2023 FOREWORD INDIES BOOK OF THE YEAR GOLD WINNER FOR TRAVELObservations on the people, culture, and history of Japan from along-time resident riding the rails along the less-traveled westerncoastline.This journey the length of Japan takes the reader off the beaten tracks to explore some of the country's remoter regions along the Japan Sea-from Wakkanai in northern Hokkaido to Ibusuki in southern Kyushu?in a fascinating mix of travelogue, anecdote, and personal memoir. At each of the thirty stops along the journey the author, who has lived in Japan for thirty years, goes in quest of the spirit of place, determined to highlight what makes it special. Mixing comments on landscape and culture, the author was inspired by Alan Booth and Donald Richie and brings a contemporary perspective to his writing. The text provides some practical information on travel by rail and railway lines, but goes into far more depth and personal observation than a conventional guidebook for tourists.
2024 International Rubery Book Awards Winner | 2023 American Writing Awards Finalist | 2023 Foreword Indies Awards Finalist | 2023 Next Generation Indie Book Awards FinalistJoiner's second novel set in the fabled Kanazawa area is an intimate yet understated look at an American who seeks recovery after his marriage to a Japanese woman has failed.After Nozomi abandons Sedge and their marriage, taking all their money and leaving him with a ceramics shop he can't manage alone, her brother and his wife offer him a lifeline at their Japanese hot spring inn until he can get back on his feet. As he proceeds forward from this devastation in his life, he becomes involved with the wife of the man Nozomi ran off with as well as her stepson, a troubled 16-year-old whose jealousy and potential for violence contrasts with his interest in birds, origami, and the haiku of Matsuo Basho. What unfolds in the shadow of "the immortal mountain of cranes" will change their lives forever.Set in Kanazawa and Yamanaka Onsen near the Sea of Japan, The Heron Catchers explores the importance of recognizing suffering both in others and in oneself, of being compassionate, and of trusting those who offer love in the shattering wake of loss.The Heron Catchers is the second in a series of novels set in and around the Japanese city of Kanazawa.
The classic travel journal, a quest for personal discovery and the ancient beauties and dying values of modern Japan.
An American's unique behind-the-scenes look at Japanese business and how the animated films of Hayao Miyazaki were introduced to the world.
Updated and expanded! 1,000,000+ words on films, artists, studios, themes, and Japan's animation culture, with key data and advisories.
Introducing Hiromi Ito, an award-winning Japanese author who has been compared to Haruki Murakami and Yoko Tawada.
The second volume in this fun, comic-style series that explores China's transition from the Three Kingdoms to the Tang Dynasty.
The first volume in this easy to read, comic-style series on Chinese history
An American student in 1970s Kyoto rambles among the city's beauties and traditions, learning as he goes.Don Ascher is a young American living in Kyoto in the 1970s.He is a studentof Japanese. He also teaches English, works at ashabu-shaburestaurant, andhangs outin the company of gangsters,hostesses, housewives, tea teachers,and fellow foreigners. Set amidst the timeless beauty of the ancient capitaland its garishmodern entertainments, this collection of fanciful episodesfromDons life is a window into Japanese culture and a chronicle of romanceand human connections.
An informal yet informed journey through the classic works of Japanese cinema and their directors.This is a passionate, personal journey through one of the worlds greatest national cinemas, beginning with the classic directors who came to the fore in the postwar period and became legendary names on the art house circuit: Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Ozu, Kobayashi, Naruse, and Oshima, among others.Japanese Cinematraces the common themes explored by these directors as well as the impact of important historical and cultural issues, including World War 2, the representation of women, and the revolutionary spirit of the 1960s.Finally, Peter Cowie surveys the state of contemporary Japanese film and its greatest living practitioners, Hirokazu Kore-eda among them, as well as the international face of Japanese animation, Hayao Miyazaki. Cowie brings a lifetimes commitment to film to bear on the human relationships so well explored by these Japanese auteurs.
Tsuneichi Miyamoto (19071981), a leading Japanese folklore scholar and rural advocate, walked 160,000 kilometers to conduct interviews and capture a dying way of life. This collection of photos, vignettes, and life stories from pre- and postwar rural Japan is the first English translation of his modern Japanese classic. From blowfish to landslides, Miyamotos stories come to life in Jeffrey Irishs fluid translation.
How China became the China we know today, through war and societal transformation.
Yukio Mishima (b. 1925) was a brilliant writer and intellectual whose relentless obsession with beauty, purity, and patriotism ended in his astonishing self-disembowelment and decapitation in downtown Tokyo in 1970. Nominated for the Nobel Prize, Mishima was the best-known novelist of his time (works like Confessions of a Mask and The Temple of the Golden Pavilion are still in print in English), and his legacyhis personais still honored and puzzled over. Who was Yukio Mishima really? This, the first full biography to appear in English in almost forty years, traces Mishima's trajectory from a sickly boy named Kimitake Hiraoka to a hard-bodied student of martial arts. In detail it examines his family life, the wartime years, and his emergence, then fame, as a writer and advocate for traditional values. Revealed here are all the personalities and conflicts and sometimes petty backbiting that shaped the culture of postwar literary Japan. Working entirely from primary sources and material unavailable to other biographers, author Naoki Inose and translator Hiroaki Sato together have produced a monumental work that covers much new ground in unprecedented depth. Using interviews, social and psychological analysis, and close reading of novels and essays, Persona removes the mask that Mishima so artfully created to disguise his true self. Naoki Inose, currently vice governor of Tokyo, has also written biographies of writers Kikuchi Kan and Osamu Dazai. New Yorkbased Hiroaki Sato is an award-winning translator of classical and modern Japanese poetry, and also translated Mishima's novel Silk and Insight.
