Two Interesting People

Today, as I was walking back home from dinner, I stumbled upon a used-book store called Forest Books, on 16th & Mission. Since I am a sucker for old books, I immediately canceled all my plans for the evening, and dove in. I emerged a bit better-acquainted with the following finer points of world culture:

1) Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi of Japan apparently kicked major ass. This guy was the governor of Japanese-occupied Manchuria during WWII, and a big wig in the Imperial regime. After the war, he was sent to prison, where he underwent some sort of metamorphosis. After he was released, he went from a POW to the highest political office in Japan, and basically oversaw the transition of this country from an imperial power to what it is today. As well-versed in world history and generally well-rounded as I consider myself, I realized that I knew next to nothing about Japan's transition, and what illuminated my ignorance is an old book, printed in 1960, called "Kishi and Japan--the Search for the Sun,"

2) by an equally impressive gentleman called Dan Kurzman, on the subject of whom the Internet is somewhat silent, with only 33,600 entries (that's 33 thousand, you weird comma-is-a-decimal-point-Europeans! How could you have a fractional number of results anyway?) I don't know if he's still alive, and if so, what he does right now, but as of 1960, he had already been a foreign correspondent for 15 years. Here's why I bought his book: on its back-cover flap, it says that "In 1958 he visited Russia, entering that country by an unusual route--from Kabul, Afghanistan, across the Hindukush Mountains to Tashkent." Wow. Wow wow wow. And that's back in 1958, when my parents were just 10-year-old, budding young communists. Just 4 years before the Cuban missile crisis. How can such a dude not have something interesting to say?

I'm a fan of these two crazy mofos. Don't know when I'll read Dan's book and become intimately familiar with Japan's post-war transition, but I'm a fan none-the-less.