Japan Books

International author Jayne A. Hitchcock (aka J.A. Hitchcock - author of Net Crimes & Misdemeanors) wrote the English versions of the folktales in this book. Although Shoji Endo wrote the Japanese version, the English writers tend to be overlooked. This is a great book of folktales from Okinawa, Japan and cleverly written. The illustrations are beautiful as well.

Folktales of Okinawa is an excellent collection of folktales from the Ryukyu Islands. Overall it contains 28 different folktales in both English and Japanese. Along with the tale it gives the information concerning where the tale comes from, both locally and internationally. Several stories originated in Japan and South Korea and made their way to Okinawa. This book also provides an insight to the people of Okinawa. One of the best collections of Folktales I have ever seen.

Explains many important points that are not explained in any other book I have seen. Much common sense has been missed. This book written in the 1700's when healthy eating was much better understood.....as well as physiognomy.

Everyday life people are careless especially things that are very close to them. This book is so great because it actually coincides with nowadays scientific evidence.

I have long been interested in Irish culture and I was so excited to find this title. It is a marvellous collection of phrases which capture the culture of Ireland - covering folkore, language , history, food, sport, music and so many other areas. I can guarantee that even the most specialist readers will find something new on every page. Here we have practically every phrase with the word 'Irish'- the only phrases I had known before were Irish coffee and Irish moss etc. but the author provides us with over 1,000 such phrases which range from fruit varieties, varieties of flowers and plants (e.g. Irish lemon - which is also a nickname for a potato), breeds of dogs (e.g. Irish water spaniel) and poultry breeds (Irish brown-red), cocktails and personal epithets too. There are measurements like the Irish mile (much more than an English mile) and historical terms such as the Irish Famine and Irish faction fights. Personal epithets include the Irish Achilles and the word 'Irish' is also prefixed to place names like the Irish Lourdes (i.e. Knock, Co. Mayo). There are also the expected jocular entries such as the Irish cherry (a carrot),an Irish buggy (a wheelbarrow)and an Irish favorite (an emerald - so called as Ireland is the 'Emerald Isle'). I also enjoyed the incredible list of phrases with the word 'paddy' in one of the several appendices. There is also a useful bibliography (most titles of which can be found by Amazon).
It could be argued that this fascinating work has now been surpassed by Thornton B. Edward's latest book "Cornish! A Dictionary of Phrases, Terms and Expithets with the word' Cornish'". Perhaps the author's knowledge of Cornish culture is even greater than his knowledge of Ireland. This analogous collection includes entries such as the 'Cornish duck' (not a bird at all but the common pilchard!), 'Cornish rex' (a breed of cat), 'Cornish elm' (a species of tree) and 'Cornish aromatic' (a variety of apple) etc. This work make a welcome companion to the Irish collection and it is available on the Amazon. uk site.

Irish!: A Dictionary Of Phrases, Terms And Epithets Beginning With The Word 'Irish' by T. B. Edwards is an inherently fascinating collective introduction of societies perception of the Irish in phrasing and labeling. Readers will discover the many detailed and individual sayings with pertinence to the Irish culture with phrases like Irish Boomerang, Irish sprits measure, and 'Irish' Maffia. Irish! gives its readers a feel for Irish cultural and societal tendencies or clichés and is very highly recommended to the enthusiast of the Irish culture, as well as students of worldly inter-cultural relations and understandings.

This book is perfect for anyone with an interest in theatre. It's a great introduction to the works of Chikamatsu, and provides four of his best works. The translating is excellent (Donald Keene is undisputedly *the* expert on Japanese translation) and the works are accessible. I was skeptical before I read it, but now I'm a big fan of Chikamatsu. Give it a try!