The novel focuses on two incidents during the Battle of Okinawa, 1945: the rape of Sayoko, 17, by four US soldiers and Seijis stabbing revenge. Narrations through nine points of view, Japanese and American, from 1945 to present reveal the full complexity of events and how war trauma ripples through the generations. Medorumas first full-length English translated work.
The third volume of the Understanding China Through Comics series, Barbarians and the Birth of Chinese Identity, tells of the founding of the Song Dynasty and its attempts to reinvigorate a flagging economy and government while defending against invading barbarians and the eventual invasion of China by Genghis Khan and the Mongols.
A "documentary comic book" from 1931, depicting the true adventures of four young Japanese men in America.
A new translation of one of the greatest works of postwar Japanese literature, acutely capturing modern anxiety and alienation
"An excellent introduction to the large trends of early Chinese history; ideal for those new to the subject." School Library Journal
Roberta, Lang and their friends experience the great Japanese city in all its manifestations to their inquiring, observing, and wandering minds as they banter over the details of a party, a film, Songs Common to Dreams, Tokyos history, the Names of Love.Tokio Whip is a distinctly stylistic Yamanote station-by-station tour-de-force discovering the City of Language, the City as Language.
Perhaps the most admired childhood memoir ever written in Japan, The Silver Spoon is a sharp detailing of life at the end of the Meiji period (1912) through the eyes of a boy as he grows into adolescence. Innocence fades as he slowly becomes aware of himself and others, while scene after scene richly evokes the tastes, lifestyles, landscapes, objects, and manners of a lost Japan.Kansuke Naka (18851965) was a Japanese poet, essayist, and novelist. He was a student of the great novelist Soseki Natsume, who lavishly praised the freshness and dignity of Nakas prose and encouraged the first publication of The Silver Spoon.Hiroaki Sato is a writer, reviewer, and translator with over forty works of classical and modern Japanese poetry, prose, and fiction published in English. He has received the PEN American Center Translation Prize and the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. He lives in New York City and writes a monthly column on politics and society for the Japan Times.
With todays sake drinkers increasingly informed and adventurous, now is the time for a truly expert guide to take you deeper into appreciation of this complex but delightful Japanese beverage, brewed from rice and enjoyed both warm or chilled.And what better mentor than John Gauntner, the Sake Guy and the worlds leading non-Japanese sake educator and evangelist? Here in over two dozen no-holds-barred essays, John reveals the truth about sake from a connected insiders perspective. No other book or website presents such a knowledgeable, practical, and concise yet complete guide to sake idiosyncrasies, misperceptions, and controversies.Sake Confidential is the perfect FAQ for beginners, experts, and sommeliers. Indexed for easy reference with suggested brands and label photos. Includes: Sake Secrets: junmai vs. non-junmai, namazake, aging, dry vs. sweet, ginjo, warm vs. chilled, nigori, water, yeast, rice, regionality How the Industry Really Works: pricing, contests, distribution, glassware, milling, food pairing The Brewers Art Revealed: koji-making, brewers guilds, grading John Gauntner John Gauntner is the only non-Japanese certified Master of Sake Tasting. A resident of Japan since 1988, he has worked in the sake industry promoting and educating since 1994. Each year he conducts Sake Professional Courses for sake professionals and aficionados, and several of his students have gone on to open thriving sake shops, breweries, and izakaya in the United States.
Born into the burakuminJapan's class of outcastsKenji Nakagami depicts the lives of his people in sensual language and stark detail. The Cape is a breakthrough novella about a burakumin community, their troubled memories, and complex family histories. Includes House on Fire and Red Hair. Kenji Nakagami (194692) was a prolific writer admired for his vigorous prose style.
One night, alone on a hilltop, a young boy is swept aboard a magical train bound for the Milky Way. A classic in Japan, this tender fable is a book of great wisdom, offering insight into the afterlife.One of Japan's greatest storytellers, Kenji Miyazawa (18961933) was a teacher, author, poet, and scientist.
A guide to the key spiritual concepts behind yoga and other branches of Eastern wisdom
These devotions inspired by ancient Shinto rituals are a series of calls-and-response that directly address the awesome power of the natural world to heal and restore the soul. Readers are invited to stand before rivers, stones, and trees, to listen to thunder, and to be touched by the wind and rain in order to cultivate a spirit of reverence for Nature and awaken the cosmic content within the human. Included are steps for conducting misogi (waterfall purification) and resources for learning more about Shinto practice in North America.Stuart Picken, an ordained minister, has taught religion in Japan since 1972 and is international adviser to the High Priest of Tsubaki Grand Shrine. He is author of Essentials of Shinto.
This important work fills the need for a reasonably priced yet comprehensive volume on major directors in the history of Japanese film. With clear insight and without academic jargon, Jacoby examines the works of over 150 filmmakers to uncover what makes their films worth watching.Included are artistic profiles of everyone from Yutaka Abe to Isao Yukisada, including masters like Kinji Fukasaku, Juzo Itami, Akira Kurosawa, Takashi Miike, Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujiro Ozu, and Yoji Yamada. Each entry includes a critical summary and filmography, making this book an essential reference and guide.UK-based Alexander Jacoby is a writer and researcher on Japanese film.
A "real manga, real Japanese" study guide and resource for language students and teachers
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