Five Gentlemen of Japan

by Frank Gibney

Description

A newspaperman, an ex-Navy vice-admiral, a steel worker, a farmer, and the 124th Emperor of Japan himself?these are the fascinating heroes of Gibney's brilliant book about modern Japan. Strongly individual, everyone of them, the five yet share the common inheritance of Japan's precocious but unstable past.Through their lives and attitudes, Gibney gives us an invaluable analysis of this new sovereign nation so suddenly thrown into the world's power conflicts. He helps us understand the show more historical and social forces which make Japan what she is today?the old contracts and loyalties f show less

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languagehat 389 reviews

Gibney died on April 9, 2006 at 81; from his LA Times obit:

"In 1953 he published his first book on Asia, Five Gentlemen of Japan. In profiling a farmer, a former vice admiral in the Imperial Navy, a newspaperman, the foreman of a steel mill and Emperor Hirohito, Gibney offered an intimate glimpse into postwar Japanese society.

"He knew each of his subjects personally, except for Hirohito, and portrayed even the emperor in familiar terms: 'a slightly stooped, mustached gentleman of a middle age, wearing a crushed brown hat.'

"Elizabeth Gray Vining, former tutor of Crown Prince Akihito, Hirohito's son, praised the book's 'keen and careful analysis' in a New York Times review. 'Their portraits are drawn with sympathy and insight; none of show more them is caricature,' she said of Gibney's profiles of the five men." show less

Apr 8, 2006

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charlottem 139 reviews

Apr 16, 2011

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