20th Century Boys (Vol. #5 and up) - Urasawa Naoki

20th Century Boys - Naoki Urasawa

My Brother's Husband ​- Gengoroh Tagame

The Samurai's Garden - Gail Tsukiyama

Anata Kaimasu: I Will Buy You (1956)

The Only Son (1936)

An Artist in the Floating World - Kazuo Ishiguro

Out - Natsuo Kirino

Shin Gozilla (2017)

Good Morning (2017)

Killing the rising sun - Bill O'Reilly

The typist - Michael Knight

The typist - Knight, Michael

Summary: Assigned to post-World War II Japan in the first year of the occupation, military typist Van finds his distinctly Western values tested by the culture, his duties as a babysitter for General MacArthur's son, and startling news from his young war bride.

Booklist Reviews
Post-surrender Japan must have been an odd assignment for a soldier. Van is spared from frontline duty due to his remarkable abilities as a typist and ends up in General McArthur's Tokyo headquarters. With a wife back home, Van shies from the romantic escapades so many of his fellow enlistees commit so much of their time to. Van's good-hearted roommate cannot stay away from the pan-pan girls and begins a small black-market operation to satisfy his desires and relieve his boredom. This operation is his downfall and even comes close to ruining Van. Knight cunningly details the confluence of the boredom of American soldiers and the economic plight of the post-bombing Japanese. Two cultures collide and gross exploitation occurs, but Knight is still able to craft heartfelt relationships amid the confusion. Such novels as this one—fiction, yes, but rooted in actual history—help contemporary readers make sense of the mayhem and heroism of WWII. Copyright 2010 Booklist Reviews.

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A Cook's Journey to Japan - Sarah Marx Feldner

A Cook's Journey to Japan - Feldner, Sarah Marx

Summary: The author recounts her adventures travelling throughout Japan and presents one hundred recipes she collected from home cooks she met along the way, with a discussion on tools, utensils, cooking techniques, and unique Japanese ingredients.

LJ Express Reviews
In this excellent compilation of traditional and contemporary Japanese cooking, Feldner focuses on certain regional specialties like Oyaki (vegetable-stuffed rolls) to reveal the diversity within Japanese cuisine. As Feldner points out, Japan is a small country with extremely different terrains, leading to distinct regional cooking styles. Her extensive travels throughout the lesser-known areas of Japan shine through in her distinctive recipes. Murata's fine photography is both beautiful and useful-many recipes feature a step-by-step photo guide of the preparation. The beginning of the book is an outstanding primer on ingredients and cooking tools that are distinctly Japanese. Verdict This gorgeous, original, and easy-to-use cookbook is recommended for all levels of experience and for palates that are open to new and varied flavors.

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Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage - Haruki Murakami

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage - Murakami, Haruki

Summary: Thirty-six-year-old Tsukuru Tazaki meets a woman named Sara who raises questions about a painful incident from his youth in which his closest friends all cut off relations with him without explanation, and inspires him to find out why.




Publishers Weekly Reviews
Murakami's latest novel, which sold more than a million copies during its first week on sale in Japan, is a return to the mood and subject matter of the acclaimed writer's earlier work. Living a simple, quotidian life as a train station engineer, Tsukuru is compelled to reexamine his past after a girlfriend suggests he reconnect with a group of friends from high school. A tight-knit fivesome for years, the group suddenly alienated Tsukuru under mysterious circumstances when he was in college. For months after the break, not knowing what had gone wrong, he became obsessed with death and slowly lost his sense of self: "I've always seen myself as an empty person, lacking color and identity. Maybe that was my role in the group. To be empty." Feeling his life will only progress if he can tie up those emotional loose ends, Tsukuru journeys through Japan and into Europe to meet with the members of the group and unravel what really happened 16 years before. The result is a vintage Murakami struggle of coming to terms with buried emotions and missed opportunities, in which intentions and pent up desires can seemingly transcend time and space to bring both solace and desolation.

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Japan 1941 - Eri Hotta

Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy - Hotta, Eri

Summary: A history of the attack on Pearl Harbor from a Japanese perspective argues that the nation's leaders largely understood they were destined to lose the war, offering insight into the tradition-obscured belief system that prompted the country to place its citizens in harm's way.



