, had been killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians from the air. General MacArthur, meanwhile, wanted the Tokyo trial to deal only with Pearl Harbor, and not with Japan’s far greater war crimes committed against other Asians, especially the Chinese.

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The Japanese war was, in fact, not the same as Hitler’s war, nor were the defendants in the Tokyo trial much like the Nazis in the dock at Nuremberg. There was no Japanese equivalent of the Nazi Party, and no dictator like Hitler. Koki Hirota (who was sentenced to death by hanging), Shigenori Togo (twenty years in prison), and Mamoru Shigemitsu (seven years) were neither fanatics nor thugs but civilian politicians who served in a number of governments that were more and more dominated by military men. All three—Hirota as Prime Minister and foreign minister, Togo and Shigemitsu as foreign ministers—had tried at different times to stop the militarists from going to war.

They failed. But the prosecutors’ allegation that these men were part of a “conspiracy to wage a war of aggression” was never plausible. There were too many disagreements inside various Japanese cabinets for that. Conspiracy to commit a crime, in any case, wasn’t a Japanese judicial concept; it was a peculiarly Anglo-American one.

Many of the military leaders on trial were belligerent. General Hideki Tojo (hanged) certainly was. And they were unable or unwilling to stop their troops from raping and murdering countless civilians. Tojo also ordered P.O.W.s to do hard labor, which often killed them. Torture—especially at the hands of the dreaded Kempeitai, whose leaders, oddly enough, were not tried in Tokyo—was routinely practiced all over the Japanese Empire. But the defendants in Tokyo had not been driven by a genocidal ideology. Many of them may have been warmongers, but they weren’t Nazis.

As latecomers to the imperialist game, the Japanese had been fighting wars on the Asian continent since 1894. They colonized Korea, Taiwan, and islands in the South Pacific; conquered Manchuria (now northeast China) in 1931 and set it up as a puppet state; and invaded the rest of China in 1937. Much of this was done in the spirit of defensive jingoism. Japan wanted to protect what it saw as its legitimate interests in Asia by building its own empire, one that both opposed Western empires in the region and mimicked them. This Japanese enterprise was often vicious, frequently dishonest, and ultimately disastrous, but it was essentially an imperialist war, and did not include a systematic and ideological program of extermination.

Still, Bass is right to keep returning to the question of race. Tojo, who served as Japan’s Prime Minister from 1941 to 1944, believed that his country needed to liberate Asians from Western imperialism and spread its “superior” culture “all over the world.” It was a brutal liberation that most Asians didn’t much appreciate. But the Japanese leaders, Tojo among them, defended their mission by claiming to be fighting against white supremacy. In 1919, the Japanese demand for racial equality in the Covenant of the League of Nations had been denied. Some two decades later, Japan, in the view of Tojo and others, was forced into a war with the West—the invasion of China was harder to justify—because Western imperial powers had conspired against Japanese interests, cutting the country off from oil and other vital supplies. At the same time, the president of Japan’s privy council warned the militarists against a war with the West, lest such a venture unite the Europeans and the Americans in a common “hatred of the yellow race.”

Some anti-colonial Asian leaders in the nineteen-forties—including José Laurel in the Philippines and Sukarno in the Dutch East Indies—were prepared to view the Japanese as liberators and hoped that collaboration with Japan would rid them of their Western masters. It did, in the end, but not before Asians suffered a great many horrors at Japanese hands. Two of the three Asian judges on the Tokyo tribunal—Delfin Jaranilla, from the Philippines, and Mei Ruao, from China—were, Bass points out, harsher on the Japanese than the Western judges were. That shouldn’t have been surprising, since Mei had suffered from Japanese bombing in Chongqing, the last wartime Chinese capital, and Jaranilla had been in the Bataan Death March, in 1942, which claimed the lives of as many as eighteen thousand Filipinos.

Justice Pal, on the other hand, an eloquent Bengali intellectual who had become a respected lawyer under the British Raj, agreed with Tojo and his colleagues in the dock in finding the idea of a Japanese conspiracy “preposterous.” Pal claimed that his fellow-judges from the West had a “bias created by racial or political factors.” Japan had been right to feel threatened in the nineteen-thirties, he thought, “with Nationalist China, Soviet Russia, and the race-conscious English-speaking peoples of the Pacific closing in on her.” And if Japanese education and propaganda had been a little racist, too, well: “I cannot condemn those of the Japanese leaders who might have thought of protecting their race by inculcating their racial superiority in the youthful mind.”

