In 1997 it had been running for 50 years, with less than one hundred people successfully completing it – only four of which had been non-Japanese. In the same year Scott Langley was at the top of his game, a third degree black belt, captain of the British JKS National Team and JKS European and World Champion. He moved to Japan with a secret plan – to be the fifth foreigner to complete the course. This is the true story of Scott’s Journey, spanning five years, chronicling the highs and lows of facing karate’s toughest challenge and how he learnt to survive and never give in.In Autumn 2013 Scott sent this book to his Sensei in Japan for their approval. They responded immediately declaring the book to be full of lies and misrepresentations of Japan and forbade him to publish it. He was suspended for a month and then affectively expelled in January 2014. Suddenly, his 30 year relationship with Japanese karate had abruptly come to an end. This had been major a part of his entire karate life and he had dedicated himself to its values and rules, running a karate organization in Ireland for over ten years. He never wanted to jeopardize his position or damage the reputation of the group. However, unfortunately, the sacrifices he made during this true story are nothing compared to the sacrifices he has had to make to publish it. About the Author Scott Langley began karate in 1985. Showing a rare combination of aptitude, dedication and love of the art, Scott rose through the grades at a steady rate. In 1991 he gained his black belt. However, this was just the beginning. He quickly began winning national competitions and in 1993 was selected for the Japan Karate Shotorenmei national team. While at university he trained daily at his university club and under the guidance of Sadashige Kato 8th Dan. By the time Scott graduated, he was a 3rd Dan and had become one of the youngest people to win the JKS World Championships. But this was just the foundation of what lay ahead. In 1997 Scott moved to Japan to train full time at the World Headquarters. In 2000 he was invited to enter the elusive instructors’ course and after two years of intensive training, graduated, becoming only the fifth westerner to complete the challenge. He moved to Ireland with a mandate to promote the JKS within the British Isles. Within a decade Scott’s group had become the biggest single style association in the UK and Ireland and was as big at the JKS in Japan. He now teaches fulltime at www.hombudojokarate.com

    She is the first non-aristocratic woman to enter the longest-running, almost hermetically sealed, and mysterious monarchy in the world. Met with cruelty and suspicion by the Empress and her minions, Haruko is controlled at every turn. The only interest the court has in her is her ability to produce an heir. After finally giving birth to a son, Haruko suffers a nervous breakdown and loses her voice. However, determined not to be crushed by the imperial bureaucrats, she perseveres. Thirty years later, now Empress herself, she plays a crucial role in persuading another young woman's rising star in the foreign ministry to accept the marriage proposal of her son, the Crown Prince. The consequences are tragic and dramatic.Told in the voice of Haruko, meticulously researched and superbly imagined, The Commoner is the mesmerizing, moving, and surprising story of a brutally rarified and controlled existence at once hidden and exposed, and of a complex relationship between two isolated women who, despite being visible to all, are truly understood only by each other. With the unerring skill of a master storyteller, John Burnham Schwartz has written his finest novel yet.

    When a detective calls in 2002 hoping to solve the case with new information, Kenji takes immediate action to keep the truth from becoming public.In 1967, Kenji’s father, a former general in the Imperial Japanese Army, had more than his fair share of enemies. When a burglar stole his war sword and left a threatening note, it became clear that someone held a nasty grudge. And when the general was found murdered with Kenji holding the same sword over his dead body, Kenji became the prime suspect.Kenji learned who killed his father and knew why, but no one was ever arrested. In 2002, the statute of limitations has already run out. No charges can be brought regardless of the new evidence.

    Not in 4000 years of Japanese recorded history had anyone followed the Cherry Blossom Front from one end of the country to the other. Nor had anyone hitchhiked the length of Japan. But, heady on sakura and sake, Will Ferguson bet he could do both. The resulting travelogue is one of the funniest and most illuminating books ever written about Japan. And, as Ferguson learns, it illustrates that to travel is better than to arrive.

    Now, thanks to recently discovered notebooks, some of the Great Detective's most challenging cases can be revealed in The Curious Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in Japan. Holmes is secretly brought to Japan disguised as an explorer named Sigerson. His host in Japan, Doctor Junichi Watanabe, helps Holmes unravel a series of perplexing cases. How can the sound of an obscure Japanese garden instrument help Holmes solve a case of madness and the voice of the Devil? Why would a thief risk capture to steal countless jars of pickles? Why would ghostly samurai appear to guard a waterfall? These and other puzzling mysteries challenge Holmes and Doctor Watanabe in The Curious Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in Japan. DALE FURUTANI is the first Asian-American to win major mystery writing awards and his books have appeared on numerous bestseller lists. He has spoken at the US Library of Congress, the Japanese-American National Museum, The Pacific Asia Museum, and numerous conferences. The City of Los Angeles named him as one of its "Forty Faces of Diversity" and Publisher's Weekly called him "a master craftsman." He has lived in Japan and traveled there extensively. He now lives with his wife in the Pacific Northwest.

