From My Grandmother's Bedside is an experiment in genre, a moving and evocative reflection on contemporary Japan, human desire, family relations, life, and death. Norma Field, the daughter of a Japanese woman and an American G.I., and author of the acclaimed In the Realm of a Dying Emperor, returned to Japan in 1995 to tend to her slowly dying grandmother, who had been rendered speechless by multiple strokes. What she finds—both in the memories of her childhood in her grandmother's household and in the altered face of postmodern Japan—forms the substance of her narrative that transcends both memoir and essay to reveal, through crafted fragments, a refraction of the whole of Japan. Having spent her childhood in Japan and her adulthood in the United States, Field speaks from the position of one who straddles two worlds. Her testimony is highly personal, her voice is intimate, her observations are keen and clear. She juxtaposes details from daily life—conversations overheard on the subway; arguments between her mother and aunts; the struggle to feed, bathe, and care for her grandmother—with observations on the political and social changes that have transformed Japan. She shows how the belated coming to terms with the war and continuing avoidance of the same are intimately related to the look and feel of Japanese society today. She gently folds back the complicated layers of blame and responsibility for the war, touching in the process on subjects as diverse as the effects of the atomic bomb, comfort women, biracial/bicultural families, the farewells of Kamikaze pilots, and the dehumanizing effects of Japan's postwar economic boom. A recurrent theme is the observation of the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war. From My Grandmother's Bedside is also a contemplation of the many facets of language: the kinds of language with which her grandmother's illness has been negotiated, the wordless language her grandmother speaks, her own relationship to these languages. Through it all runs the realization that the personal and the political are perpetually entangled, that past and present converge and overlap.

From My Grandmother's Bedside: Sketches of Postwar Tokyo

Literature & Fiction

Field, Norma

History & Criticism

University of California Press

Japanese Law in Context: Readings in Society, the Economy, and Politics (Harvard East Asian Monographs)

This is a wide-ranging selection of 130 readings in Japanese law. The essays, extracted from previously published books and articles, cover subjects including historical context, the civil law tradition, the legal services industry, dispute resolution, constitutional law, contracts, torts, criminal law, family law, employment law, corporate law, and economic regulation. This unique collection of readings is accompanied by the texts of the Japanese constitution and other basic laws.

Computers & Technology

West, Mark D.

Hendry, Joy

THOMPSON, Mark

Johnson, Chalmers

Young, Leslie

Fallows, James

Shapiro, Martin

Becker, Gary S.

Chira, Susan

Van Wolferen, Karel

BOK, DEREK

Merryman, John Henry

McCubbins, Mathew D.

Bayley, David H.

Weingast, Barry R.

Bernstein, Lisa

Magee, Stephen P.

Brock, William A.

Dubro, Alec

Roe, Mark J.

Nakazato, Minoru

Shleifer, Andrei

Lohr, Steve

Rohlen, Thomas P.

Murphy, Kevin M.

Vishny, Robert W.

Pascale, Richard

Noble, Gregory W.

Upham, Frank K.

Bryant, Taimie L.

Krauss, Ellis S.

Smith, Thomas C.

Kidder, Robert L.

Crabb, Kelly

Miyazawa, Setsuo

Foote, Daniel H.

Miller, Geoffrey P.

Fukao, Mitsuhiro

Muramatsu, Michio

Smith, Robert Eliot

Eng, Robert Y.

Gilson, Ronald J.

Abegglen, James

Abowd, John M.

Amaya, Naohiro

Ames, Walter

Asanuma, Banri

Calvert, Randall L.

Coleman, Samuel

Edwards, Linda N.

Fukushima, Glen S.

Haley, John O.

Hamilton, Constance

Heftel, Chris

Henderson, Dan Fenno

Kaplan, David S.

Kaplan, Steven N.

Kawashima, Takeyosi

Minton, Bernadette A.

Moran, Mark J.

Muto, Shunko

Notehelfer, F. G.

Olson Jr., Mancur

Parkinson, Lorraine

Sheard, Paul

Sklar, Deborah

Smith, Malcolm D. H.

Stalk Jr, George

Takasugi, Shingo

Tanaka, Hideo

Weinstein, David E.

