Japan Books

THIS IS A VISUALLY LOVELY BOOK BUT I WOULD HAVE ENJOYED SOME ACOMPANING TEXT. HAD I READ THE EDITORIAL REVIEWS CLOSER I MIGHT HAVE NOTED THAT THE NATURE OF THE BOOK WAS PICTORIAL...HOWEVER...OVERALL, I ENJOY THE BOOK (ONCE I GOT USED TO THE FORMAT) AND CHOSE NOT TO RETURN IT. IN THE FUTURE I WILL READ REVIEWS CLOSER THO. MY VIEWS OF JAPANESE DESIGN ,IS, AS ALWAYS, AWE. THE SIMPLICITY OF THESE DESIGNS HIGHLIGHTS THE FACT THAT ELEGANCE COMES WITH RESTRAINT IN DECORATION.

This beautifully put together piece shows me time and again that in graphic design, less is usually "more." The book illustrates through timeless Japanese design that one well-placed form is more powerful than 10 ill-placed ones. Katachi will teach you as a designer to give more by giving less. It's a must have for anyone looking to broaden their skill-set.

Nice book, explains various techniques used in this flower arranging art.
I liked the techniques of creating decorations using more than one vaze side by side and the ways they are connected with flowers.

This book is a pleasure to read and look at even if you don't do flower arranging. The illustrations are beautiful and the writing is clear and direct. I bought multiple copies and gave them to clients for holiday presents, and it was very well received.

I bought this dictionary in the early nineties when I was a student in Tokyo. Today, I am still in Japan, married to a Japanese woman, but still continue to use this dictionary. It is so helpful, even though there are translation softwares on my computer. The Editor in Cheif is probably a genius. His work has helped/benefited many students and people like me.
I will try to add more details here when I have the time.

If you know Japanese, it's a blessing to have this dictionary. If you don't, you'll surely improve your language skills by looking up words in Kenkyusha. Not only is it made for people who translate, but it is a wodnerful tool for those who want to know in-depth informations about a certain word, or phrase: it has many examples, a thing which I personally appreciate, because it helps see the words in the right context. Difficult kanji's are spelled out in the examples, another thing that makes me appreciate the care of the editors. And you can find lots of important katakana romanizations, that's a blessing! The annexes are also very useful: one containing the katakana spelling for European/US names (authors, artists, famous people), one with Chinese names and their spelling and another one, which is wonderful: titles of famous books/novels. Another thing: next to each technical term, one has a reference (one kanji), describing the field to which this word "belongs". This is really a very useful info, because when the same word has two different meanings, I can select the one I need. Great dictionary!

William Reed has tried to define and teach the meaning of KI so that we in the west can learn. The first part of the text helps us undersatnd KI, develop KI and pratcie KI. There are a series of excericses and a section on KI meditation. The second part of the text goes into KI development in the Japanese Arts (Shodo, Aikido, Kiatsu, Go, Noh and the Tea Ceremony). And the third part, Ki in our ever changing world. A must have book.

Like William Reed, I spent over 10 years in the Orient learning martials arts from men who had dedicated their life to the practice. This book ranks among the best written concerning ki. The ideas put forth are universal, and can be assimilated by a broad minded and discerning person. Enjoy this book, I certainly did and continue to do so everytime I pick up my copy.

I teach art and have had many requests to teach anime. I don't draw in the anime/manga style and struggled to do so. Christopher Hart's book is a great tie-in or introduction to Fantasy Manga. His style is similiar to mine in that it is a bit more cartoony than traditional anime/manga style. While some people might criticize the book for that, I think it's an awesome book with lots of color pictures. It even had some tips and tricks I didn't know. It would be useful for a beginner or a resource for someone more experienced. If you are looking to draw like someone else or in the more traditional style of anime/manga then this book is not for you. But if you are looking to develop your own style or like the more Americanized look to your anime/manga drawing then I would highly recommend it!

