Tattered Kimonos in Japan: Remaking Lives from Memories of World War II - Hardcover

by Robert Rand (Author)

Examines Japan's war generation--Japanese men and women who survived World War Two and rebuilt their lives, into the 21st century, from memories of that conflict

Since John Hersey's Hiroshima--the classic account, published in 1946, of the aftermath of the atomic bombing of that city--very few books have examined the meaning and impact of World War II through the eyes of Japanese men and women who survived that conflict. Tattered Kimonos in Japan does just that: It is an intimate journey into contemporary Japan from the perspective of the generation of Japanese soldiers and civilians who survived World War II, by a writer whose American father and Japanese father-in-law fought on opposite sides of the conflict.

The author, a former NPR senior editor, is Jewish, and he approaches the subject with the sensibilities of having grown up in a community of Holocaust survivors. Mindful of the power of victimhood, memory, and shared suffering, he travels across Japan, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki, meeting a compelling group of men and women whose lives, even now, are defined by the trauma of war, and by lingering questions of responsibility and repentance for Japan's wartime aggression.

The image of a tattered kimono from Hiroshima is the thread that drives the narrative arc of this emotional story about a writer's encounter with history, inside the Japan of his father's generation, on the other side of his father's war. This is a book about history with elements of family memoir. It offers a fresh and truly unique perspective for readers interested in World War II, Japan, or Judaica; readers seeking cross-cultural journeys; and readers intrigued by Japanese culture, particularly the kimono.

Author Biography

Robert Rand has worked in journalism for more than three decades. He was senior editor of the weekend edition of NPR's All Things Considered and has produced and reported stories and documentaries that have aired on NPR's newsmagazines as well as other public radio platforms. Rand is also author of four other books, among them Tamerlane's Children: Dispatches from Contemporary Uzbekistan; Comrade Lawyer: Inside Soviet Justice in an Era of Reform; and My Suburban Shtetl: A Novel About Life in a 20th Century Jewish-American Village.