Wiswell, Ella

Yokoyama, Minoru

Yonemoto, Kazuhiro

Zaloom, E. Anthony

Software

Harvard University Asia Center

Examines Japan's uneasy relationship to its past, the tortuous relations between religion and state, and the role of dissent in a society where freedom has become banal and elusive

IN THE REALM OF A DYING EMPERO

History

Asia

Pantheon

When the Emperor Hirohito died in 1989, Japanese newspapers had to use a special, exalted word to refer to his death, and had to depict his life uncritically, as one beginning in turbulence but ending in magnificent accomplishment. To do otherwise would have exposed them to terrorism from the vigilant right wing. Yet this insightful book by a Japanese-American scholar who grew up in both cultures reveals the hidden fault lines in the realm of the dying emperor by telling the stories of three unlikely dissenters: a supermarket owner who burned the national flag; an aging widow who challenged the state's "deification" of fallen soldiers; and the mayor of Nagasaki, who risked his career and his life by suggesting that Hirohito bore some responsibility for World War II.

In the Realm of a Dying Emperor: Japan at Century's End

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Vintage

"In highly informed yet sympathetic and persuasive terms, Norma Field delineates the characters of a number of the most important women who figure in the Tale of Genji in order to show the way in which their lives mirror and ultimately explicate the vast structure of this most wonderful of Japanese novels. This is Genji as read and loved by a person of a truly contemporary sensibility." -J. Thomas Rimer, University of Maryland. Foremost among Japanese literary classics and one of the world's earliest novels, the Tale of Genji was written around the year A. D. 1000 by Murasaki Shikibu, a woman from a declining aristocratic family. For sophistication and insight, Western prose fiction was to wait centuries to rival her work. Norma Field explores the shifting configurations of the Tale, showing how the hero Genji is made and unmade by a series of heroines. Professor Field draws on the riches of both Japanese and Western Scholarship, as well as on her own sensitive reading of the Tale. Included are discussions of the social, psychological, and political dimensions of the aesthetics of this novel, with emphasis on the crucial relationship of erotic and political concerns to prose fictions. Norma Field is Assistant Professor of Far Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.

The Splendor of Longing in the Tale of the Genji (Princeton Legacy Library)

Princeton University Press

Foremost among Japanese literary classics and one of the world's earliest novels, the Tale of Genji was written around the year A.D. 1000 by Murasaki Shikibu, a woman from a declining aristocratic family. For sophisticaion and insight, Western prose fiction was to wait centuries to rival her work. Norma Field explore the shifting configurations of the Tale, showing how the hero Genji is made and unmade by a series of heroines. Professor Field draws on the riches of both Japanesse and Western scholarship, as well as on her own sensitive reading of the Tale. Included are discussions of the social, psychological, and political dimensions of the aesthetics of this novel, with emphasis on the crucial relationship of erotic and political concerns to prose fiction. Norma Field is Assistant Professor of Far Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. Originally published in 1987. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Foremost among Japanese literary classics and one of the world's earliest novels, the Tale of Genji was written around the year A.D. 1000 by Murasaki Shikibu, a woman from a declining aristocratic family. For sophisticaion and insight, Western prose fiction was to wait centuries to rival her work. Norma Field explore the shifting configurations of the Tale, showing how the hero Genji is made and unmade by a series of heroines. Professor Field draws on the riches of both Japanesse and Western scholarship, as well as on her own sensitive reading of the Tale. Included are discussions of the social, psychological, and political dimensions of the aesthetics of this novel, with emphasis on the crucial relationship of erotic and political concerns to prose fiction. Norma Field is Assistant Professor of Far Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.
Originally published in 1987.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence (Japan in the Modern World)

This work aims to show that Japan even at it's height of success, while the successful version of capitalism was blighted at it's core, being unsustainable. This revised edition features n introduction which gives an analysis of Japan's contemporary crisis.

Business & Money

McCormack, Gavan

Economics

Routledge

The Splendor of Longing in the Tale of Genji (Volume 21) (Michigan Classics in Japanese Studies)

U of M Center For Japanese Studies

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Field, Norma. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Field, Norma