Titles for Japanese Culture Day

By Coll Rowe | November 2 2023 | HistorySociologyComparative Literature

For Japanese Culture Day, we are sharing titles that celebrate the country’s art, history, and culture. From titles about the history of Japan to classic and modern Japanese literature—ranging from women’s voices and historical, sociological, or religious perspectives—this collection provides an array of perspectives about Japanese culture.

A Beginner's Guide to Japan
A Beginner's Guide to Japan
Observations and Provocations
Pico Iyer
978-1-101-97347-9

After three decades in Japan, Pico Iyer knows the country like few others. In A Beginner’s Guide to Japan, he draws on his years of experience—his travels, conversations, readings, and reflections—to illuminate his adopted home like never before. This is a playful and profound guidebook full of surprising, brief, incisive glimpses into Japanese culture.

$17.00 US
Jun 02, 2020
Paperback
208 Pages
Vintage
Pure Invention
Pure Invention
How Japan Made the Modern World
Matt Alt
978-1-9848-2671-8
The untold story of how Japan became a cultural superpower through the fantastic inventions that captured—and transformed—the world’s imagination.
$18.00 US
Jun 22, 2021
Paperback
368 Pages
Crown
Kokoro
Kokoro
Natsume Soseki
978-0-14-310603-6
The father of modern Japanese literature's best-loved novel, in its first new English translation in half a century.
$17.00 US
Feb 23, 2010
Paperback
256 Pages
Penguin Classics
Dead-End Memories
Dead-End Memories
Stories
Banana Yoshimoto
978-1-64009-369-0
Japan’s internationally celebrated master storyteller returns with five stories of women on their way to healing that vividly portrays the blissful moments and everyday sorrows that surround us in everyday life.
$26.00 US
Aug 09, 2022
Hardcover
240 Pages
Counterpoint
The Sakura Obsession
The Sakura Obsession
The Incredible Story of the Plant Hunter Who Saved Japan's Cherry Blossoms
Naoko Abe
978-0-525-43538-9

As much a history of the cherry blossom in Japan as it is the story of one remarkable man, The Sakura Obsession follows the flower from its significance as a symbol of the imperial court, through the dark days of the Second World War, and up to the present-day worldwide fascination with this iconic blossom.

$21.00 US
Feb 25, 2020
Paperback
416 Pages
Vintage
Woman Running in the Mountains
Woman Running in the Mountains
Yuko Tsushima
978-1-68137-597-7
Set in 1970s Japan, this tender and poetic novel about a young, single mother struggling to find her place in the world is an early triumph by a modern Japanese master.
$17.95 US
Feb 22, 2022
Paperback
288 Pages
NYRB Classics
The Tale of the Heike
The Tale of the Heike
978-0-14-310726-2
From the acclaimed translator of The Tale of Genji, a groundbreaking rendering of Japan’s great martial epic.
$30.00 US
Mar 25, 2014
Paperback
784 Pages
Penguin Classics
The End of August
The End of August
A Novel
Yu Miri
978-0-593-54266-8
From the National Book Award winning author, an extraordinary, ground-breaking, epic multi-generational novel about a Korean family living under Japanese occupation.
$35.00 US
Aug 01, 2023
Hardcover
720 Pages
Riverhead Books
The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories
The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories
978-0-241-31190-5
A major new collection of Japanese short stories, many appearing in English for the first time, with an introduction by Haruki MurakamiA Penguin Classic
$18.00 US
Jul 14, 2020
Paperback
576 Pages
Penguin Classics
Diary of a Void
Diary of a Void
A Novel
Emi Yagi
978-0-14-313688-0
A woman in Tokyo avoids harassment at work by perpetuating, for nine months and beyond, the lie that she’s pregnant in this prizewinning, thrillingly subversive debut novel about the mother of all deceptions, for fans of Convenience Store Woman and Breasts and Eggs
$18.00 US
Aug 08, 2023
Paperback
224 Pages
Penguin Books
Three Japanese Buddhist Monks
Three Japanese Buddhist Monks
Various
978-0-241-47291-0
A guiding light amid the world's chaos and a manual for rejecting materialism, in the form of writings by Japanese Buddhist monks
$13.00 US
Jun 08, 2021
Paperback
112 Pages
Penguin Books
The Forest Brims Over
The Forest Brims Over
A Novel
Maru Ayase
978-1-64009-537-3
A woman turns herself into a forest after long being co-opted to serve as the subject of her husband’s novels—this surrealist fable challenges traditional gender attitudes and exploitation in the literary world
$16.95 US
Jul 25, 2023
Paperback
208 Pages
Counterpoint
Blossoms in the Wind
Blossoms in the Wind
Human Legacies of the Kamikaze
M. G. Sheftall
978-0-593-47231-6
Back with Caliber after more than a decade out of print, a revelatory and groundbreaking account of Imperial Japan’s kamikaze—the suicide pilots of World War II—as told through the eyes of survivors
$32.00 US
May 09, 2023
Hardcover
496 Pages
Dutton Caliber
Hit Parade of Tears
Hit Parade of Tears
Stories
Izumi Suzuki
978-1-83976-849-1
A new collection of short stories translated from Japanese from the cult author of Terminal Boredom
$19.95 US
Apr 11, 2023
Paperback
288 Pages
Verso Fiction
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