Vignettes Of Japan

Fifty vignettes of everyday life in Japan, seen through the eyes of an American woman teaching English there. From the Art of Tea to Zen Buddhism, these short essays, illustrated by beautiful color photographs, take the armchair traveler on an exploration of this often mysterious culture.

The Monocle team celebrates the endlessly fascinating and culturally rich country of Japan.

Travel to Japan, but not as a tourist observing from the outside. Go inside Japan to gain a unique perspective in the homes, schools, cultural venues and individual Japanese lives through the eyes of an American Fulbrighter, who lived, worked, and traveled throughout Japan. Vignette titles include, "The Salt Dog", "Gambare", "The Suicide Cliff", "Hiroshima and the Green Frog", "Kendo", "Mount Aso and the Baths", "Baseball, Japanese Style", "The Oshiya", "Kyudo, the Way of the Bow", "Chado: I am Beautiful Because I Drink Tea", "Tsukiji Fish Market", "Harajuku District", "Backstage at the Kabuki Theatre", and others.

First published in 1937 this is a collection of articles written by the author under the pseudonym 'Waseda Eisaku' for the Japan Tourist Bureau's magazine over twenty five years. Intended to satisfy the intellectual curiosity of cultivated tourists from abroad by giving the insider's view of all things Japanese, it was published as a book just before the outbreak of World War II. Writing in the first person, Katsumata becomes both guide and confidante, writing about his own travel experiences in Japan and about Japanese customs and practices that interest him, such as traditional incense ceremonies, or fishing with rod and creel. This personal approach results in an unusual selection of topics and itineraries including tray landscapes, old Japanese clocks, hot springs, Japanese humour, sumo wrestling, pines in Japanese scenery, the Japanese sun flag and Buddhist temple bells. The author not only describes, but draws the reader into his own experiences - his joy on buying an antiquarian book he cannot really afford, the monotony he feels when travelling too long through snowy landscapes, the delight he takes in telling you that the best bait for carp fishing is sweet potato. Katsumata's unconventional choice of subjects and his informal and individualistic writing style make this a refreshingly different guide to Japan, and a valuable record of the period in which it was written.

Excerpt from In the Land of the Gods: Some Stories of Japan Preface the cities, but that no longer survives among the educated modern Japanese. For a fuller understanding of the mys teries touched upon in this volume, the reader is referred to the works Of Lafcadio Hearn. His book, Japan, an Attempt at Interpretation, is the most complete and sympathetic study yet made of the spiritual side of the nation, and the chapter Kitsune, in volume one of his Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, relates in charming form the various phases of the fox belief. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

DIVA study of the "modern" woman in Japan before World War II./div