Japan Books

Life Among the Samurai is a captivating account of the life of the warrior class during Japan's medieval period. Fascinating illustrations capture the imagination and combine with descriptive text, which engages the reader, no matter what their age. Stories about some of the most famous Samurai add to the mystique of the Samurai's role in Japanese history. The author, Eleanor J. Hall, has done a fabulous job making the Samurai's life as vibrant today as it was centuries earlier.

Life Among the Samurai is a captivating account of the life of the warrior class during Japan's medieval period. Fascinating illustrations capture the imagination and combine with descriptive text, which engages the reader, no matter what their age. Stories about some of the most famous Samurai add to the mystique of the Samurai's role in Japanese history. The author, Eleanor J. Hall, has done a fabulous job making the Samurai's life as vibrant today as it was centuries earlier.

E WARREN CLARK was a very young American scientist and missionary
who taught chemistry for the former Tokugawa shoguns and later
at Tokyo University. His 1878 book, LIFE AND ADVENTURE IN JAPAN,
republished here,gives a superb look at life in Japan in the early Meiji era. The editors' introductions put the book into context

E WARREN CLARK was a very young American scientist and missionary
who taught chemistry for the former Tokugawa shoguns and later
at Tokyo University. His 1878 book, LIFE AND ADVENTURE IN JAPAN,
republished heregives a superb look at life in Japan in the early Meiji era. The editors' introductions put the book into context

Soka Gakkai International President Daisaku Ikeda gives a passionate and lucid explanation of the very nature of "life," "spirit," and the existence of "life after death." This now classic work, first published in 1982, is sometimes available here on Amazon.com in paperback.

Scientists have probed matter and discovered the world of atoms. Yet, while the limits of the known cosmos are being increasingly pushed back, life, the closest thing, remains a mystery.

Shakyamuni viewed life from a different perspective. He believed that life is not an abstract concept, but rather, it involves living in the world and achieving enlightenment in the midst of reality, while coping with joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain.

In writing this book, Daisaku Ikeda has sought to reveal the relationship linking the mystery of life as interpreted by Buddhism with empirical deductions of science, explaining spatial and temporal aspects of life, self-realization, and the Buddhist interpretation of death.

The author also explores the great life force inherent in the universe as it works in the context of daily human activities. For this he frequently draws from scientific analysis as well as the traditions of East and West. He hopes that the reader will rediscover what they are and live in a truly human way.

I actually bought this book in the airport in Tokyo on my way back to the States. I was visiting my son and family in Northern Japan and was experiencing the Japanese Culture.
I only wish I had know about this book before I went to Japan.
I feel in love with the people and country and culture.
This book is written by the Japanese and is illustrated to help your understanding.
I would have avoided several embarassing moments. It is a "must"

I ordered this book before traveling to Japan and have found that it was incredibly helpful in getting me up to speed on the subtle and not-so-subtle mannerism of the Japanese people.

All of the sections are direct and to the point and will save you lots of trial and error. For example, the section on Japanese public baths pointed out the main steps that I needed to take in order to not make a complete idiot of myself in my first visit to a Japanese Public bath.

The illustrations are humorous and cute in the typical Japanese manner and make the reading quite enjoyable.

I highly recommend this book for anyone thinking of traveling to Japan or even just interested in Japanese culture.

I listed the table of contents for this book below. Each section is main section is listed with asterisks and followed by its subsections. Each subsection consists of 1 to 5 pages of material.

*Living in Japan*

Exchanging greetings

Sleeping

Using the bath and toilet

Japanese clothes

Visiting a Japanese home

Finding one's way around

Taking the train

Using the municipal buses

Taking a taxi

Driving

Renting accommodations

Using the telephone

Sending mail

Keeping up with the news

Using the bank

Shopping

Eating out

Tea, coffee and Japanese tea

Drinking

Using the public bath

Barbers and hairdressers

Going to the cleaners

Putting out the rubbish

Going to the hospital

Typhoons and earthquakes

Cooking Japanese food

Studying Japanese

*Enjoying Japan*

Getting on with the Japanese

Singing to karaoke

Playing pachinko

Betting

Studying martial arts

Watching sumo or baseball

Adult amusements

Annual events

Street stalls

Going to fishing ponds

Traveling in style

Traveling on the cheap

Taking a sightseeing bus

Visiting a hot spring

Going to the seaside

*Understanding Japan*

Attending a wedding

Attending a funeral

Exchanging gifts

Good and bad luck

Zazen

Eastern Medicine

Soroban and calculator

Crime

Business

The Japanese factory

Going to parties

A typical Japanese family

*Appendix*

Self-expression

Physique

Body language

Etiquette

********************

Other titles released by Japan Travel Bureau:

Vol 1 - A Look Into Japan

Vol 2 - Living Japanese Style

Vol 3 - Eating in Japan

Vol 4 - Festivals of Japan

Vol 5 - Must-see in Kyoto

Vol 6 - Must-see in Nikko

Vol 7 - A Look Into Tokyo

Vol 8 - "Salaryman" in Japan

Vol 9 - Who's Who of Japan

Vol 10 - Today's Japan

Vol 11 - Regard Sur Le Japon (french edition)

