Poems from the 1600s to the present day are beautifully illustrated with images from the unrivaled collection of Japanese paintings and prints in the British Museum. The majority of the poems come from the Tokugawa period (early seventeenth to mid nineteenth centuries) and include works from the best-known Japanese classical authors, female poets and a number of contemporary writers. Nearly all are newly translated by Alan Cummings.From the tender and the melancholy to the witty and the ribald, the poems and images in Haiku Love comment on the most universal of human emotions.

    Dick Seaton is a shy, handsome American whose business takes him to Japan to close a very big deal. In violation of a timeless taboo, Dick and Kanno spend slow, tantalizing days falling in love. Then Dick discovers that Kanno’s love was paid for by his businessmen hosts. Sensing his rage and hurt, Kanno flees in confusion. And, too late, Dick realizes the truth—that she really loved him. Now, a stranger in a strange, exotic land, he must find her—and seduce her back into his life. Love her for a night… and you will remember her for a lifetime.

    In fact, she designs kimono and kimono accessories herself and shares her love in Okimono Kimono, a fun and lavishly illustrated book full of drawings and illustrations, interviews (including an interview with Ami of the J-pop duo Puffy AmiYumi!), and even short manga stories from the CLAMP artists. Fans of CLAMP will love Okimono Kimono for the personal glimpse of Mokona's kimono obsession, and people who love the traditional Japanese arts will appreciate the love and detail Mokona puts into her work.

    Extensively revised, updated, and expanded since its first publication, this authoritative survey of the arts of Japan from the prehistoric period to the present brings together the results of the most recent research on the subject. Profusely illustrated with examples from all the arts—painting, calligraphy, the decorative arts, and architecture—and with a wide-ranging bibliography, Japanese Art addresses itself equally to those who come to the subject for the first time and to the student. It is a concise overview of a fascinating and perplexing culture in which interest has never been greater than it is today.

    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.

    In the evocative taleof 19th century Tokyo, The Printmaker’sDaughter  delivers an enthrallingtale of one of the world’s great unknown artists: Oei,the mysterious daughter of master printmaker Hokusai, painter of the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. In a novel that willresonate with readers of Tracy Chevalier’s Girlwith a Pearl Earring, Lisa See’s SnowFlower and the Secret Fan, and David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet,the sights and sensations of an exotic, bygone era form the richly captivatingbackdrop for an intimate, finely wrought story of daughterhood and duty, artand authorship, the immortality of creation and the anonymity of history.

    Haiku are practiced by poets, lovers, and schoolchildren, by “political haiku” twitterers, by anyone who has the desire to pin preception and experience into a few quick phrases. This essay offers readers unparalleled insight into the living heart of haiku—how haiku work and what they hold, and how to read through and into their images to find a full expression of human life and perceptions, sometimes profound, sometimes playful.

    Entitled Songs in Time of War, Shared Ground, The Traveller and Seven Elements, the libretti take us all over the world - from Chinese and Indian poetry, to the beauty and quietness of the Wiltshire rectory where English poet George Herbert lived and died.Spanning centuries of creativity and humanity, the poems that form these libretti pulse with life, energy and inspired brilliance.They are accompanied by four pieces of calligraphy by the author.

    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.

    The book also includes descriptions of laquerware under candlelight, and women in the darkness of the house of pleasure.

    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.

    Have you tried before to paint in a loose and free way but found it to be difficult? In this Introduction to loose watercolor you will find the tools you need to free your creativity! Finally you will be able to paint in a way that is both liberating and refreshing to you, and your viewer. No prior knowledge is assumed, just bring a willingness to relax and lose the 'fear' of making a mark on paper. Once you start painting in the way demonstrated here, you will be able to express your emotional response to a scene with energy and power.After a brief introduction, you will see examples of loose paintings, learn the materials used (which will not break the bank!). Discover which colors the author recommends and see a complete step by step painting of a landscape. You will learn how to create inspiring sky effects easily, when to dry, and when to add highlights to add that final sparkle to a composition. Many of the techniques and ideas are somewhat unconventional! But they work,and you will be delighted with your results.

    

    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.