    Though rumors of war circulate, she feels safe—the island is fortified, the airbases are ample, and the Filipino troops are well-trained.But on December 8, 1941, her dream world shatters. Captured by the invading Japanese, Margie ends up interned at Santa Tomas, an infamous prison camp. There, for the next three years, while enduring brutality and starvation, her bravery, resourcefulness, and faith are tested and her life forever changed.At once an epic tale of a nation at war and the deeply personal story of one woman’s journey through hell, A Pledge of Silence vividly illustrates the sacrifices the Greatest Generation made for their country, and the price they continued to pay long after the war was over.

    Readers of this book will gain a clear understanding of what really makes the Japanese, and their society, tick. Among the topics explored: aimai (ambiguity), amae (dependence upon others' benevolence), amakudari (the nation's descent from heaven), chinmoku (silence in communication), gambari (perseverence), giri (social obligation), haragei (literally, "belly art"; implicit, unspoken communication), kenkyo (the appearance of modesty), sempai-kohai (seniority), wabi-sabi (simplicity and elegance), and zoto (gift giving), as well as discussions of childrearing, personal space, and the roles of women in Japanese society. Includes discussion topics and questions after each chapter.

    

    His people catch barely enough fish to live on, and so must distill salt to sell to neighboring villages. But this industry serves another, more sinister purpose: the fires of the salt cauldrons lure passing ships toward the shore and onto rocky shoals. When a ship runs aground, the villagers slaughter the crew and loot the cargo for rice, wine, and rich delicacies. One day a ship founders on the rocks. But Isaku learns that its cargo is far deadlier than could ever be imagined. Shipwrecks, the first novel by the great Japanese writer Yoshimura to be translated into English, is a stunningly powerful, Gothic tale of fate and retribution.

    Japan Style introduces 20 special residences. With more than 200 color photographs, this book showcases the stunning beauty of old homes, and reveals how they are cared for by their owners.Traditional Japanese homes, with superbly crafted fine wood, great workmanship and seasonal interior arrangements, have an aesthetic of infinite simplicity. Unlike Japanese inns and historical buildings, the houses featured in this book are private property and are not open to public viewing. Japan Style offers a rare glimpse into the intimate world of the everyday Japanese and fascinating insight into the traditional architecture of Japan.

    But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer's, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?

    In the story, a mother takes extreme measures to provide her four mentally disabled children with a normal life. She feeds them a medicinal soup made from the bones of her dead husband when she finds out that bones 'the closer from kin the better' can cure their illness. When she runs out of her husband's bones, she resorts to a measure that only a mother can take.

    It is here that Kazu’s life in Tokyo began, as a labourer in the run up to the 1964 Olympics, and later where he ended his days, living in the park’s vast homeless ‘villages’, traumatised by the destruction of the 2011 tsunami and enraged by the announcement of the 2020 Olympics.Akutagawa-award-winning author Yū Miri uses her outsider’s perspective as a Zainichi (Korean-Japanese) writer to craft a novel of utmost importance to this moment, a powerful rebuke to the Imperial system and a sensitive, deeply felt depiction of the lives of Japan’s most vulnerable people.

    Even the selfless physician who saves him cannot soften the boy's hardened spirit. Angry with the world and desiring vengeance against those who caused his parents' suicides, Hachiro feels rejection almost everywhere and reacts in kind. This anger he forges into an amazing skill with a sword. He becomes the most famous swordsman in the city. Many deaths are due to Hachiro’s reputation, until he seeks solitude and redemption by leaving the capital.The love of women proves even less kind than the cut of a sword. His obsession with a forbidden passion forces Hachiro to join the war between two powerful clans where he finds another dangerous woman and treachery.When at last he returns home, he finds Kyoto in ruin and his beloved master dead. In the midst of the tragedy of this ravaged city, he discovers his redemption, something he had given up hoping for. But first he must face the danger of losing all when a secret enemy sets his trap.

    It tells the tale of a young woman who moves to Tokyo after the death of her mother, hoping to get over her grief and start a career as a graphic artist. She finds herself spending too much time staring out her window, though ... until she realizes she’s gotten used to seeing a young man across the street staring out his window, too. They eventually embark on a hesitant romance, until she learns that he has been the victim of some form of childhood trauma. Visiting two of his friends who live a monastic life beside a beautiful lake, she begins to piece together a series of clues that lead her to suspect his experience may have had something to do with a bizarre religious cult. . . . With its echoes of the infamous, real-life Aum Shinrikyo cult (the group that released poison gas in the Tokyo subway system), The Lake unfolds as the most powerful novel Banana Yoshimoto has written. And as the two young lovers overcome their troubled past to discover hope in the beautiful solitude of the lake in the country- side, it’s also one of her most moving.