Motivating for the young beginner cartoonist. My kids loved this easy to follow instructive book. Fantasy goes wild with just a few tips and direction. Beginning with the basic figures, adding hair styles, eye shapes & general body posture brings the magna life & character. Many examples to follow or just be inspired by makes this book a fantastic entertaining guide to manga drawing

"Kokoro" is a difficult word to translate from Japanese to English. Heart, Spirit, Way of Being...it is all of these things. Rather than attempt a direct translation, Lafcadio Hearn offers a selection of stories focusing on Japanese inner life, so that by the end you will understand kokoro.

The stories follow Hearn's particular interests of Japanese folklore and the vanishing culture of which he found himself a part in post-Meji Japan. Each story is a slice of life focusing on Japanese character, morals and feelings. This is what the Japanese people care about, what they think is important, what is inside.

The selected tales are non-judgmental and non-orientalist. This is no attempt to explain or highlight the "strange" Japanese, but merely a record and an illumination, in the best sense of the term.

The collected stories:

"At a Railway Station"
"The Genius of Japanese Civilization"
"A Street Singer"
"From a Traveling Diary"
"The Nun of the Temple of Amida"
"After the War"
"Haru"
"A Glimpse of Tendencies"
"By Force of Karma"
"A Conservative"
"In the Twilight of the Gods"
"The Idea of Pre-Exsistance"
"In Cholera Time"
"Some Thoughts about Ancestor Worship"
"Kimiko"

Not to be confused with Natsume Soseki's novel by the same title, Lafcadio Hearn's "Kokoro" is a magnificent collection of essays, vignettes, memoirs, and meditations on Japan in the 1890's. Very much a product of the mid-Meiji period, these masterfully-written little literary pieces are nonetheless timeless. Each piece is quite different from the rest, and yet almost all of them manage to start from everyday incidents or obvious observations and gradually spiral inwards to some deeply moving and startling insight into Japanese attitudes, values, and worldviews; more than once this seemingly methodless method allows Hearn to share with the reader certain common opinions and normal spiritual orientations held by average Japanese folks--the kinds of things usually taken for granted and so unarticulated, hence least amenable to documentation and scholarship (especially of the time, but even today). And Hearn does all this with an unpretentious erudition and an understated and balanced sympathy for his subject that, along with his literary flair for wonderfully clear and flowing prose, places his writings here in a category far above the rest. With him we can find none of the unintentional strains of condescension and orientalism so typical of folklore and religious anthropology, for while he's looking with the surprised gaze of the outsider with one eye, his other eye is that of the insider feeling very much at home where he is. The resulting view is visionary--but in subdued and shadowy tones.

Appendix on an Appendix: in addition to the fifteen excellent essays forming the main body of "Kokoro", there's an extensive appendix featuring Hearn's translations of three popular folk ballads: "The Ballad of Shuntoku-Maru", "The Ballad of Oguri Hangwan" and "The Ballad of O-Shichi, the Daughter of the Yaoya". These are fascinating on a number of levels. They provide a tantalizingly fleeting glimpse of plebian drama, remarkable in its very lack of remarkableness. There's a certain sociological angle, as the versions of these oral ballads collected and translated by Hearn are those recited by mountain outcastes in the area of today's Shimane Prefecture. Religiously the first two ballads are key in understanding popular attitudes concerning pilgrimage in Japan--the first demonstrating a creepy (almost voodoo) edge in Kannon faith at Kiyomizudera Temple, the second delightfully exaggerating the rejuvenating benefits of Kumano and its sacred hot springs. Meanwhile, the third ballad is a straightforwardly melodramatic retelling of a true story better known to us today in a more refined and literary version as found in the novelist Saikaku's "Five Women Who Loved Love" of 1686.

Kuhaku is a difficult book to classify. Part cultural observations from long-term foreign residents in Japan, part translations of essays and stories by Japanese authors, and part insight into a street populated with cartoon rabbits and a family of cubes. Canned coffee, extra-marital affairs, a kegger at a buddhist temple, a stay at a hotel that caters to dogs, a man writing his way to a Nobel Prize by doing articles about sex shops in Tokyo; Kuhaku is nothing else but varied in the stories it tells.

