The story of filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki's life and work, including his impact on Japan and the world A thirtieth‑century toxic jungle, a bathhouse for tired gods, a red‑haired fish girl, and a furry woodland spirit—what do these have in common? They all spring from the mind of Hayao Miyazaki, one of the greatest living animators, known worldwide for films such as My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, and The Wind Rises.

    In the decades since, people have asked endless far-ranging questions about this spectacular suicide. Christopher Ross wondered, What on earth happened to Mishima's sword? And so Ross sets off for Tokyo on a journey into the heart of the Mishima legend---the very heart of Japan. It was a country Ross knew well after nearly five years of living there--but nothing could have prepared him for this. While searching for the fabled sword, Ross encounters the rather startling range of those who knew Mishima...a world, or perhaps more accurately a demimonde, of craftsmen and critics, soldiers and swordsmen, boyfriends and biographers (even the man who taught Mishima hara-kiri). The trail Ross follows inspires a travelogue of the most eye-opening--and occasionally bizarre--sort, a window into the real Japan that is never seen by tourists and the occasion for digressions on, among other things, socks and the code of the samurai, nosebleeds and metallurgy... even how to dress for suicide. Mishima's Sword is a dazzling read--the perfect book for all those intrigued by things Japanese, from gangsters to Genji, from manga to Mishima.

    He tries to keep his clients happy, and he does his best to alleviate the sorrows of mankind, at least insofar as they afflict the wealthy men and large corporations who are his clients. This humane approach to life is not always appreciated by his chief cameraman, Banteki, who is a firm believer in Art for Art’s Sake. With ironic humor and sharp compassion, The Pornographers follows its oddly endearing hero through a succession of tragicomic encounters and numerous physical and moral dilemmas. Whether dealing with the rich and sometimes treacherous clients to whom he purveys a bewildering diversity of artifacts and entertainments; with the synthetic schoolgirls he recruits from among the thirteen worldly Veteran Virgins of Osaka; with infuriating technical problems; or with idiot actors incapable of following the simplest script, Subuyan maintains a cheerful view of humanity that prevails against all frustrations. Nosaka’s truly original novel is rich in comic invention and absolutely unflinching in its acceptance of life.

    A hefty compilation of essays (both pictorial and prose), notes, concept sketches and interviews by (and with) Hayao Miyazaki. Arguably the most respected animation director in the world, Miyazaki is the genius behind "Howl's Moving Castle," Princess Mononoke" and the Academy Award-winning film, "Spirited Away."

    

    This book is centered around those essays that generations have regarded as containing the essence of Dogen's teaching. These translations, revised from those that first appeared in the 1970s, clarify and enrich the understanding of Dogen's religious thought and his basic ideas about Zen practice and doctrine. Dogen's uncommon intellectual gifts, combined with a profound religious attainment and an extraordinary ability to articulate it, make Sho�bo�genzo� unique even in the vast literature the Zen school has produced over the centuries, securing it a special place in the history of world religious literature.

    With a haunting emotional intensity, they offer glimpses of love lost and lives wasted. These three luminous, compassionate tales showcase the mastery and exquisite talent of one of Japan's most beloved writers.

    Features his compelling adaptation of Clytemnestra--finding an astonishing parallel between ancient Greek and modern Japanese society, Suzuki melds traditional and avant-garde techinques to shed new light on this primal tale.

    This playful and thoroughly researched handbook examines the key styles and subcultures past and present: sailor-suited gangsters, Pippi Longstockings risen from the dead, girls in blackface, teens sporting giant hamster costumes, and more. Each fashion profile is packed with photos and illustrations, history, ideal boyfriends, and must-have items. Also included are a gatefold evolutionary fashion chart, resources, and makeup tips. At last, an in-depth guide to what the girls are wearingand why on earth they're wearing it.