No wonder, then, that Justice Pal should have a monument all to himself at Yasukuni Shrine, bearing the words “When Time shall have softened passion and prejudice, when Reason shall have stripped the mask from misrepresentation, then Justice, holding evenly her scales, will require much of past censure and praise to change places.” Few of the Japanese nationalists who go to the shrine to pay their respects to the Indian judge will recognize that these words were spoken originally by Jefferson Davis, the Confederate leader, who mourned the lost cause of slavery.

Are the Japanese nationalists right? Was the Tokyo trial just a hypocritical piece of Western propaganda, taken up by Japanese leftists? The truth is far more complicated. Western bias can safely be assumed, since the trial was decided upon by the U.S. and dominated by judges from the British Empire. The chief judge was an Australian, the chief prosecutor an American, and, aside from Jaranilla, Mei, and Pal, the judges representing Asian peoples were Dutch, British, and French. The Koreans, who had suffered from Japanese aggression longer than any other people, had no judge at all.

Nor is it a stretch to think that a sense of wounded imperialism might have colored the perspective of some of the European judges. Although Bass overstates the case when he says that Britain’s postwar Labour government “embraced imperialism”—the independence of India and Burma, at least, had its approval—there’s no doubt that the Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, and the Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, still had an exalted view of British power in the world, which they sought to preserve through the Commonwealth, and through a global network of military bases. The Japanese invasions of European colonies were clearly experienced as a humiliation. Publicly abasing Western P.O.W.s had been a deliberate Japanese tactic to show other Asians how low the white man could be brought down, and to promote the mission of restoring Asia to Asians.

The legacy of the tribunal was certainly muddled by the lack of consensus among the judges about the legitimacy of the charges. Justice Pal was not the only one to challenge the idea of conspiracy to wage war. The charge of crimes against peace had been justified in Nuremberg by various prewar agreements to proscribe war, such as the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928. (In the wake of the First World War, the French foreign minister, Aristide Briand, suggested a Franco-U.S. agreement to outlaw war between the two nations. When his U.S. counterpart, Frank B. Kellogg, showed little interest in a bilateral arrangement, the idea was expanded to include most of the countries in the world, including Japan.) But international agreements are not criminal laws. Even the Australian jurist William Webb, the tribunal’s chief judge, admitted that “international law, unlike the laws of many countries, does not expressly include a crime of naked conspiracy,” and that the creation of this crime was “nothing short of judicial legislation.”

Natural law, based on religious and legal philosophies associated with such figures as the seventeenth-century Dutch statesman and jurist Hugo Grotius—and systematized earlier by Thomas Aquinas—was also invoked to condemn the Japanese. The Dutch judge, Bert Röling, was among those who dissented from the tribunal’s rulings (much to the alarm of his government in The Hague), and he pointedly took issue with the effort to enlist natural law. Fully conscious of the Dutch colonial record in Asia, he wrote, “I hesitate to approach the Far East in our effort to determine the criminality of aggression with quotations from idealists and philosophers of the very period when our heroes and soldiers were conquering its territories in what could hardly be called a defensive war.” Röling wanted to limit the trial to conventional war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Meanwhile, Joseph Keenan, the American chief prosecutor, was prone to sonorous absurdities. He claimed that the Japanese aggressors had invaded countries in Asia intending to “destroy democracy and its essential basis—freedom and the respect of human personality.” These countries in Asia were, of course, European and U.S. colonies. That Keenan was often drunk is no excuse. Even Asians who had loathed their Japanese oppressors would have been astonished by this delusional flourish of American idealism.

The Asian judges, apart from Pal, had no doubts about the court’s jurisdiction. Bass is especially good on Mei, the Chinese judge, to whom too little attention has been paid in other books on the Tokyo trial. A man of considerable learning who had studied at Stanford University, Mei was perhaps the least cynical of the judges. He truly believed that the trial would create a more peaceful and democratic world order, and had the thankless task of promoting this idea even as his Nationalist government was being quickly overwhelmed by Mao Zedong’s Communist revolutionaries. He also did his best to focus attention on Japanese atrocities in China. If MacArthur thought the attack on Pearl Harbor was a murderous war crime, Chinese claims were far more persuasive: as many as twenty million Chinese died in the war between 1937 and 1945.

The retreating Japanese had destroyed most of the documents attesting to their actions, but there was nonetheless sufficient evidence to shock Japanese public opinion. Various witnesses gave accounts of what they saw when the Nationalist capital, Nanjing, was ransacked in the course of six weeks in 1937 by Japanese Imperial Army troops, who raped countless women and killed tens of thousands and possibly even hundreds of thousands of people. A Japanese Army document produced at the trial showed that superior officers had either encouraged or ignored these crimes. “In the battlefield we think nothing of rape,” one soldier said. Chinese P.O.W.s were lined up and “killed to test the efficiency of the machine gun,” another recalled.

