Wall Street Journal
Absorbing… In the hands of a lesser writer, this construct wouldn’t work, but Mr. Jaffe pulls it off with skill and intelligence. Fascinating… a mini-history of the treatment of the mentally ill in the first half of the 20th century along with public attitudes toward mental illness.
Jonathan Weiner
"In Tokyo, just after World War Two, Eric Jaffe's grandfather played a small but remarkable role in what is sometimes remembered as Japan's Nuremberg Trials. In A Curious Madness, Jaffe tells the story. The book is a brave, meticulously researched and beautifully balanced account of an episode that by its very nature must always remain unaccountable."
Japan Times
"Over 250 fascinated pages, A Curious Madness performs a valuable service for history buffs by figuratively exhuming Okawa from obscurity... For readers who believe the 20th century has been squeezed dry of its secrets, this book is a revelation.
Booklist
Gripping.
Washington Post
A richly layered exploration of the thin line between wellness and madness and the extent to which our understanding of those states is sometimes a matter of perception. A Curious Madness is much more than a narrow portrait of its protagonists. It is also a wider study of their cultures and the collective spirits of their countries before and during World War II.
Daily Beast
Illuminating…in stylish, effortless prose, Jaffe plumbs interesting depths—was Okawa an ‘ideological villain’ or a psychological casualty of war? Is madness contagious?
Eri Hotta
"Travelling effortlessly between times and places, Eric Jaffe recounts the uneasy meeting of two curious minds. The story of the eccentric Japanese philosopher Okawa Shumei, a suspected war criminal and ideological mastermind behind Japan’s war mobilization in World War II, and Daniel Jaffe, a young American combat psychiatrist and the author’s grandfather who judged Okawa too mad to stand trial, provides a series of illumining, thoughtful, and at times funny insights on how we ourselves deal with our own minds and imaginations. A CURIOUS MADNESS is a powerful proof that true life is stranger, indeed more curious, than fiction."
author of A Measureless Peril: America in the Fight for the Atlantic, the Longest Battle of WWII - Richard Snow
"Eric Jaffe has given us an extraordinary book, at once intimate (a wrenching tale of family madness) and epic (two nations gathering themselves to fight a devastating war). While never slowing his narrative velocity, the author finds in the convergence of two very different lives an encapsulation of immense issues: When does patriotism become criminal? What does combat do to the human spirit? Can a victorious nation ever mete out just punishment to a vanquished enemy? Here is a work of the greatest significance that is as engrossing as a first-rate detective story—which, in a way, it is as well."
From the Publisher
"A Curious Madness is a powerful proof that true life is stranger, indeed more curious, than fiction." ---Eri Hotta, author of Japan 1941
Booklist
Gripping.
Washington Post
A richly layered exploration of the thin line between wellness and madness and the extent to which our understanding of those states is sometimes a matter of perception. A Curious Madness is much more than a narrow portrait of its protagonists. It is also a wider study of their cultures and the collective spirits of their countries before and during World War II.
Wall Street Journal
Absorbing… In the hands of a lesser writer, this construct wouldn’t work, but Mr. Jaffe pulls it off with skill and intelligence. Fascinating… a mini-history of the treatment of the mentally ill in the first half of the 20th century along with public attitudes toward mental illness.
From the Publisher - AUDIO COMMENTARY
"A Curious Madness is a powerful proof that true life is stranger, indeed more curious, than fiction." —Eri Hotta, author of Japan 1941
AUGUST 2014 - AudioFile
In a deep voice, narrator Robertson Dean captures the serious tone of this dual biography of the author’s grandfather, Major Daniel Jaffe, and the accused Japanese war criminal Okawa Shumei, whom Jaffe examined as part of the Tokyo War Crimes Trials after WWII. Robertson’s narration of this extensive work is in itself well done. But the work contains a lot of material that is seemingly unrelated until the two subjects actually interact. Robertson’s sonorous voice has an appropriate tone for the subject matter but often seems slow and lacking in expression—a problem that is more a reflection of the text than his reading. Those interested in this topic will most likely find this production interesting. M.T.F. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2013-11-03
Atlantic Cities contributor Jaffe (The King's Best Highway: The Lost History of the Boston Post Road, the Route that Made America, 2010) provides a dual biography of a Japanese nationalist ideologue and the American psychiatrist who examined him at the Tokyo war trial after World War II. The rise of Japan on a mission of pan-Asian supremacy, culminating in its ruthless militarism during the war, was largely the idea of a "philosopher-patriot" who was never prosecuted at the war trials due to his presumed insanity. The psychiatrist who examined Okawa Shumei in 1946 was the medical officer Daniel Jaffe, the grandfather of the author of this probing work of research. With his familial insight into his grandfather's own troubled childhood and adolescence with an often hospitalized mother and his cachet that invited the Japanese to speak freely about Okawa with him, Jaffe had access to dark secrets long hidden. Jaffe's grandfather was a brilliant, taciturn doctor who did not elaborate about his report on Okawa's condition at the trial, when he caused a spectacle by slapping Gen. Tojo Hideki's bald head and otherwise acting up; the author hoped to find some confirmation of his grandfather's diagnosis that Okawa was "unable to distinguish right from wrong" at the time of the trial. Jaffe delves into Okawa's early association with the Asianist movement, prophesying to Japanese youth about another world war as a means of shaking off the shackles of the West. Okawa gave public talks about the need for resolving the "Manchurian problem" two years before Japan annexed the Chinese provinces in 1931, thus embarking on its militaristic track to world war. While Okawa served as the Japanese military's "brain trust," Daniel Jaffe cut his teeth as a combat psychiatrist, tending to shellshocked young soldiers. His experience as a neuropsychiatrist allowed him to recognize Okawa's symptoms as "tertiary syphilis." War criminal or hero? Jaffe reads carefully between the lines to get at the truth.