As Keene points out in his introduction, Chikamatsu is no Shakespeare. There is a lack of grand themes and grand people here. Instead, these are (mostly) tiny tragedies, the misfortunes of the common man. Think instead of Arthur Miller.
Also: don't be too quick to judge the puppet theatre (jojuri) an inherently second-rate. The use of puppets allowed the playwright a scope of action and violence that would have been impossible, unbelievable or just plain disgusting if performed by live actors. Chikamatsu takes full advantage of the structure of puppet theatre which involved voicing the characters and a narrator-a kind of first, second and third person telling of the drama all at once.
These plays are good short introductions to a kind of performance that grew up in isolation from the rest of the world and without any references or debts to Western cultural traditions.

Lynn Hoffman, author of the novel bang BANG

To anyone familiar with Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural designs, the fact that love of Japanese art, design and print work should come as no surprise. The book 'Frank Lloyd Wright and the Art of Japan: The Artist's Other Passion' by Julia Melch gives clear details of the influence of the Japanese on his thinking and creativity, both in narrative and in glorious photography and print.

Frank Lloyd Wright
Wright was born in Wisconsin shortly after the American Civil War. He studied in the late nineteenth century with noted architect Louis Sullivan, with whom he had continuing and occasionally strained relationship. Wright is probably best known in America for the design of the Guggenheim Museum of Art In New York City; more generally, though, he is known for a particular style of low-built prairie-style houses and institutional buildings, that utilised open-space planning, and often had an element of interaction with elements such as water (in fact, a perennial complaint of Wright buildings is that they leak!). Wright was an innovator in incorporating engineering principles into the design of his buildings to provide sturdiness and creative forms of support and room design. In Japan, Wright was well-known for his design of the Imperial Hotel in Japan, as well as other buildings, including private residences of many prominent Japanese citizens. His work in Japan did not extend much beyond the early 1920s, however, and even the Imperial Hotel was demolished in 1968. Wright himself passed away in 1959 at the age of 91.

Wright and the Art of Japan
This book was produced for the Japan Society Gallery of New York by Julia Melch. It traces early affinities and influences of Japanese art on Wright and his work, continuing interest including Wright's almost voracious collecting habits, and the final selling and distribution of his collection late in Wright's life.

'When Wright died at the age of almost ninety-two, he owed money to several Asian art dealers in New York, and there were six thousand Japanese colour woodblock prints in his personal collection, not to mention some three hundred Chinese and Japanese ceramics, bronzes, sculptures, textiles, stencils, and carpets, and about twenty Japanese and Chinese folding screens.'

Some of this collection remains as part of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, but much had to be sold to pay debts, including tax bills.

Japanese art probably first came into Wright's sphere of creative influences with the World's Fair of 1893 in Chicago. Louis Sullivan had many books of Japanese design and art in his offices when Wright first joined the firm of Adler and Sullivan. This probably represents the earliest introduction. However, Japanese art was becoming widely available in American and Europe by this time, and Japanese principles were beginning to be introduced in novel ways to various buildings. Wright's first trip to Japan came in 1905, the first of many.

Wright became well-known in Japan, and entered a period he sometimes referred to as his 'Oriental Symphony'. During the time of his work on the Imperial Hotel, he gave an interview which showed his standing and mis-understanding in the Japanese architectural community:

Wright was not only a collector, but was himself a dealer of some standing. Particularly in Oak Park and the Chicago area, his designs for buildings would often include artistic recommendations that he would provide as dealer.

This lead to a major scandal, which Melch recounts in some (sometimes juicy) detail, including Wright's egocentric way of viewing the world and attempt to 'get away' with various controversial practices of manufacture and transfer of art work.

'Wright was an immodest foreigner operating outside the guidelines of the closed community of Tokyo print dealers. He flaunted his money and exuded the thinly veiled bravado of the ace dealer. Prices were escalating, the stakes were high, and h is jealous rivals were no doubt pleased to take him out of the game. Revamping was a new technique, totally unexpected. Greed and anticipation of huge profits had made him careless.'

Wright left Japan in 1922, before completion of the Imperial Hotel. He never returned. In fact, he had few international dealings in art or architecture after this period. He longed for greater international acclaim and exposure, but save a few unfinished projects in Hungary and Baghdad, he had few foreign assignments, and none of note.