Vol 12 - Vie Au Japon (french edition)

Vol 13 - Japanese Characters

Vol 14 - Japanese Inn & Travel

Vol 15 - Say it in Japanese

Vol 16 - Martial Arts & Sports in Japan

Vol 17 - Japanese Family & Culture

I LOVED this tale. My daughter enjoyed it, too. Set in ancient Japan, the story unfolds like a centuries old folk tale that has been lovingly passed down through the generations. What a surpise to discover it is new and original to the author. "The Long Silk Strand" represents the life of an old woman as recounted to her granddaughter, a different tale for each silk thread wound into a ball. When the ball is complete, the grandmother dies, and her loving granddaughter goes in search of her in heaven. But the living and her life ahead call her home again. The story is beautiful and simple, its rich texture wonderfully rendered in the illustrations. I can well imagine this tale told by a storyteller in a candle-lit room -- how lovely to find it in a modern book.

The Long Silk Strand is superb! It is the ideal book for a child dealing with the grief for a lost grandparent. It focuses on the positive aspects of life, impressing the importance of the child not only to the deceased grandmother but, also to parents and others who love the child and would be devastated if the child were to join her grandmother. Williams' work is of profoundly superior quality and is accompanied by beautiful illustrations. Anytime a child I know loses a grandparent, I purchase this book for him.

This is one of the most fascinating stories I have ever read. Politically correct academics have succeeded in erasing Longfellow from the American canon, replacing him and his contemporaries with names you've never heard and will never know how to pronounce. Perhaps this bit of exotica if not to say erotica will give life back to this former pillar of American culture. It is the son, not the sage of Cambridge whom Professor Guth has chosen as her subject. But what a character he is. Longfellow Jr. had very little going for himself besides boredom and a nearly limitless bank account, so he went on an extended grand tour of the Orient, setting himself up in a Japanese harem, stocked like a koi pond which nubile Japanese maidens. Besides an addiction to Asian flesh, young Longfellow seems to have keyed into that great American pastime known as shopping with the result that he brought a warehouse full of souvenires back to fill Boston's museums and the mansions of his father's aristocratic friends. Any way you look at it, this story has legs. It's a miracle Hollywood hasn't grabbed hold of it. Stay tuned.

Charles Longfellow was the son of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Charles visited Japan in the 1870s intending a brief visit, and stayed for two years, returning to Boston with photos and elaborate tattoos he had 'collected' on his body. But Christine M.E. Guth's Longfellow's Tattoos: Tourism, Collecting, And Japan is not so much a survey of collectible items nor even tattoo history, as a cultural expose of Japan in the 19th century travel world. Chapters survey the state and nature of Japanese culture in the world of the times, using art and curios as a focal point.

This book provides excellent information on the many cultural aspects of Japan. It is easy to understand, wonderfully illustrated, easy to carry with, and extremely valuable to anyone interested in the Japanese culture. It is a must before a Japanese visit.

This book is one of a series of books that I first saw in an English-language bookstore in Tokyo at the end of a long vacation in Japan. I bought one of each to bring home, and now I see they are available from Amazon.com. These are far and away the best guidebooks to life in Japan. Great illustrations, very fun to read. Do not leave home without them!

This is a simple book, with nothing insightful or original about one
of the 20th century's most fascinating military leaders. When you
consider that it is a textbook written for Japanese university
students-who hardly know that Japan fought and lost a war 60 years
ago-that is all it could be, I suppose. Although the academic/English
level would be appropriate for U.S. middle or high school students, I
found it to be a nice, well-written read. The Japan-based author
surveyed his university students and was shocked at their lack of
knowledge of a war their grandfathers fought. Apparently he felt that
the Occupation of Japan should be better understood and appreciated
for what it did to change Japan for the better. I thought he did a
good job of presenting the material as simply as one could for English
as a second language students. It is unfortunate that he mentions
atrocities (Unit 731, Bataan, Nanking, etc.) only in passing because
that is what they don't get in their own
history books. The author seems over-flattering in his portrayal of
MacArthur, who, at worst, was reviled by many and at best was
controversial. Also, one wonders whether young people anywhere would
want to spend so much time on one historical figure, which, to them,
must seem like ancient history. Still, given the national collective
amnesia in Japan regarding the Pacific War, Professor McBean's text is
a welcome, commendable idea.

I ordered this book-knowing that it was written for Japanese students-because I am a MacArthur buff and have collected almost all books written about him. In addition, I was curious about the view of history students are getting from this text, which is written by an American. I have read about how Japanese high school history books distort, cover-up, and revise Pacific War history, especially atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army. After reading it, I can say that students fortunate enough to use this text will get a good, balanced treatise on the war, MacArthur, and the Occupation. Apparently, they learn much about Hiroshima, Nagasaki, etc., in other words, how Japan suffered during the war, but little about the suffering Japan caused it neighbors. The textbook deals with some of this in the lesson on the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. Given the present sour state of relations between Japan and China/Korea because of visits to Yasukuni Shrine, the textbook problem, etc., this should be required reading for Japanese leaders! I recommend this book for history buffs or educators interested in how English-as-a-second-language is taught using a content-based (historical) textbook in Japan.