    From interlocking wooden sculptures to massive steel monuments to the elegant Akari lamps, Noguchi became a master of what he called the "sculpturing of space." But his constant struggle-as both an artist and a man-was to embrace his conflicted identity as the son of a single American woman and a famous yet reclusive Japanese father. "It's only in art," he insisted, "that it was ever possible for me to find any identity at all."In this remarkable biography of the elusive artist, Hayden Herrera observes this driving force of Noguchi's creativity as intimately tied to his deep appreciation of nature. As a boy in Japan, Noguchi would collect wild azaleas and blue mountain flowers for a little garden in front of his home. As Herrera writes, he also included a rock, "to give a feeling of weight and permanence." It was a sensual appreciation he never abandoned. When looking for stones in remote Japanese quarries for his zen-like Paris garden forty years later, he would spend hours actually listening to the stones, scrambling from one to another until he found one that "spoke to him." Constantly striving to "take the essence of nature and distill it," Noguchi moved from sculpture to furniture, and from playgrounds to sets for his friend the choreographer Martha Graham, and back again working in wood, iron, clay, steel, aluminum, and, of course, stone.Noguchi traveled constantly, from New York to Paris to India to Japan, forever uprooting himself to reinvigorate what he called the "keen edge of originality." Wherever he went, his needy disposition and boyish charm drew women to him, yet he tended to push them away when things began to feel too settled. Only through his art-now seen as a powerful aesthetic link between the East and the West-did Noguchi ever seem to feel that he belonged.Combining Noguchi's personal correspondence and interviews with those closest to him-from artists, patrons, assistants, and lovers-Herrera has created an authoritative biography of one of the twentieth century's most important sculptors. She locates Noguchi in his friendships with such artists as Buckminster Fuller and Arshile Gorky, and in his affairs with women including Frida Kahlo and Anna Matta Clark. With the attention to detail and scholarship that made her biography of Gorky a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Herrera has written a rich meditation on art in a globalized milieu. Listening to Stone is a moving portrait of an artist compulsively driven to reinvent himself as he searched for his own "essence of sculpture."

    It was in sixteenth-century Japan, as Shakespeare was writing his masterworks half a world away, that the spirit of Kabuki theater was born out of a single woman's passions and dedication to her art. In Kabuki Dancer, the popular Japanese novelist Sawako Ariyoshi (The Doctor's Wife, The River Ki, The Twilight Years) retells the story of Okuni, the legendary temple dancer who first performed among jugglers and freak shows on a stage along the riverbank in the heart of the imperial city of Kyoto. Blending the rhythms and movements of religious festivals with the words of popular love songs, she and her troupe became sensations. Their affairs and rivalries, infatuations and jealousies, were transformed into the very fabric of their performance, as it began its evolution into the classic drama of today. Against a backdrop of civil war, dynastic conflict, and social turmoil, Okuni and her companions and lovers, together with their audience of artisans, merchants, and aristocrats, struggled to survive the birth pangs of a glorious--yet sometimes deadly--new age. Based on fact, transmuted into powerful and moving artistic expression, Kabuki Dancer is at once a turbulent love story, a recreation of an exotic and colorful historical period, and an almost mythic representation of the miraculous moment in which an immortal art form appears.

    Its structure has become popular in other languages and today it is probably the best know form of poetry worldwide.There are few rules to haiku, but they are strict: 17 phonetic sounds, a sense of cutting images or ideas, and a reference to a season. From those restrictions, poets have written about many things, from the year’s first blossom to aging, from mosquitoes humming to insects singing, from catching one’s shadow to crossing a stream in the summer.Haiku features 90 classic poems from four poets: Matsuo Bashō, Yosa Buson, Kobayashi Issa and Masaoka Shiki which range across more than 200 years of Japanese poetry.In Haiku, each poem is presented in Japanese script, along with romanized Japanese (romaji) and an English translation. Beautifully produced in traditional Chinese binding and with a timeless design, Haiku is an expert introduction and celebration of one of the most beautiful and accessible forms of poetry in the world.

    The seventeen-syllable form is rooted in a Japanese tradition of close observation of nature, of making poetry from subtle suggestion. Infused by its great practitioners with the spirit of Zen Buddhism, the haiku has served as an example of the power of direct observation to the first generation of American modernist poets like Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and also as an example of spontaneity and Zen alertness to the new poets of the 1950s. This definitive collection brings together in fresh translations by an American poet the essential poems of the three greatest haiku masters: Matsuo Basho in the seventeenth century; Yosa Buson in the eighteenth century; and Kobayashi Issa in the early nineteenth century. Robert Hass has written a lively and informed introduction, provided brief examples by each poet of their work in the haibun, or poetic prose form, and included informal notes to the poems. This is a useful and inspiring addition to the Essential Poets series.

    This book also features a section on how the art was created and comments as to why they did what the director did. This 176 pages book is no disappoint for any Makoto Shinkai fan.176 pages. Japanese text. Softcover with Dust Jacket. Landscape Format. Printed in Japan.

    It shows a changing city, its slums, backstreets, temples and shrines, a city filled with erudite establishments and brothels. It shows a man trying to justify his life, and a glimpse into the creative process and a gentle eulogy on things passing.