Davisson illuminates the vast realm of kaibyō, or supernatural cats, with historical and modern cultural context. Lushly illustrated in full color with dozens of ukiyo-e prints and drawings. A must-have book for the Japanophile and cat-lover alike!

    Compiled by Maru’s owner, the user-named mugumogu, I Am Maru celebrates the unique abilities of this unforgettable feline contortionist with photographs and text, in English and Japanese. Cat lovers everywhere and readers who made Dewey, Zooborns, and I Can Has Cheezburger phenomenal hits will be delighted to get to know better this endearing celebrity cat with a big personality and an enormous established online fanbase.

    Together they provide a complete painting programme.

    This history of the strange and mysterious in Japan seeks out these creatures in folklore, encyclopedias, literature, art, science, games, manga, magazines, and movies, exploring their meanings in the Japanese cultural imagination and offering an abundance of valuable and, until now, understudied material. Michael Dylan Foster tracks yôkai over three centuries, from their appearance in seventeenth-century natural histories to their starring role in twentieth-century popular media. Focusing on the intertwining of belief and commodification, fear and pleasure, horror and humor, he illuminates different conceptions of the "natural" and the "ordinary" and sheds light on broader social and historical paradigms—and ultimately on the construction of Japan as a nation.

    "Sensei," as he comes to be known, is a city boy through and through, and has never experienced rural life until now. And by the looks of it, he has much to learn! Luckily(?), he has a willing teacher in Naru, the energetic expert islander, to help show him the ropes. But can Sensei keep up with the plucky first-grader, or will he get schooled?! Here unfolds a heartfelt island comedy about a gruff on the outside, soft on the inside urbanite teacher and his new, unfailingly kind island neighbors!

    But this monotony screeches to a halt when, one night, he encounters a harvest goddess in the guise of a beautiful young girl...with wolf ears and a tail! Longing for the northern lands of her birth, Holo the Wisewolf joins Lawrence as he follows the ebb and flow of trade through the countryside. And when the two come across a compelling but suspicious opportunity for profit, will Lawrence with his mercantile chops and Holo with her ancient instincts be able to separate the truth from the lies--and make some coin while they're at it?!

    Rashomon, which won both the Venice Film Festival's grand prize and an Academy Award for best foreign-language film, helped ignite Western interest in the Japanese cinema. Seven Samurai and Yojimbo remain enormously popular both in Japan and abroad. In this newly revised and expanded edition of his study of Kurosawa's films, Stephen Prince provides two new chapters that examine Kurosawa's remaining films, placing him in the context of cinema history. Prince also discusses how Kurosawa furnished a template for some well-known Hollywood directors, including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas.Providing a new and comprehensive look at this master filmmaker, The Warrior's Camera probes the complex visual structure of Kurosawa's work. The book shows how Kurosawa attempted to symbolize on film a course of national development for post-war Japan, and it traces the ways that he tied his social visions to a dynamic system of visual and narrative forms. The author analyzes Kurosawa's entire career and places the films in context by drawing on the director's autobiography--a fascinating work that presents Kurosawa as a Kurosawa character and the story of his life as the kind of spiritual odyssey witnessed so often in his films. After examining the development of Kurosawa's visual style in his early work, The Warrior's Camera explains how he used this style in subsequent films to forge a politically committed model of filmmaking. It then demonstrates how the collapse of Kurosawa's efforts to participate as a filmmaker in the tasks of social reconstruction led to the very different cinematic style evident in his most recent films, works of pessimism that view the world as resistant to change.

    Clueless in Tokyo provides an outsider's take on everyday life in Japan's capital city—a place where vending machines talk, toilets can be terrifying, and centuries-old festivals unfold against a backdrop of space-age architecture. During the seven years Reynolds lived in Japan, she filled thirty sketchbooks with everything that caught her eye. Whether it's fashion, food, sport, transport, seasonal rituals, or Japanese pastimes, each vibrant sketch is a delight, and Reynolds' witty hand-lettered captions in both Japanese and English provide an entertaining resource for beginning learners of the Japanese language.Adult students and travelers alike will find this Japan travel guide to be a charming and insightful addition to their trip.

    An artist's quest for growth from one of the world's greatest stylists. Nakagi, an ex-con painter who has sequestered hismself in a mountain cabin, is trying to elevate his art. The only thing breakin his solitude are the visits of two women: an art dealer who wants him to produce the sort of paintings that she would like to buy from him, and a young aspiring, and soulful apprentice. When Nakagi welcomes an escaped felon into the emotionally fraught fold, and begins to teach him to pain well. Winter Sleep awakens to a literally incendiary climax.

