And, with each detour, she brushes up against the seemingly disparate lives of the city-dwellers, connecting them in unexpected ways.But the city is changing. As it does, it pushes her to the margins where she chances upon a series of apparent strangers – from a homeless man squatting in an abandoned hotel, to a shut-in hermit afraid to leave his house, to a convenience store worker searching for love. The cat orbits Tokyo’s denizens, drawing them ever closer.

    In the sounds of ice breaking in the river, silkworms eating mulberry leaves in the night, and Mahler played on the double bass, her characters hear the music of human suffering and redemption. . . . The Ocean in the Closet is a compelling and moving novel.”—Kyoko MoriIn sunny California, the Vietnam War may have just ended, but nine-year-old Helen Johnson’s world is beginning to crumble. Her father, a former POW and Vietnam veteran, has become increasingly distant; her mother, a Japanese adoptee, is struggling with mental illness; and her six-year-old brother is too young to understand what’s happening. Determined to find out more about her mother’s past and with a boldness that belies her timid self-image, Helen writes to her great-uncle Hideo in Japan, beginning a journey that will take her across the ocean and through the imperial legacies of both countries.As Hideo and his wife recount the stories of his family’s silk business in Hiroshima, their experiences in China and Japan during and after World War II, and the fate of his sister Ume, Helen’s grandmother, they discover that although their lives have been darkened by war, their future can be healed by tending their shared roots. In this beautiful debut novel, Yuko Taniguchi creates a moving story of hope and redemption, of tragedy and resilience, and of the secrets, burdens, and ultimate strength that lie in a young girl’s heart.Yuko Taniguchi, author of the critically acclaimed book of poetry Foreign Wife Elegy, was born in Yokohama, Japan, in 1975. At the age of fifteen, she came to the United States and attended high school in Maryland, obtaining her collegiate degrees in Minnesota, where she continues to make her home. Visit her website at www.yukotaniguchi.com.

    From the audacious Doolittle raid in 1942 to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, award-winning historian Barrett Tillman recounts the saga from the perspectives of American and British aircrews who flew unprecedented missions overthousands of miles of ocean, as well as of the generalsand admirals who commanded them.Whether describing the experiences of bomber crews based in China or the Marianas, fighter pilotson Iwo Jima, or carrier aviators at sea, Tillman provides vivid details of the lives of the fliers and their support personnel. "Whirlwind" takes readers into the cockpits and gun turrets of the mighty B-29 Superfortress, the largest bomber built up to that time. Tillman dramatically re-creates the sweep of wartime emotions that crews endured on fifteen-hour missions, grappling with the extreme tedium of cramped spaces and with adrenaline spikes in flak-studded skies, knowing that a bailout would put them at the mercy of a merciless enemy or an unforgiving sea.A major character is the controversial and brilliant General Curtis LeMay, who rewrote strategic bombing tactics. His command's fire-bombing missions incinerated fully half of Tokyo and many other cities, crippling Japan's industry while still failing to force surrender."Whirlwind" examines the immense logistics and construction efforts necessary to support Superfortresses in Asia and the Mariana Islands, as well as the tireless efforts of engineers to build huge air bases from scratch.It also describes the unheralded missions that American bomber crews flew from the Aleutian Islands to Japan's northernmost Kuril Islands.Never has the Japanese side of the story been so thoroughly examined. If Washington, D.C., represented a "second front" in Army-Navy rivalry, the situation in Tokyo approached a full-contact sport. Tillman's description of Japan's willfully inadequate approach to civil defense is eye-opening. Similarly, he examines the mind-set in Tokyo's war cabinet, which ignored the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, requiring the emperor's personal intervention to avert a ghastly Allied invasion.Tillman shows how, despite the Allies' ultimate success, mistakes and shortsighted policies made victory more costly in lives and effort. He faults the lack of a unified command for allowing the Army Air Forces and the Navy to pursue parochial goals at the expense of the larger mission, and he questions the premature commitment of the enormously sophisticated B-29 to the most primitive theater in India and China."Whirlwind" is one of the last histories of World War II written with the contribution of men who fought in it.With unexcelled macro- and microperspectives, "Whirlwind" is destined to become a standard reference on the war, on multiservice operations, and on the human capacity for individual heroism and national folly.

