Narrative Medicine in Action

This monograph is the first modern research study in English to provide history of the Amur Society ( known as Black Dragon Society due to a mistranslation from Japanese to English), its genesis, its members and its activities in historical context from 1901-1945. Using original sources, some consulted for the first time, Dr Jacob discusses the Amur Society as a key driving force in Japan's embrace of national expansion and analyzes the effect of this ultra-nationalist secret society on Japanese history from before the Russo-Japanese War(1901 +) to the bitter defeat of 1945 and the end of colonial empire, military rule and international aggression . The Amur Society was seen by its enemies as an almighty secret society, one which determined the course of Japanese history from the murky background of Japanese civil and military politics. Founded in 1901 the Amur-Society was aimed at stopping the Russian expansionist ambitions in East Asia and preparing Japan for a war against the tsardom. The members of the society followed a double-sided strategy to achieve this goal. In public they rooted for an anti-Russian mood of the Japanese society by starting a propaganda campaign which consisted of pamphlets and public lectures. In secret their members began spying in Korea, Manchuria and even Siberia gathering information would be of value during the upcoming war with Russia. Although the Russo-Japanese War started in 1904/05 and the Japanese troops gained victory after victory, the diplomats were not able to build on these t victories during the negotiations in Portsmouth, NH where Russia - especially Sergej Witte - won the only Russian victory of that conflict. Although the Kokuryûkai( Amur Society) ,due to the conclusion of the war and the Russo-Japanese diplomatic relations in the years after 1905, had lost its raison d'être it still till 1946. During the years after 1905 the society became more engaged in Korean affairs and tried to accelerate a political unification with Korea and the destruction of Korean cultural and poliical elites as well as Christian religious practice . After Uchida Ryôhei (the leader of the society) was not able to influence Ito Hirobumi -g overnor general in Korea - he returned to Japan and the Kokuryûkai involved in influencing Japanese society via newpapers,books as well as propaganda aimed at army leadership. Their new aim was to influence Japan's pan-Asianism and to force it onto a more expansionistic course. During the Shôwa period, the Kokuryûkai tried to establish an ultranationalist mass movement and founded the Greater Japanese Productive Party (Dai-Nippon Seisantô), but even if it was able to recruit a few thousand members it became not influential mass movement but an open conspiracy against democratic, labor and pacifistic organizations. Terrorism was embraced and practiced against the enemy i.e. felow Japanese.The early death of Uchida in 1937 marked a startling decline of the Kokuryûkai's general influence as even more radical ideas took hold as Japan waged war throughout China then Southeast Asia attacking America and Australia in the Pacific and India in South Asia .

Professors Speak Out showcases the stories of 22 faculty members from various fields, all of whom have been investigated by their own colleges or universities. These disturbing narratives reflect the growing frequency of absurd campus investigations, which often result from the expression of disfavored opinions—opinions that should be protected by free speech rights and longstanding principles of academic freedom. Some of the contributors paid the ultimate price, the loss of a tenured faculty position. Many others learned that the investigation itself is the punishment, with chilled speech an inevitable byproduct. By providing a badly needed platform for persecuted voices in contemporary academia, this unique volume exposes the grave injustice that confronts faculty members today and calls into serious question the twisted bureaucratic processes that give rise to such investigations. Taken together, the stories told here show how a new campus McCarthyism is assailing academic freedom.

Narrative Medicine: New and Selected Essays, by Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA, contains the thoughtful curation of the author’s best work alongside new contributions.

The book is divided into two sections:

Section 1: New Essays

In this section, 10 vibrant essays serve as a bridge between reflection and the future of the medical profession. They focus on themes that have emerged since the COVID-19 pandemic and have taken on a new urgency in light of our evolving healthcare landscape.

Section 2: Selected Essays

Here, 50 essays were chosen for their significance and quality, representing the author’s finest additions to the discourse on contemporary medical practice. These essays explore a range of topics critical to the medical field: the arduous journey through medical training, the ethical dilemmas doctors face, the rise of artificial intelligence, the importance of mentorship and reflective writing, and the career challenges that can either make or break a physician’s resolve.

Within these pages you will find a comprehensive gathering of essays and viewpoints that reflect the complexities of modern medicine and explore the intricate relationship between practice and storytelling, offering insights into how narrative shapes our understanding of patient care.

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) was founded in 1935. A great deal has been written about the addiction program and its membership, but little scholarship has been done on how it reflected the culture of the 1930s and Great Depression. Kevin Kaufmann’s Rigorous Honesty investigates what AA can tell us about America in the 1930s. It begins by examining the temperance movement and prohibition era and how they influenced the program’s initial design and foundational texts. With the advent of World War II, Alcoholics Anonymous, like the rest of the nation, underwent enormous changes. AA spread across the country and considerably increased its membership. The fellowship went from a slow-growing, grassroots movement to an international organization almost overnight. As American culture took a decidedly conservative turn in the postwar era, Alcoholics Anonymous changed its message to suit not only the changing political climate country but its evolving economy as well.

Indian counterinsurgency has expanded steadily over the years, adding a new region in each decade since the 1950s. Beginning with Nagaland, these wars without a name have followed a remarkably consistent pattern throughout the Northeast, in Punjab, Kashmir, and the central Indian Tribal Belt up to the present day. Such shared features as blanket repression, intensive military mobilization, large scale violence against civilians, and the de jure and de facto impunity given to military and police forces provide an important corrective to facile descriptions of India as the “world’s largest democracy.” Received wisdom in Indian politics has long held that a strong, centralized government is needed to manage and control the wealth of diversity and pluralism that characterizes the subcontinent. In practice, the imbalance created by a powerful center and the absence of regional autonomy has produced a pattern of cumulative and escalating ethnic and regional conflict. This pattern is characteristic of the post-independence state in India, and indeed in all of South Asia. It might be seen as the outcome of the superimposition of a strong centralized power structure and extractive economy on a terrain of ethnic and religious difference. Read as a whole, these conflicts provide a portrait of the relationship between Indian state and society on the one hand and ethnic and religious minorities on the other.

In Mirrored Sublimation: Essays on the Early Work of Knut Hamsun, Lisa Yamasaki examines a small selection of the Norwegian dramatist Knut Hamsun’s early work that reveals the theme of sublimation from a psychoanalytic perspective. Although Hamsun wrote many short stories, plays, and novels in the late nineteenth century, Yamasaki focuses on those that comprise Hamsun’s portrayal of sublimation as a culmination of erotic love for humans in nature and art. She also contrasts Hamsun’s representation of sublimation with a play by Henrik Ibsen and a novel by Sigbjørn Obstfelder to solidify Hamsun’s unique portrayals. While other scholars have been drawn to the more controversial aspects of Hamsun’s work, Yamasaki suggests that an examination of how he represented the relationship between women, nature, and art shows his vulnerability, usually more evident in the representation of his male protagonists. Furthermore, to reveal the interconnection between literature and life, Yamasaki includes academic braided essays and her illustrations of Hamsun’s works to demonstrate how the investigation itself comments on the topic of sublimation, thus mirroring the phenomenon. Through the combination of the literary analytical essays, academic braided essays, and the illustrations, she portrays how the three approaches to this topic contribute to a more enriched understanding of the topic and could further enhance the relationship between literature, art, and analysis.