    It’s given him a raging inferiority complex and a permanently pessimistic outlook. Now that he’s in college, he’s hoping to find a sense of belonging. But after a whole life of being left out, does he even know how to fit in?! It’s two months into Ranmaru’s college career, and if he’s learned one thing, it’s that he’s really uncomfortable around other people. But when he stumbles into a zombie mob attack, he’s forced out of his comfort zone in the most dramatic way possible! Of course it’s just a movie shoot, but when he wakes up from his ignoble faint, he’s been whisked away behind the scenes with the Art Squad! Could this group of weirdos be what Ranmaru’s been looking for all his life?!

    At the same time, while preparing for the Sandman 10th anniversary, he met Yoshitaka Amano, his artist for the 11th Sandman book. Amano is the famed designer of the Final Fantasy game series. The product of Gaiman's immersion in Japanese art, culture, and history, Sandman: Dream Hunters is a classic Japanese tale (adapted from "The Fox, the Monk, and the Mikado of All Night's Dreaming") that he has subtly morphed into his Sandman universe.Like most fables, the story begins with a wager between two jealous animals, a fox and a badger: which of them can drive a young monk from his solitary temple? The winner will make the temple into a new fox or badger home. But as the fox adopts the form of a woman to woo the monk from his hermitage, she falls in love with him. Meanwhile, in far away Kyoto, the wealthy Master of Yin-Yang, the onmyoji, is plagued by his fears and seeks tranquility in his command of sorcery. He learns of the monk and his inner peace; he dispatches demons to plague the monk in his dreams and eventually kill him to bring his peace to the onmyoji. The fox overhears the demons on their way to the monk and begins her struggle to save the man whom at first she so envied.Dream Hunters is a beautiful package. From the ink-brush painted endpapers to the luminous page layouts--including Amano's gate-fold painting of Morpheus in a sea of reds, oranges, and violets--this book has been crafted for a sensuous reading experience. Gaiman has developed as a prose stylist in the last several years with novels and stories such as Neverwhere and Stardust, and his narrative rings with a sense of timelessness and magic that gently sustains this adult fairy tale. The only disappointment here is that the book is so brief. One could imagine this creative team being even better suited to a longer story of more epic proportions. On the final page of Dream Hunters, in fact, Amano suggest that he will collaborate further with Mr. Gaiman in the future. Readers of Dream Hunters will hope that Amano's dream comes true. --Patrick O'Kelley

    . . exploding. But where did Japanese animation come from, and what does it all mean? Written for fans, culture watchers, and perplexed outsiders, this is an engaging tour of the anime megaverse, from older arts and manga traditions to the works of modern directors like Miyazaki and Otomo. Read about anime standbys like giant robots, samurai, furry beasts, high school heroines, and gay/girl/fanboy love—even war and reincarnation, plus all of anime’s major themes, styles, and conventions. At the end of the book are essays on 15 of fandom’s favorite anime, including Evangelion, Esca-flowne, Sailor Moon, and Patlabor."A good resource and guide to the foundation, historical development and overall themes in Japanese animation and serves as an excellent reference source whether you are an established fan or a person who wants to learn about the cultural aspects of this specific and increasingly popular genre. It is an easy yet thorough read on the myriad of societal aspects and cultural references Japanese animation holds." -- Active Anime

    But before he became a director, he was a manga artist, and Dark Horse is honored to remember Kon with the release of Satoshi Kon’s OPUS,an omnibus collection of a two-volume manga from 1996, created by Kon on the eve of his first film. OPUS contains the mastery of both realism and surrealism that would make Kon famous in Perfect Blue,as a manga artist planning a shocking surprise ending to his story gets literally pulled into his own work—to face for himself what he had planned for his characters!OPUS is Kon's metafictional tale of Chikara Nagai, a creator under pressure to finish his latest graphic novel, Resonance, who finds that the harshest critic of the shock ending he's got planned is the character who'll have to die in it! Nagai's stregths and weaknesses as a creator are tested beyond their limits as his present and his past, and the worlds of the manga and of reality, become the levels of a maze he may never escape... let alone get a chance to resolve the story!

    He began following and documenting the life of teenager Komomo as she studied and grew into her role.Naoyuki Oginos photographs follow Komomos entire journey, from her first tentative visits after finding the geisha house on the internet through her commitment to the hard schedule of an apprentice, learning arts that go back centuries, all the way to the ceremony where she officially became a geiko, as Kyotos geisha are known and beyond. From the cobbled streets where she walks in her elaborate dress to the inner sanctums of her dressing room, these pages offer a rare look at a unique, living art.The photographs are accompanied by autobiographical text and captions by Komomo, as she shares her thoughts and emotions, and describes the day-to-day existence of a Kyoto apprentice. It is an illuminating view of seven years in the life of a very special young woman.

    forces linked, somehow, to two mysterious transfer students who''ve just arrived - one attracted to her brother, the other attracted to her Li and Sakura may be friends now instead of rivals, but if there''s a rival for Sakura''s affections, is he going back to Hong Kong?