No phone, no internet, no shopping. Just a small, inviting community where the most common expression is “take it easy.”At first, Yuki is exhausted, fumbles with the tools, asks silly questions, and feels like an outcast. Kamusari is the last place a city boy from Yokohama wants to spend a year of his life. But as resistant as he might be, the scent of the cedars and the staggering beauty of the region have a pull.Yuki learns to fell trees and plant saplings. He begins to embrace local festivals, he’s mesmerized by legends of the mountain, and he might be falling in love. In learning to respect the forest on Mt. Kamusari for its majestic qualities and its inexplicable secrets, Yuki starts to appreciate Kamusari’s harmony with nature and its ancient traditions.In this warm and lively coming-of-age story, Miura transports us from the trappings of city life to the trials, mysteries, and delights of a mythical mountain forest.

    Known primarily for his novels, he also published a large and diverse body of short personal writings (shohin) that have long lived in the shadow of his fictional works. The essays, which appeared in the Asahi shinbun between 1907 and 1915, comprise a fascinating autobiographical mosaic, while capturing the spirit of the Meiji era and the birth of modern Japan.In Reflections in a Glass Door, Marvin Marcus introduces readers to a rich sampling of Soseki's shohin. The writer revisits his Tokyo childhood, recalling family, friends, and colleagues and musing wistfully on the transformation of his city and its old neighborhoods. He painfully recounts his two years in London, where he immersed himself in literary research even as he struggled with severe depression. A chronic stomach ailment causes Soseki to reflect on his own mortality and what he saw as the spiritual afflictions of modern Japanese: rampant egocentrism and materialism. Throughout he adopts a number of narrative voices and poses: the peevish husband, the harried novelist, the convalescent, the seeker of wisdom.Marcus identifies memory and melancholy as key themes in Soseki's personal writings and highlights their relevance in his fiction. He balances Soseki's account of his Tokyo household with that of his wife, Natsume Kyoko, who left a straightforward record of life with her celebrated husband. Soseki crafted a moving and convincing voice in his shohin, which can now be pondered and enjoyed for their penetrating observation and honesty, as well as the fresh perspective they offer on one of Japan's literary giants.

    A new volume in the Traditional Patterns series, this book features Shunga, a type of Ukiyo-e that is made using the finest Japanese woodblock print techniques and portrays the erotic expressions of men and women; and the pleasure, the pain, and the beauty of the human body. This Japanese erotic art was made by all Ukiyo-e artists and was usually more profitable than "normal" art during the Edo period. It is believed that Shunga, literally "springtime picture," originated from Chinese medical books. It was not only intended to provide the fun that comes from viewing erotic images, but also the book could be held as a charm against evil. Shunga was also used as textbooks for the sexual education of young men and women. Because there were fewer restrictions on Shunga, ukiyo-e artists used a variety of colors usually not seen in usual woodblock prints. Only the best techniques of Ukiyo-e are found in Shunga. This glorious volume features works from the Edo period to the present. Including works by Ukiyo-e artists such as Hishikawa Moronobu, Kitagawa Utamaro, Utagawa Kunisada, Katsushika Hokusai, this Japanese "kama sutra" manages to be erotic, artistic, and fun all at the same time.

    For more than four decades, Miyoshi worked outside the mainstream, trespassing into new fields, making previously unseen connections, and upending naive assumptions. With an impeccable sense of when a topic or discussion had lost its critical momentum, he moved on to the next question, and then the next after that, taking on matters of literary form, cross-cultural relations, globalization, art and architecture, the corporatization of the university, and the threat of ecological disaster. Trespasses reveals the tremendous range of Miyoshi’s thought and interests, shows how his thinking transformed over time, and highlights his recurring concerns. This volume brings together eleven selections of Miyoshi’s previously published writing, a major new essay, a critical introduction to his life and work, and an interview in which Miyoshi reflects on the trajectory of his thought and the institutional history of modern Japan studies. In the new essay, “Literary Elaborations,” he provides a masterful overview of the nature of the contemporary university, closing with a call for a global environmental protection studies that would radically reconfigure academic disciplines and merge the hard sciences with the humanities and the social sciences. In the other, chronologically arranged selections, Miyoshi addresses cross-culture relations between Japan and the United States, English literary studies in Japan, and Japan studies in the U.S., as well as the organization of urban space and the integrity of art and architecture in aggressively marketed-oriented environments. Trespasses is an invaluable introduction to the work of a fearless cultural critic.

    What is the place of the hero (Hikaru Genji) in the work? What story gives the narrative underlying continuity and form? And how does the closing section of the tale (especially the ten ?Uji chapters?) relate to what precedes it? Written over a period of nine years, the essays suggest fresh, thought-provoking perspectives on Japan?s greatest literary classic.

    It does so by introducing a method that is both effective and easy to use in memorizing the meanings and pronunciations of Kanji—the array of characters that are used in the Japanese language to symbolize everything from abstract ideas to concrete nouns. Learning any of the kanji is a two step process, requiring that you remember both the visual aspect of a character (so you can recognize it when you see it) and the aural aspect (so you will know how to say and, thus, read it). The method employed by Mastering Japanese Kanji will show you how to tackle both of these aspects from the outset, and by so doing enable you to immediately get down to the practical (and fun!) business of recognizing and reading kanji on everything from street signs to newspapers. By the time you finish this book, in fact you will be able to boast of a Japanese vocabulary numbering in the thousands of words. Key features:Corresponding CD-ROM helps to reinforce the written materialTeaches the 200 most common kanji and the hundreds of compounds that use include them.Unique, specially–designed drawings and entertaining stories help you learn more quickly.Sample sentences, along with common words and compounds, expand your vocabulary by showing each kanji used in context.Stroke–order diagrams show the correct way to write each chapter.Chapter and cumulative review exercises help ensure master of what you've learned.Complete indexes show Japanese readings and English meanings for all Kanji.Contents of the CD–ROM:Stroke order animations for all 200 kanji characters.Native speaker audio recordings of all:Kanji characters.Common words and compounds.Sample sentences.

    The selections that make up the chapters range from the late Han to the Qing dynasties, a period spanning over 1,500 years. All of the lessons are covered in a concise yet detailed manner, making this book suitable for self-taught learners and classrooms alike. The extensive vocabulary lists, detailed grammar notes, example sentences, and clear writing make this book accessible to all levels of Chinese language learners.

    Examining sexual perversion in Tanizaki's aesthetic essays, cultural criticism, cinema writings and short novels from the 1930s, it argues that Tanizaki understands human subjectivity in remarkably Freudian terms, but that he is much more critical than Freud about what it means for the possibility of love. According to Tanizaki, perversion involves not the proliferation of interesting gender positions, but rather the tragic absence of even two sexes, since femininity is only defined as man's absence, supplement, or complement. In this fascinating work, author Margherita Long reads Tanizaki with a theoretical complexity he demands but has seldom received. As a critique of the historicist and gender-focused paradigms that inform much recent work in Japanese literary and cultural studies, This Perversion Called Love offers exciting new interpretations that should spark controversy in the fields of feminist theory and critical Asian studies.