Disposing of the collection, both before his death and by his widow after his death, is a tale in-and-of itself recounted in the book. Trading with friends and other art dealers, auctioning off pieces individually and as collections, and giving gifts away reduced the collection somewhat, but Wright continued to add pieces throughout his life.

Julia Melch
The author, Julia Melch, has had a career devoted to Asian art. Educated at Smith College and Harvard University, she has worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art organising exhibitions of Asian art. She is currently a senior consultant to Christie's, the famous auction house, specialising in Japanese art works.

This book is produced by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., which has a strong reputation, well deserved, for producing outstanding volumes of art. The colours are vibrant and attractive; the pages are firm and well-suited to the art represented. This is a reference volume, a great coffee-table book, and an interesting narrative read. Giving a perspective on both Frank Lloyd Wright and Japanese art of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through the lens of each other is a unique perspective, well executed.

It's almost unimaginable that anyone could find something new to say about this protean figure of the 20th Century. And, in fact, another author, Kevin Nute, has also written in recent years about the architect's lifelong fascination with things Japanese. Yet where Nute concentrates on the Orientalist ideas and design concepts that Wright so readily and brilliantly adapted in his own work, Julia Meech turns her attention to a different--and darker--side of the architect's personality: his passion for Japanese prints and art collecting. As she tells it, this obsession (his print purchases often exceeded the money that he took in on architectural commissions) not only drove Wright into bankruptcy, but ensnared him in a debilitating scandal over the resale of "revamped" artworks to several of his wealthy patrons.

Wright, the driven, self-absorbed genius, is everywhere apparent in this fascinating, well-researched saga. But so is the conflicted man behind the famous persona. (This isn't to say that he emerges as a particularly sympathetic figure: Meech relates, for instance, how Wright helped organize a memorial exhibition following the untimely death of his Japanese mentor, the young and talented printmaker Hashiguchi Goyo. She adds, however, that no evidence exists to show that Wright ever owned one of Goyo's prints--a bit ironic given the high regard in which Goyo's work is held today.)

Equal to Meech's riveting account, I would have to say that this is one of the most beautifully-designed catalogs (it accompanies an exhibition of the same name at the Japan Society Gallery in New York City) that I have ever encountered. It is both lavish and tasteful, if that's possible, with gorgeous color plates and scads of rare photographs of the architect and his cronies, his places of refuge (including hotel suites and other temporary dwellings chock-a-block full of art treasures), and persons and places relevant to the story. For Frank Lloyd Wright fans already burdened by a surfeit of wonderful books, make room on your shelf for a fine new acquisition.

being a 43 year old, and not yet born durring this period of history, I found that the life of this gentleman was exremely interesting to say the least. The personal letters home where by themselves worth reading this fine book. How fortunate for us all that he survived, and through his account of his experience, we can learn of a time that young men and women of his generation, stepped up and saved this country, and the world, from tryany.

Chittenden's book is historical, inspirational and highly compelling. Few books are able to accurately portray life of the China Marine turned Japanese Prisoner of War. His book reminded me of the gratitude that is owed to all those men who sacrificed so much for our nation.

This is the final volume in the Full Metal Panic manga which brings it right up to the point where the first anime ended. Gauron has gained control of the Danaan and holds Tessa and Chidori's lives in his clutches. One false move and he won't hesitate to kill them. While Gauron knows that both of the girls are "Whispered" he has no idea that they can communicate telepathically. The girls hatch a desperate plan to take back control of the ship. Meanwhile, the Danaan's crew are virtual prisoners, locked by Gauron in the hangar, and he's thinking about cutting off their oxygen! Only Sousuke and Kurtz have gotten out and set out to rescue Tessa and Chidori, but they'll have to contend with some of the crew that turned traitor and now serve Gauron.

