Rejected by his family, hounded by society for his interest in young girls, he expressed through his art a deep and bewildering loneliness and an obsession with sexuality, death and decay. He was only twenty-eight when he died, yet he left behind him a body of work that sustains a huge public reputation--and a myth. This book sets out to examine both. 151 illus., 20 in color.

    Some pictures are easily appreciated at first glance, but others - often the most rewarding - require some explanation before they can be fully understood. This clearly written and enjoyable book is intended to increase pleasure and stimulate thought. It tackles many aspects of looking at paintings as well. Starting with familiar ideas, Dr Susan Woodford moves on to explore subtler, less obvious concepts. For example, she shows how paintings can be appreciated as patterns on a flat surface emotional effect; how ordinary objects can conceal hidden meanings and how knowledge of tradition improves our understanding of revolutionary works.

    As his home life unravels, a sexy space assassin becomes his family maid, and his own head becomes a portal for armed robots. Life as he knows it is quickly falling apart, and Naota doesn’t know who’s friend or foe! One thing’s for certain—he has to grow up quick and save his hometown, whether he wants to or not! With Dark Horse’s FLCL Omnibus, fans will not only get every chapter in Hajime Ueda’s acclaimed FLCL adaptation, but this collection will also include revised story pages and over a dozen color FLCL illustrations by Ueda.

    This book, John Hersey's journalistic masterpiece, tells what happened on that day. Told through the memories of survivors, this timeless, powerful and compassionate document has become a classic "that stirs the conscience of humanity" (The New York Times).

    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.

    She dedicates 30 years of her life as a housewife, custodian and chatelaine of a 350–year–old farmhouse in rural Japan. This astonishing book traces a circular path from were Rebecca began, to living under Japanese customs, from the basic day to day details of life in the house and village, through relationships with family, neighbors and the natural and supernatural entities with which the family shares the house. Rebecca Otowa then focuses on her inner life, touching on some of the pivotal memories of her time in Japan, the lessons in perception that Japan has taught her and the ways in which she has been changed by living in Japan.An insightful and compelling read, At Home in Japan is a beautifully written and illustrated reminiscence of a once simple life made extraordinary.

    Describes the principles of wabi-sabi, a Japanese aesthetic associated with Japanese tea ceremonies and based on the belief that true beauty comes from imperfection and incompletion, through text and photographs.

    Get ready for hundreds of pages filled with surprising revelations, inside information, obscure trivia, and universal cosmic destruction. This legend of localization doesn’t stink!

    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.

    By living the wabi sabi life, Westerners would be seeking to find peace and truth through nature, harmony and the little things. Readers can explore all aspects of this wondrous way of life: - Wabi sabi working - doing what one loves and not overdoing it; Wabi sabi eating - valuing the humble and familiar and savouring the exotic; Wabi sabi socializing - gleaning the lessons of the ancient tea ceremony; Wabi sabi creativity - enriching one's life by; valuing individual moments. The author serves as a highly eloquent guide on the reader's journey to a simpler, more fulfilling life

    Into this tumultuous age of constant warfare came three remarkable individuals: Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582), Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598), and Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616). Each would play a unique role in the re-unification of the disparate, fragmented collection of warring provinces which constituted Japan in the sixteenth and early seventeenth-centuries. This new narrative history of the sengoku era draws together the epic strands of their three stories for the first time. It offers a coherent survey of the Azuchi-Momoyama Period (1568-1600) under both Nobunaga and Hideyoshi, followed by the founding years of the Tokugawa shogunate (1600-1616). Every pivotal battle fought by each of these three hegemons is explored in depth from Okehazama (1560) and Nagashino (1575) to Sekigahara (1600) and the Two Sieges of Osaka Castle (1614-15). In addition, the political and administrative underpinnings of their rule is also examined, as well as the marginal role played by western foreigners ('nanban') and the Christian religion in early modern Japanese society. In its scope, the story of Japan's three unifiers ('the Fool', 'the Monkey', and 'the Old Badger') is a sweeping saga encompassing acts of unimaginable cruelty as well as feats of great samurai heroism which were venerated and written about long into the peaceful Edo/Tokugawa period.

    Known as the johatsu, or the 'evaporated', they are often driven by shame and hopelessness leaving behind lost jobs, disappointed families and mounting debts. In The Vanished, journalist Léna Mauger and photographer Stéphane Remael uncover the human faces behind the phenomenon through reportage, photographs and interviews with those who left, those who stayed behind and those who help orchestrate the disappearances. Their quest to learn the stories of the johatsu weaves its way through:A Tokyo neighborhood so notorious for its petty criminal activities that it was literally erased from the maps.Reprogramming camps for sub-par bureaucrats and businessmen to become 'better' employees.The charmless citadel of Toyota City with its iron grip on its employees.The 'suicide' cliffs of Tojinbo patrolled by a man fighting to save the desperate.The desolation of Fukushima in the aftermath of the tsunami.And yet, as exotic and foreign as their stories might appear to an outsider’s eyes, the human experience shared by the interviewees remains powerfully universal.

    Escher (Dutch, 1898-1972) shows us the limitless, the infinite, and the impossible -- continuous staircases that rise and yet end at their beginning points, two hands reaching out of a page to draw each other. The pop-up format adds even more intrigue, bringing the designs to life. Each pop-up is accompanied by a quotation from Escher's writings.

    His problems worsen following the emergence of a strange voice - a woman who is trying to contact him. Tsuneo desperately chases this woman, and the mystery behind what happened eight years earlier.

    In a book that spans the years from the wild speculation of the late 1980s to the recession of the 1990s, Polsky, himself a private dealer, takes his readers on a funny, fast-paced tour through an industry characterized by humor, hypocrisy, greed, and gossip.