Best Books About Japan

From 1632 until 1854, Japan's rulers restricted contact with foreign countries, a near isolation that fostered a remarkable and unique culture that endures to this day.

2016 Travel Book of the Year by the Society of American Travel WritersFinalist for the 2016 IACP Awards: Literary Food WritingNamed one of the Financial Times' "Best Books of 2016"An innovative new take on the travel guide, Rice, Noodle, Fish decodes Japan's extraordinary food…

The multimillioncopy bestselling historical novel of feudal Japan that captured the heart of a culture and the imagination of the world.After Englishman John Blackthorne is lost at sea, he awakens in a place few Europeans know of and even fewer have seen Nippon.

Wabi Sabi, a little cat in Kyoto, Japan, had never thought much about her name until friends visiting from another land asked her owner what it meant.

Hi! My name is Nao, and I am a time being. Do you know what a time being is Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you.On a remote island in the Pacific Northwest, a Hello Kitty lunchbox washes up on the beach.

The classic portrayal of court life in tenthcentury Japan Written by the court gentlewoman Sei Shonagon, ostensibly for her own amusement, The Pillow Book offers a fascinating exploration of life among the nobility at the height of the Heian period, describing the exquisite…

This is the true story, as told to the doctor who looked after him just before he died, of the life of one of the last traditional yakuza in Japan.

"No woman in the threehundredyear history of the karyukai has ever come forward in public to tell her story. We have been constrained by unwritten rules not to do so, by the robes of tradition and by the sanctity of our exclusive calling...But I feel it is time to speak…

Winner of the Pulitzer PrizeIn this groundbreaking biography of the Japanese emperor Hirohito, Herbert P. Bix offers the first complete, unvarnished look at the enigmatic leader whose sixtythreeyear reign ushered Japan into the modern world.

Banana Yoshimoto's novels have made her a sensation in Japan and all over the world, and Kitchen, the dazzling Englishlanguage debut that is still her bestloved book, is an enchantingly original and deeply affecting book about mothers, love, tragedy, and the power of the kitchen…

"An enchanting and fascinating insight into Japanese landscape, culture, history and future. Originally written in Japanese, this passionate, vividly personal book draws on the author's experiences in Japan over thirty years.

The Silent Cry follows two brothers who return to their ancestral home, a village in densely forested Western Japan. After decades of separation, the reunited men are each preoccupied by their own personal crises.

The beautiful, immature girl whom she took home to her husband was a maid only in name. Tomo's real mission had been to find him a mistress. Nor did her secret humiliation end there.

"Arguably the greatest living travel writer" (Outside magazine), Pico Iyer has called Japan home for more than three decades. But, as he is the first to admit, the country remains an enigma even to its longterm residents.

This fascinating history tells the story of the people of Japan, from ancient teenage priestqueens to teeming hordes of salarymen, a nation that once sought to conquer China, yet also shut itself away for two centuries in selfimposed seclusion.First revealed to Westerners in the…

A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present, Fourth Edition, paints a richly nuanced and strikingly original portrait of the last two centuries of Japanese history.

An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here.In the face of the misery in his homeland, the artist Masuji Ono was unwilling to devote his art solely to the celebration of physical beauty.

To this day, Japan's modern ascendancy challenges many assumptions about world history, particularly theories regarding the rise of the west and why the modern world looks the way it does. In this engaging new history, Brett L.

Traveling to Japan has never been so much fun! Visit the land of anime, manga, cosplay, hot springs and sushi!This fullcolor graphic novel Japan guidebook is the first of its kind exploring Japanese culture from a cartoonist's perspective.

Written from 1904 through 1906, Soseki Natsume's comic masterpiece, I Am a Cat, satirizes the foolishness of uppermiddleclass Japanese society during the Meiji era.

Nobel Prize recipient Yasunari Kawabata's Snow Country is widely considered to be the writer's masterpiece, a powerful tale of wasted love set amid the desolate beauty of western Japan.At an isolated mountain hot spring, with snow blanketing every surface, Shimamura, a wealthy…

One of Japan's greatest classic murder mysteries, introducing their best loved detective, translated into English for the first time.In the winter of 1937, the village of Okamura is abuzz with excitement over the forthcoming wedding of a son of the grand Ichiyanagi family.

Completed in the early 11th century, The Tale of Genji is considered the supreme masterpiece of Japanese prose literature, and one of the world's earliest novels.

Volume 1: To 1334 Volume 2: 13341615 Volume 3: 16151867

In Bending Adversity, Financial Times Asia editor David Pilling presents a fresh vision of Japan, drawing on his own deep experience, as well as observations from a cross section of Japanese citizenry, including novelist Haruki Murakami, former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi,…

DK Eyewitness travel guides: awardwinning guidebooksDiscover Japan with this essential travel guide, designed to help you create your own unique trip and to transport you to this fascinating country before you've even packed your case catch the buzz of futuristic Tokyo, step…

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the 1999 National Book Award for Nonfiction, finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize and the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize, Embracing Defeat is John W.

In later life Basho turned to Zen Buddhism, and the travel sketched in this volume relfect his attempts to cast off earthly attachments and reach out to spiritual fulfillment. The sketches are written in the "haibun" stylea linking of verse and prose.

It had never been done before. Not in 4000 years of Japanese recorded history had anyone followed the Cherry Blossom Front from one end of the country to the other. Nor had anyone hitchhiked the length of Japan. But, heady on sakura and sake, Will Ferguson bet he could do both.

Japanese pubs, called izakaya, are attracting growing attention in Japan and overseas. As a matter of fact, a recent article in The New York Times claimed that the izakaya is starting to shove the sushi bar off its pedestal.

Gail Tsukiyama's The Street of a Thousand Blossoms is a powerfully moving masterpiece about tradition and change, loss and renewal, and love and family from a glorious storyteller at the height of her powers. It is Tokyo in 1939.