University of Chicago Press

A project that began life as a study of cherry blossom viewing became something author Ohunuki-Tierney never expected: a study of the way the symbolism of cherry blossoms was manipulated by the state in the Japanese kamikaze (tokkotai) operations in the closing days of World War II. The author admits she became obsessed by the question: why did they do it? "They" are the almost 1,000 highly educated "student soldier" volunteers who plunged to their deaths in kamikaze missions – even though Japan was losing the war. "Why" takes the reader into the diaries and letters of these young men (many never before published in English) and moves into a fascinating reflection on symbolic communication, nationalism, and the ramifications of totalitarian ideologies.

Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney is the William F. Vilas Research Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She is the author of a number of books in English and Japanese, most recently Rice as Self: Japanese Identities Through Time; The Monkey as Mirror: Symbolic Transformations in Japanese History and Ritual; and Illness and Culture in Contemporary Japan.