Japan category: 1648 books

In 1614-15 Osaka Castle was Japan's greatest fortification, measuring approximately 2 miles in length with walls 100 feet high. It was guarded by 100,000 samurai, determined to defend the last of the once-powerful Toyotomi clan. The castle was seemingly impenetrable; however, Tokugawa Ieyasu, the...

This classic text about Buddhism in Japan by Lafcadio Hearn—on of the first Westerns to write about Japan—will be of great interests to scholars and Japanophiles alike. Lafcadio Hearn's books continue to charm and captivate readers, as the exotic subjects about which he wrote charmed and...

Gathering all of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s writings on Japan, this sustained meditation follows his dictum that to understand one’s own culture, one must see it from another’s point of view. For Lévi-Strauss, Japan occupied a unique place among world cultures. This English translation presents one of France’s most public figures at his most personal.

And it was at the hour of sunset that they came to the foot of the mountain. There was in that place no sign of life,--neither token of water, nor trace of plant, nor shadow of flying bird,-- nothing but desolation rising to desolation. And the summit was lost in heaven.

This book examines Japanese tourism and travel, both today and in the past, showing how over hundreds of years a distinct culture of travel developed, and exploring how this has permeated the perceptions and traditions of Japanese society. It considers the diverse dimensions of modern tourism including...

Take a trip to old Japan with William Scott Wilson as he travels the ancient Kiso Road, a legendary route that remains much the same today as it was hundreds of years ago. The Kisoji, which runs through the Kiso Valley in the Japanese Alps, has been in use since at least 701 C.E. In the seventeenth...

Emphasizing how modes of book production, promotion, and consumption shape ideas of literary value, Edward Mack examines the role of Japan’s publishing industry in defining modern Japanese literature. In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, as cultural and economic power consolidated...

This compelling study of a previously overlooked vice industry explores the larger structural forces that led to the growth of prostitution in Japan, the Pacific region, and the North American West at the turn of the twentieth century. Combining very personal accounts with never before examined Japanese...

During a year spent in Japan on a personal quest to deepen her appreciation for such Eastern ideals as commitment and devotion, documentary filmmaker Karin Muller discovered just how maddeningly complicated it is being Japanese. In this book Muller invites the reader along for a uniquely American...

A thousand years ago, a young Japanese girl embarked on a journey from the wild East Country to the capital. She began a diary that she would continue to write for the next forty years and compile later in life, bringing lasting prestige to her family. Some aspects of the author's life and...

When the Imperial Japanese Navy destroyed Russia's battle fleet during the Russo-Japanese War, it marked the emergence of Japan as one of the world's major naval powers. Japan's navy had been built up over just two decades, with the IJN acquiring a fleet of modern foreign-built warships. Coupled with...

In the history of the twentieth century, the role of the military intelligence services in the competition among nations is still murky. Among the world's foremost intelligence services, those of Imperial Japan remain the least known. Few stories are as compelling as those surrounding the Japanese Army's...

The Japanese offensive in the Far East in 1941-2 was extraordinary in its ambition for their aim was to advance across the entire region. They clashed with an array of forces in a series of lightning campaigns that included famous episodes like the raid on Pearl Harbor and the conquest of Singapore....

Drawing on theories of place, consumption and identity, Sarah Chaplin details the evolution of the love hotel in urban Japan since the 1950s. Love hotels emerged in the late 1950s following a ban of licensed prostitution, then were extremely popular in the 1970s, were then legislated against in the...