But the one thing that Kuhaku systematically achieves is a vision. The vision is to capture a feel, an attitude -- the zeitgeist if you will -- of contemporary Japan. This vision however is never truly fulfilled, and it was never meant to be; this the book never makes any apology for being what it is. Kuhaku invites the reader into a niche of a culture and lets the reader take away what the reader wants to from it. For the most part it is an attempt to break away from the typical foreigner-stuck-in-Japan literature, (Which tend toward quirky anecdotes about old ladies, packed train rides, sexual escapades, funny English, and superficial observation just beyond tourist insight masquerading as brilliant nuggets of anthropology, et cetera.), and tries to offer a more lucid, a more respectful and honest appraisal of life in Japan, here and now. In this aspect, Kuhaku is one of the best books -- with a foreign slant -- on contemporary Japanese life available; and I have read many. It can be appreciated by somebody who has never been to Japan, and yet very elucidating to those who call Japan home.

Kuhaku is a compilation of the works of fourteen authors and artists. Some stories appeared elsewhere in magazines or in their original Japanese in other books; other sections were written and designed specifically for this book. The section on Japanese canned coffee convinced me to try some after two years of living in Japan without one sip. The ten page cartoon-like spread on a typical Japanese street is a delight of graphic design. And the three stories of Japanese housewives engaging in affairs at first seemed like an over-tapped subject used for the sake of naughty literature, but ended up being the most insightful part of the book. All three tales were devastatingly penetrating in their insights into the world of marriage, love versus lust, and the pressures of society on one's life and well being. They read better than most novels and were at times more fulfilling. The essay that explores contemporary problems in Japanese society, that starts with the concept of youths beating up businessmen, is a brilliant short exploration of a very large issue. But it is the glossary at the end of Kuhaku that makes for a perfect capper to these stories. More than just simple definitions, some words have full stories of love, betrayal, and slice of life fables that even after three or four readings still put a smile on my face.

Even the weakest parts of Kuhaku still offer nuggets of wisdom that make them worth the reading, if not exactly memorable. The short story about the man who takes his dog to a hotel that caters to dog owners teetered close to the over-assumption of Japanese social mores based off of very simple anecdotal evidence that foreign authors are helpless to exercise. But it is a story about dogs and dog hotels and Japanese names for dogs, so I should let my high-handed Lafcadio Hearn proclivity rest every once in a while. And the one-page ditty about an editor's lunch break seemed unnecessary, but in hindsight, even the occasional mediocre moments of Kuhaku (and they tend to be the shorter stories anyway) add a nice seasoning to the total meal the book offers.

I fear this book caters more to the experienced visitor to Japan, but thanks to the glossary and and inviting attitude of the design, I think Kuhaku would make a welcome edition to anybody's collection of Japanese cultural literature. Plus it comes with a bookmark thread, and I appreciate that.

What does infidelity have to do with recycling? And what does canned coffee have to do with suicide?

The obvious link between the widely varied stories within Kuhaku is the backdrop - all the events and stories take place in contemporary Japan. While sex and consumerism show up in more than a few tales, bigger themes - like loneliness and modern alienation - penetrate further. Kuhaku's paradoxical collage - the vivid forms of commercialism, sex, and modern technology combining to form an empty grey - tells a sometimes beautiful, sometimes bleak story of a society whose humanity appears in jeopardy.

Its not all so serious, though - between a journalist's romp through Tokyo's red light district and a foreign woman's very un-Japanese reaction to getting groped on the subway, there's a good deal of material to amuse as well as enlighten.

The Japanese-style design is worth noting - it makes the book a pleasure to read.

I totally agree with the previous reviewer. This is the best and ONLY guidebook to Kyoto - the story of Kyoto's history through the story of a succession of temples and palaces, each of which typifies that period. Beautifully and gently written. Wonderful wonderful stuff. Tragically I've lost my copy. It shouldn't be so hard to find a new one. Tuttle, please reissue!!

The author has put a lot of TLC into writing this book and it shows. Aside from being a love letter to the city of Kyoto, it is a top-notch guidebook for anyone interested in exploring the temples of Kyoto. No other guidebook contains such carefully-researched and well-written descriptions of these temples. Though it was written decades ago, not much has changed at these sites, so don't let the date of publication deter you from using this book. I would highly recommend bringing this book along with the most recent edition of "Gateway to Japan" on your next trip to Kyoto.