    Too impetuous to be satisfied as a subsidiary wife, this beautiful (and unnamed) noblewoman of the Heian dynasty protests the marriage system of her time in one of Japanese literature's earliest attempts to portray difficult elements of the predominant social hierarchy. A classic work of early Japanese prose, The Gossamer Years is an important example of the development of Heian literature, which, at its best, represents an extraordinary flowering of realistic expression, an attempt, unique for its age, to treat the human condition with frankness and honesty. A timeless and intimate glimpse into the culture of ancient Japan, this translation by Edward Seidensticker paints a revealing picture of married life in the Heian period.

    This striking book contains full-color woodblock prints made during Japan's famous Edo Period, historic and contemporary photographs of geisha life, and images of the "floating world" Japan's mysterious artistic subculture. The accompanying text includes evocative Japanese poems and haikus. All celebrate the beauty and creativity of the geisha, who with her exquisitely detailed costume, elaborate make-up and hairstyle, and artfully ritualized behavior, chastely beguiles and entertains Japan's most powerful men.

    Learn to identify and make the same things you see in all your favorite manga: authentic onigiri (rice balls), yakitori (skewered chicken), oshinko (pickled vegetables), udon (Japanese noodles), okonomiyaki (Japanese-style pizza) and many others! Includes sections on how to assemble bento boxed lunches and properly use chopsticks. Features original manga illustrations by Chihiro Hattori. Soon, you too can enjoy a meal fit for a manga character!

    The narrator, a professor of philosophy, wrestles with issues of sexual desire, sex education, and the proper place of sensuality. He tells the story of his own journey into sexual awareness, spanning fifteen years, from his first exposure to erotic woodcuts at the age of six, to his first physical response to a woman, and his eventual encounter with a professional courtesan. Beyond being a poignant account of one boy's coming of age, Vita Sexualis is also an important record of Japan's moral struggles during the cultural upheaval of the last years of the Meiji era.In response to the publication of Vita Sexualis, Ogai Mori was reprimanded by Japan's vice-minister of war.

    Normally, the learner must memorize numerous compounds as unrelated units. A unique feature of this dictionary that overcomes this difficulty is the core meaning, a concise keyword that defines the dominant sense of each character, followed by detailed character meanings and numerous compounds that clearly show how thousands of building blocks are combined to form countless compound words.Another unique feature is the System of Kanji Indexing by Patterns (SKIP), an indexing system that enables the user to locate characters as quickly and as accurately as in alphabetical dictionaries.Modern linguistic theory has been effectively integrated with sophisticated information technology to produce the most useful kanji learner's dictionary ever compiled. For the first time, learners have at their fingertips a wealth of information that is linguistically accurate, easy to use, and carefully adapted to their practical needs.FEATURESo 2,230 entry characters, including all the kanji in the Joyo and Jinmei Kanji listso 41,000 senses for 31,300 words and word elements show how each character contributes to the meanings of compounds o 1,200 homophones with core meanings explain differences between closely related characters o 386 variant forms used in prewar literature and in names o 1,945 stroke order diagrams show you how to write each kanji stroke by stroke o 7,200 character readings, including name readings o Over 2,000 cross-references and five appendixes give instant access to a mass of useful reference data

    The Emperor and the Wolf is an in-depth look at these two great artists and their legacy that brims with behind-the-scenes details, many never before known, about their tumultuous lives and stormy relationships with the studios and with one another. More than just a biography, though, The Emperor and the Wolf is also an impromptu history of Japanese cinema -- its development, filmmakers, and performers -- and a provocative look at postwar American and Japanese culture and the different lenses through which two great societies viewed each other.

    This memoir chronicles his extraordinary life and intellectual pursuits.

    Abundantly illustrated and containing a wide variety of exercises, Genki is sure to bring vigor to your classroom! Though primarily meant for use in college-level classes, it is also a good guide for independent learners and is a nice resource book for teachers of Japanese. Genki's authors teach at Kansai Gaidai University, which hosts the largest number of North American students spending their junior year in Japan.