The Japanese press reported these horrors at length, but Mei’s noble intention to establish a thorough historical record of Japan’s crimes was further hampered by the civil war in China. The Nationalist generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek tended to see trials against Japanese war criminals as a distraction from his struggle against the Communists. He even employed one of the most ruthless Japanese generals as his military adviser. The massacres perpetrated by this particular general had been directed mostly at Communist guerrillas, which didn’t especially concern Chiang. The Communists, in turn, didn’t bother much about the Nanjing Massacre until decades later, because its victims were governed by the Nationalists.

Other Japanese crimes were ignored at the Tokyo trial for equally cynical reasons. Japanese doctors and scientists in the notorious Unit 731, which was in charge of biological and chemical warfare, had conducted hideous experiments on Chinese and Russian prisoners, and deliberately infected large numbers of Chinese with fatal diseases, such as bubonic plague, just to see what would happen. The leader of this unit, Shiro Ishii, and his team received immunity from the Americans in exchange for their data, which were thought to be useful. Quite how useful the data proved has never been divulged.

Nor was attention paid at the Tokyo trial to the organized effort of the Japanese Imperial Army to force Chinese, Korean, and other Asian women into sexual slavery. The wide-scale rape of local women had become a headache for the Army, since it provoked greater anti-Japanese resistance. To mitigate this problem, so-called comfort women were tricked or kidnapped and made to service Japanese soldiers. But their suffering wasn’t on anyone’s agenda in 1946. This enormity would become a serious issue only much later.

The extent to which the defendants in the Tokyo trial were personally responsible for the crimes in China, or in other parts of Asia, was hard to prove, so they were convicted for their failure to stop those crimes. But in the end it wasn’t the Western powers that came down hardest on the Japanese. Justice Mei thought the final judgment had been too soft in some respects. The Chinese Communists were outraged that Tojo and other defendants had been allowed to make self-justifying speeches in court and to be defended by able U.S. lawyers. The People’s Daily thundered, “MacArthur’s protection and indulgence is the real reason why war criminals such as Tojo dare to be so arrogant.”

In one important respect, the “Tokyo-trial version of history” was indeed utterly remiss. Emperor Hirohito, whose name was on many incriminating documents, was, for political reasons, neither prosecuted nor even called as a witness. When Tojo inadvertently let it slip that “no Japanese subject would go against the will of His Majesty,” he was swiftly reminded not to implicate the Emperor and stated that the Emperor had never had anything but peaceful intentions.

MacArthur, as well as his advisers, decided in 1945 that if the Emperor did not remain on his throne there would be a nationwide revolt that would upset SCAP ’s administration. Only a few days after the formal Japanese surrender, as Bass writes, “both the American occupiers and the Japanese authorities converged on a common line: the imperial court, so useful for a peaceful occupation, was not to be blamed for the war.” Bass might have stressed, however, that this was the view of MacArthur’s most conservative advisers and the most reactionary Japanese authorities, and that many Japanese, including some of Hirohito’s closest relatives, thought he should at least abdicate. It was the Americans who quashed that idea from the beginning.

Bass describes some of the rifts in the U.S. Administration, in Tokyo as well as in Washington, D.C. At almost nine hundred pages, his book is already very long—“necessarily so,” in his opinion—but on the politics swirling around MacArthur’s court he could have said more. There were New Dealers in his entourage who wanted a more radical transformation of Japan than did more conservative figures such as Henry Stimson, George Kennan, and Joseph Grew, the former Ambassador to Japan. Some of the conservatives around MacArthur were rather disreputable, to put it mildly. General Willoughby, his intelligence chief, born in Germany as Adolf Karl Weidenbach, was an admirer of Mussolini. MacArthur called Willoughby “my pet fascist.” The intelligence chief, who arranged for the protection of Shiro Ishii, from Unit 731, found allies among Japanese right-wingers, including some influential figures who had been arrested for war crimes and who sought to shape Japan according to their political wishes.

Bass calls the New Dealers “retributive” and “maximalist.” That’s a little unfair; they were convinced that there was enough Japanese enthusiasm for civic rights to establish a more liberal democracy than had existed before, and to a large degree they were right. That Grew, Kennan, Stimson, and Willoughby were skeptical of the prospects for such a liberal democracy was partly a matter of cultural or racial prejudice. In Stimson’s view, the Japanese were “an oriental people with an oriental mind and religion,” and thus incapable of governing themselves. Attempts to democratize Japan, in his view, would end up making “a hash of it.”