With its slightly tongue-in-cheek title, "Made in Japan" is a nice, beautifully printed art book focusing on the heyday of the creative art print (sosaku hanga) from the immediate postwar years until the late 1960's. Originally intended as an exhibit catalog for a 2005 exhibition by the same name at the Milwaukee Art Museum, it stands on its own just fine as well (except for a little blurb frustratingly listing the exhibited pieces not shown herein). It also works well as a bit of art history, including as it does two interesting articles by Alicia Volk and Helen Nagata. The latter takes a careful look at the complex, ambiguous relationship between creative print artists and Ukiyo-e, a premodern tradition of mass production from which they stridently distinguished themselves even as it subtly influenced and informed some of their work. The former focuses on the role of this art form in Japanese-American relations in fascinating detail, discussing among other things the initial enthusiasm for prints on the part of American Occupation officials in the late 1940's, the efforts of people like James Michener and Oliver Statler to draw attention to these prints as a form of fine art both in America and Japan itself, and Japanese artists' intentions and motivations for using their works as a medium of cultural diplomacy between the two recently belligerent nations within the context of the Cold War. Volk does a wonderful job too of attending to the historical context and to the sociopolitical realities involved without being reductive or cynical.

And that's just the beginning. What about the actual art itself? The majority of the book is indeed dedicated to presenting a selection of 78 prints (actually more, for in a few cases there's a set of several prints under an overarching series title) by 59 artists, all in full color. Most artists are represented by one or two works as is appropriate to such an overview, though a few major figures in the field get more of a spotlight, especially the ever favorite Munakata Shiko. The prints are also organized in roughly chronological order and according to themes (nature, process and materials, abstraction, things Japanese, and pop and conceptualism), which aids one in appreciating and distinguishing the different artists and their styles as well as the gradual development of this art form during the decades in question. If the book has one imperfection, it's that some of the illustrations are a bit small. The format of the book makes this a necessary evil perhaps, though the decision-making process behind which prints get a single full page and which get crowded together with two or three others seems a tad arbitrary. So be it, though. One minor nitpick aside, this thin little volume is an immensely interesting and visually stunning look at one surprisingly significant aspect of modern art in Japan.

P.S. For a fine book on this subject published during the actual time period when Japanese creative prints were at their peak of popularity, check out CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE PRINTS.

In the rebuilding of Japanese society in the years after its defeat in World War, there was a "creative print movement [that] brought modern European artistic attitudes such as self-expression and formalist innovation to the Japanese woodblock print, a medium that had been rooted in the mass-production of popular images for several hundred years." The latest stages of this movement are becoming more widely known in the United States with the popularity of the Japanese manga and anime. The predecessors of this recent Japanese art are seen in the colors, designs, collages, subjects, and treatments of the post-war prints in this volume. One or two prints of 59 artists are shown in the main section of about 70 pages. These range from dark, tangled visions from having witnessed the devastation from the atom bombs to abstract designs to brightly-colored, comically erotic figures. Biographical sketches of the 59 artists follow the main section.

Tsunesaburo Makiguchi is one of Japan's most significant yet perhaps least-recognized educators. His fame as the founder of Soka Gakkai has somewhat eclipsed his reputation as an educator. (Soka Gakkai International is now the largest Buddhist organization in the world with over 12 million members in 128 nations.)

Mr. Makiguchi had spent a lifetime developing his "value-creating" educational philosophy from his experience as teacher, principal, and teacher of teachers before he founded the Buddhist lay organization.

A man ahead of his time, Mr. Makiguchi made proposals over sixty years ago that are being made anew today. He was staunchly opposed to the rote memorization that was the backbone of Japanese pedagogy in his day (and largely remains so today), and he called for greater involvement by community members in the education of children.

The author, himself an educator, gives a clear and vivid picture of the magnitude and revolutionary quality of Mr. Makiguchi's theories. Until this book, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi has gone virtually unrecognized in the West because so little information on non-Western educators has been available in English. This work fills a need at a time when Mr. Makiguchi's impact on education and society is of increasing importance.

Tsunesaburo Makiguchi is one of Japan's most significant yet perhaps least-recognized educators. His fame as the founder of Soka Gakkai has somewhat eclipsed his reputation as an educator. (Soka Gakkai International is now the largest Buddhist organization in the world with over 12 million members in 128 nations.)

Mr. Makiguchi had spent a lifetime developing his "value-creating" educational philosophy from his experience as teacher, principal, and teacher of teachers before he founded the Buddhist lay organization.

A man ahead of his time, Mr. Makiguchi made proposals over sixty years ago that are being made anew today. He was staunchly opposed to the rote memorization that was the backbone of Japanese pedagogy in his day (and largely remains so today), and he called for greater involvement by community members in the education of children.

The author, himself an educator, gives a clear and vivid picture of the magnitude and revolutionary quality of Mr. Makiguchi's theories. Until this book, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi has gone virtually unrecognized in the West because so little information on non-Western educators has been available in English. This work fills a need at a time when Mr. Makiguchi's impact on education and society is of increasing importance.