    Behind this most serene of beverages, idolized by poets and revered in spiritual practices, lie stories of treachery, violence, smuggling, drug trade, international espionage, slavery, and revolution. Liquid Jade's rich narrative history explores tea in all its social and cultural aspects. Entertaining yet informative and extensively researched, Liquid Jade tells the story of western greed and eastern bliss. China first used tea as a remedy. Taoists celebrated tea as the elixir of immortality. Buddhist Japan developed a whole body of practices around tea as a spiritual path. Then came the traumatic encounter of the refined Eastern cultures with the first Western merchants, the trade wars, the emergence of the ubiquitous English East India Company. Scottish spies crisscrossed China to steal the secrets of tea production. An army of smugglers made fortunes with tea deliveries in the dead of night. In the name of "free trade" the English imported opium to China in exchange for tea. The exploding tea industry in the eighteenth century reinforced the practice of slavery in the sugar plantations. And one of the reasons why tea became popular in the first place is that it helped sober up the English, who were virtually drowning in alcohol. During the nineteenth century, the massive consumption of tea in England also led to the development of the large tea plantation system in colonial India - a story of success for British Empire tea and of untold misery for generations of tea workers.Liquid Jade also depicts tea's beauty and delights, not only with myths about the beginnings of tea or the lovers' legend in the familiar blue-and-white porcelain willow pattern, but also with a rich and varied selection of works of art and historical photographs, which form a rare and comprehensive visual tea record. The book includes engaging and lesser-known topics, including the exclusion of women from seventeenth-century tea houses or the importance of water for tea, and answers such questions as: "What does a tea taster do?" "How much caffeine is there in tea?" "What is fair trade tea?" and "What is the difference between black, red, yellow, green, or white tea?"  Connecting past and present and spanning five thousand years, Beatrice Hohenegger's captivating and multilayered account of tea will enhance the experience of a steaming "cuppa" for tea lovers the world over.

    Mair teams up with journalist Erling Hoh to tell the story of this remarkable beverage and its uses, from ancient times to the present, from East to West.For the first time in a popular history of tea, the Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, and Mongolian annals have been thoroughly consulted and carefully sifted. The resulting narrative takes the reader from the jungles of Southeast Asia to the splendor of the Tang and Song Dynasties, from the tea ceremony politics of medieval Japan to the fabled tea and horse trade of Central Asia and the arrival of the first European vessels in Far Eastern waters.Through the centuries, tea has inspired artists, enhanced religious experience, played a pivotal role in the emergence of world trade, and triggered cataclysmic events that altered the course of humankind. How did green tea become the national beverage of Morocco? And who was the beautiful Emma Hart, immortalized by George Romney in his painting The Tea-maker of Edgware Road? No other drink has touched the daily lives of so many people in so many different ways.The True History of Tea brings these disparate aspects together in an entertaining tale that combines solid scholarship with an eye for the quirky, offbeat paths that tea has strayed upon during its long voyage. It celebrates the common heritage of a beverage we have all come to love, and plays a crucial part in the work of dismantling that obsolete dictum: East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.

    Taro would wear the historic dark blue uniform and learn alongside other little Einsteins while she basked in the glory of his high achievements with the other perfect moms. Together they would climb the rungs into the country's successful elite. But it didn't turn out that way. Taro had other things in mind.While set in Japan, their struggles in the school's hyper-competitive environment mirror those faced by parents here in the US and raise the same questions about the best way to educate a child—especially one that doesn’t quite fit the mold. Public or private? Competitive or nurturing? Standardized or individualized. Helicopter parenting or free-range? Amid this frenzied debate, how does one find balance and maintain a healthy parent-child relationship?Dear Diary Boy is an intensely personal, heartwarming, and heartbreaking chronicle of one mother and child's experience in a prestigious private Tokyo school. It's a tale that will resonate with all parents as we try to answer the age-old questions of how best to educate our children and what, truly, is in their best interests versus what is in our own.

    Yoshio Sugimoto challenges the traditional notion that Japan is an homogeneous society with few cultural and social disparities.