MacArthur himself, a martinet and a staunch Republican, was torn between his New Dealers and the conservatives. He compared the Japanese to “a boy of twelve” in terms of the “standards of modern civilization.” But he also had a rather grandiose idea of what he saw as his historic mission to establish a Christian democracy in Japan. This resulted in a liberal constitution, trade unions, land reforms, a free press, and women’s suffrage, all of which were welcomed by most of the Japanese population. In the late nineteen-forties, however, when the Communists were winning in China and the Cold War was warming up, the right-wing, anti-Communist views of people such as Willoughby gained strength. “Reds” in government jobs, trade unions, universities, and other institutions were purged. But almost all the men who had been indicted for war crimes were released as soon as the Tokyo trial was over, in 1948. One of them was Nobusuke Kishi, the wartime vice-minister of munitions and Shinzo Abe’s grandfather, who escaped a prison sentence and became Prime Minister in 1957.

In short, the kind of Japanese who objected to the “Tokyo-trial version of history” soon returned to power with active American assistance, including large amounts of American cash that flowed into conservative coffers well into the nineteen-sixties. Some of the work of the New Dealers and the Japanese liberals was undone. There were no further efforts to hold the Japanese to account for waging aggressive wars and committing war crimes across Asia. Still, there was at least one aspect of the postwar Japanese constitution, written by American idealists, that could not be revised, and that was Article 9, whereby Japan was to “renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.” This was simply too popular in Japan to touch.

But the right-wing nationalists—and, indeed, many American conservatives, such as Richard Nixon —deplored Article 9 as a big mistake. The nationalists continue to see Article 9 as a humiliating assault on Japanese sovereignty, while their liberal opponents continue to see pacifism as a necessary lesson to be drawn from Japan’s dismal wartime record. As a result of this conflict, views on Japan’s modern history have become hopelessly tangled up with postwar politics. The more liberals point to the Nanjing Massacre, or the destruction of Japan itself, as a warning not to change the constitution, the more nationalists wish to deny that there ever was such a massacre in Nanjing, or that Japan did anything to be particularly ashamed of. This has greatly muddled Japanese foreign policy, especially in Asia. Every time Japanese leaders issue formal apologies for Japan’s dark past in other Asian countries, their efforts are undercut by right-wing politicians making a show of visiting the Yasukuni Shrine, or insisting that school textbooks should be more patriotic and omit references to the Nanjing Massacre and other war crimes.

This is embarrassing, and makes it easier for China to stir up anti-Japanese sentiment. South Korea—given the increasing belligerence it faces from China, as well as from North Korea—should be a close ally of Japan’s. But relations between the two countries remain troubled by Japanese right-wing denials that Korean women were forced to work in Japanese military brothels. Indeed, Japan’s unresolved issues with the “Tokyo-trial version of history” get to the heart of what Bass identifies as the country’s greatest dilemma today.

Japan’s constitutional pacifism has always been predicated on the understanding that the U.S. would guarantee its security. Amid an increasingly hostile environment and an erratic American politics (Donald Trump), growing numbers of Japanese believe that a constitutional revision should now at least be seriously discussed, so that Japan can do more to defend itself and its neighbors. But neither Japan’s allies in South Korea and Southeast Asia nor its liberals at home will be reassured by such a move as long as the country’s conservative leaders refuse to face up to its past, and seek to appeal the verdict of history. ♦

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THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER 'Chris Broad explores Japan in all its quirky glory..Endlessly fascinating!' Will Ferguson, author of Hokkaido Highway Blues 'Carves a unique path across Japan bringing him into contact with far too many cats, heartening renewal in Tohoku, and even pizza with Ken Watanabe.' Iain Maloney, author of The Only Gaijin in the Village 'Fascinating, fact-packed and very funny..An excellent and enjoyable read for the Japan-curious. I loved it and learned a lot.' Sam Baldwin, author of For Fukui's Sake: Two years in rural Japan When Englishman Chris Broad landed in a rural village in northern Japan he wondered if he'd made a huge mistake. With no knowledge of the language and zero teaching experience, was he about to be the most quickly fired English teacher in Japan's history? Abroad in Japan charts a decade of living in a foreign land and the chaos and culture clash that came with it. Packed with hilarious and fascinating stories, this book seeks out to unravel one the world's most complex cultures. Spanning ten years and all forty-seven prefectures, Chris takes us from the lush rice fields of the countryside to the frenetic neon-lit streets of Tokyo. With blockbuster moments such as a terrifying North Korean missile incident, a mortifying experience at a love hotel and a week spent with Japan's biggest movie star, Abroad in Japan is an extraordinary and informative journey through the Land of the Rising Sun. Number one Sunday Times bestseller, August 2023

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Violence and its impact on writers anchor three of our recommended books this week: Michael Korda offers a group biography of the soldier-poets of World War I, while Kristine Ervin writes about her mother’s murder and Salman Rushdie relives the knife attack that almost took his life two years ago.

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