Though I have not actually read this book or been formally told the story of The Bamboo Cutter, I know most of it legend. After watching InuYasha; The Movie 2, Castle Beyond the Looking Glass (reffering to Kaguya's moon palace) I was very interested. If you have seen the series by Rumiko Takahashi (InuYasha, that is) then you'll know of InuYasha red kimono that is indestructable. It's made of the fur of a fire-rat which I believe is one of the things Kaguya orderred a man to fetch (in the stories, not in InuYasha {in InuYasha she must collect firerat fur and the other items like the Stone Cup of Buddah (which happen to be the things Kaguya ordered men to get in the stories) to oppen her moon palace. You see in InuYasha Kaguya was evil (and it's funny because she was working with a minion of the real baddie in InuYash a who was named KaguRA) so the story wasn't the same of course!}) And InuYasha isn't the only anime/manga Kaguya has been in or refferenced in. Sailor Moon and Oh My Goddes also feature Kaguya. I think it's cool to learn about something and then hear about it somewhere else. Though you can simply but a Bamboo Cutter story book, It's much more interesting to learn about things in the form of a chapter book. Definentally a choice to make.

This is a wonderful retelling of a classic myth. It educates young readers about the origin of some symbols and themes that they have already seen in popular cartoons and comics such as Naoko Takeuchi's "Sailor Moon", Kosuke Fujishima's "Oh My Goddess" and Yuji Moriyama's "Project A-ko"

Dr. Kita hits with this work a crucial node in Japanese Art History: the transition from the medieval and classical traditions of art, from the art of the courtiers and handscrolls to that of the merchants and woodblock prints. Matabei is both chronologically and artistically at the centre of this transition, and his opus refuses simple interpretations.

Kita is the first scholar outside Japan to ever have researched on Matabei, and while his book gives a thorough review of the vivid discussions that Japanese scholars have held since the 19th century, it also presents the author's own extremely consistent study of Matabei. While Japanese art is often collected and admired in western museums, serious scholarship seldom transcends the borders of the archipel. This book is a fortunate exception, and it strikes both against the idea that Japanese-style scholarship is not suited for western readers, and agains the commonplace conceptions of Japanese art in the West, which has been looked at for too long now with the same blurred glasses of the "Japonisme" which, over a century ago, could not have more than a superficial interest for "decadent" woodblock prints or mysterious brushstrokes.

Solid image analysis, supported by reproductions for us mortals who do not have access to these rare paintings, is the base of Kita's argumentation, enhanced with abundant reference to earlier and contemporary scholars' studies. Leading us didactically, weaving a web of evidence that eventually comes down to the conclusion yet in no instance sacrificing academic consistency, this book is an ideal acquisition for both the experienced scholar of Japanese art and the serious amateur. Appendices, a glossary, and a character guide enhance the enjoyment of this book for many successive rereadings.

Dr. Kita hits with this work a crucial node in Japanese Art History: the transition from the medieval and classical traditions of art, from the art of the courtiers and handscrolls to that of the merchants and woodblock prints. Matabei is both chronologically and artistically at the centre of this transition, and his opus refuses simple interpretations.

Kita is the first scholar outside Japan to ever have researched on Matabei, and while his book gives a thorough review of the vivid discussions that Japanese scholars have held since the 19th century, it also presents the author's own extremely consistent study of Matabei. While Japanese art is often collected and admired in western museums, serious scholarship seldom transcends the borders of the archipel. This book is a fortunate exception, and it strikes both against the idea that Japanese-style scholarship is not suited for western readers, and agains the commonplace conceptions of Japanese art in the West, which has been looked at for too long now with the same blurred glasses of the "Japonisme" which, over a century ago, could not have more than a superficial interest for "decadent" woodblock prints or mysterious brushstrokes.

Solid image analysis, supported by reproductions for us mortals who do not have access to these rare paintings, is the base of Kita's argumentation, enhanced with abundant reference to earlier and contemporary scholars' studies. Leading us didactically, weaving a web of evidence that eventually comes down to the conclusion yet in no instance sacrificing academic consistency, this book is an ideal acquisition for both the experienced scholar of Japanese art and the serious amateur. Appendices, a glossary, and a character guide enhance the enjoyment of this book for many successive rereadings.