If you've already seen the Full Metal Panic anime series, there's really nothing new here. But that doesn't detract from the enjoyment of seeing a different interpretation of the same material. Retsu Tateo's art is spot-on and she has handled the mix of humor and action quite elegantly throughout the entire series. Most of volume 9 is missing comedy but the artist does a good job of conveying the energy and suspense leading up to the final battle between Sosuke and Gauron. The manga does a better job of conveying the affection between Sosuke and Chidori than the anime did. I'm sad to see this series end.

Sadly, this is the last graphic novel for the FMP series, according to the illustrator's notes in the back of the book. That said,

It does clear up and finish the main plot that has been building with Gauron, the Tuatha de Danaan, and Chidori. At the end of book 8, Kaname, worried about Sosuke as he returned from a mission, was verbally rebuffed by him and fled, crying, making her examine her purpose on board the TDD. As she flees, she runs into Guaron and two traitors, who hold her hostage and then take over the TDD in book 9!

Gauron, to assert his power, reprograms the computer to listen only to him, and then commences an attack on an innocent battleship nearby, but only after setting up a false Fire Drill to isolate most of the crew. Sosuke, feeling as though something is wrong, and realizing that he had been harsh to Chidori, defies direct orders and joins Kurz in a mission to save the ship and Kamane, who is just as determine not to "be annoying" and to save herself. Then Tessa plays her hand to rescue the day and her crew, but it is Kaname that saves everybody at the end (not spoiling it!). For another variation, see the end of the DVD series--Kaname's part is beautiful!

For more books on the FMP series, check out the Boku-Tachi website.

I just loved all the information and pictures it has on pruning your evergreen and trees. I found it very informative.

Visually appealing with its hundreds of bright color photographs and encyclopedic in its scope and content, this reference also has the clarity of organization and practicality of a garden handbook. Each of the listings of the hundreds of Japanese plants gives notes on appearance, cultivation, and use (e. g., ground cover, attractive spring flowers, potted plant) of the particular plant along with the Japanese and English names, interesting points, and related plants. As noted in the Foreword by E. Charles Nelson, the Japanese, with their insular culture, had no desire to go abroad seeking foreign plants--nor did they need to with the variety available in their homeland. Yet American gardeners and others readily took to Japanese plants when Japan opened up to the West, and continue to do so increasingly in recent years. This attractive, complete, useful reference fully satisfies an interest in the variety of Japanese plants. Both authors have extensive backgrounds and solid reputations in horticulture.

I found this book to be very well written with a strong plot and exceptional character development. The author creates an autoritative view of Tokyo, U.S- Japanese relations and Japanese culture. I'm waiting for his next book . This title was published in 1992 under a pseudo name and I'm wondering if the author has published other works under a different name.

This was a fun book to read. What made it more so - in addition to the very well-handled plot and characters - was that Meigs obviously knows his setting. After suffering through many books, some by unknowns, others by very well-knowns (can you say "Danielle Steel"...?), it certainly is nice to read something that was written by someone who actually spent more than six months in Japan. If you have an interest in the country, read this book. It will tell you volumes if you let it. If you don't particularly have an interest in Japan, but just like a good mystery/thriller, read it anyway. You won't be disappointed. I have to join the other reviewer in wondering who Meigs really is. It would be nice to read other books by this man.

This is a wonderful book filled with great old photograpics and text. A book that anyone interested in other cultures would really enjoy!!!!

Dr. Stanley Burns is well known as the founder of the Burns Archive of Historic Vintage Photographs and as the author of several previous books about various niches within vintage photography. Here, Dr. Burns focuses on the representation of Geisha in photography during the peak of their popularity. This time period of photography in Japan is of increasing interest and popularity among museums and collectors, and several important books on the subject have been published recently. Burns take is a unique tact, though. He uses the photographs to tell the fascinating story of the geisha, but he does not dwell on details of individual photography studios. His is not a collectors guide, so he avoids the issue of attrubiton which drives so many such texts. And the production quality of "Geisha" comes closer than any previous works in truly representing the beauty of these hand-colored photographs.