On the night of February 24, 1942, three months after Pearl Harbor, the air raid sirens screamed across Los Angeles. Searchlights swept the sky. Anti-aircraft guns fired over 1,400 shells into the darkness. Millions of people watched as explosives detonated in the air. The next morning, five civilians were dead from heart attacks and car accidents. But there was not a single enemy plane. Was it a Japanese submarine launching a plane? A weather balloon? A UFO? Or was it the deadliest case o...

An accessible discussion of the thought of key figures of the Kyoto School of Japanese philosophy.This book provides a much-needed introduction to the Kyoto School of Japanese philosophy. Robert E. Carter focuses on four influential Japanese philosophers: the three most important members of the Kyoto School (Nishida Kitarō, Tanabe Hajime, and Nishitani Keiji), and a fourth (Watsuji Tetsurō), who was, at most, an associate member of the school. Each of these thinker...

This collection presents twenty-seven new essays in Japanese aesthetics by leading experts in the field. Beginning with an extended foreword by the renowned scholar and artist Stephen Addiss and a comprehensive introduction that surveys the history of Japanese aesthetics and the ways in which it is similar to and different from Western aesthetics, this groundbreaking work brings together a large variety of disciplinary perspectives—including philosophy, literature, and cultural politics—to...