Library Journal Reviews
In 1941, Japan was a resource-strapped country bogged down in a costly war with China. So why did it decide to initiate a war with the United States? Hotta (Pan-Asianism and Japan's War, 1931–45) explores every aspect of this question. She reveals that many high-ranking Japanese officials had real doubts about launching an attack on America. However, a combination of weak civilian leadership, outsize military involvement in government, extreme nationalism, and bureaucratic inertia forced Japan down a path of certain destruction. Her book gives colorful descriptions of the various characters involved, from the common Japanese soldier on the frontlines all the way up to the emperor himself. VERDICT This is a fascinating read for anyone interested in Japan's involvement in World War II generally or its motivations for attacking the United States specifically. While scholarly and thoroughly researched, it's also a highly enjoyable read. Hotta writes the story with a novel's narrative drive, making it a real page-turner. Readers seeking a more concise exploration of this topic should consider Jeffrey Record's A War It Was Always Going To Lose: Why Japan Attacked America in 1941.—Joshua Wallace, South Texas Coll. Lib., McAllen

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Shōgun - James Clavell

Shōgun: A Novel of Japan - Clavell, James

Summary: After John Blackthorne shipwrecks in Japan, he makes himself useful to a feudal lord in a power struggle with another and becomes a samurai.




New York Times Review
It's almost impossible not to continue to read "Shōgun" once having opened it. Yet it's not only something that you read--you live it....Clavell wants everything in "Shōgun," and he nearly gets it: living characters, tumultuous events, stories that shine, a culture assembled like a jigsaw puzzle....He writes in the oldest and grandest tradition that fiction knows.

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Japanese pop, beat & bossa nova 1966-70 (CD)

Japanese pop, beat & bossa nova 1966-70 (CD)

Summary: The likes of Shonen Knife and The 5-6-7-8s have given more face to women in Japanese pop, but they draw on a tradition that stretches back to the wild 1960s 'Group Sounds' era, when the Land Of the Rising Sun was smitten with westernized rock 'n' roll, yet came to develop its own distinctive brand of the same. Like in the west, female artistes tended to be solo, though their accompaniment often came from some of the top GS acts like the Bunnies. Major female stars of the period represented here include Miki Obata, Linda Yamamoto and Mie Nakao, the latter with the fuzztoned classic Sharock No 1. The sound was eclectic, drawing upon not only the full smorgasbord of 60s styles like groovy go-go, lounge-y bossa nova and wobbly pop-psych, but also traditional Japanese songwriting and themes. There's dance floor fillers such as Ye-Ye and the usual fascinating interpretations of western material, such as Nana Kanomi's take on the Zombies' I Love You.

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Cutie and the boxer (DVD)

Cutie and the boxer (DVD)

Summary: In New York City in 1969, nineteen-year-old art student Noriko fell in love with 41-year-old avant-garde artist Ushio Shinohara and put her career on hold to marry and support this rising star of the Manhattan art world. But 40 years later and still struggling, Ushio remains consumed with reinforcing his legacy via his 'boxing' paintings, while Noriko is now finding her own creative voice through a series of drawings.

Video Librarian Reviews
Filmmaker Zachary Heinzerling's Oscar-nominated documentary begins with an arresting title sequence in which diminutive 80-year-old avant-garde Japanese emigrant artist Ushio Shinohara creates one of his trademark "boxing" paintings—methodically moving left to right while beating the bejeezus out of a huge rectangular canvas with his paint-drenched boxing gloves, finishing the work in about two minutes. In 1969, the-41-year-old Ushio married 19-year-old art student Noriko in New York City, where the couple still live, struggling to make rent payments (at one point, Ushio literally stuffs some of his surreal sculptures into a battered suitcase and jets to Japan, returning with a few thousand dollars and a beaming smile). Noriko continues to pursue her own artistic dreams, creating drawings of a nude "Cutie and Bullie" in a series of semi-autobiographical cartoon panels (sometimes presented in striking iconographic animation here), although Ushio feels that his own work is much more important ("the average one has to support the genius"). But while the couple clearly have a loving relationship, Noriko is also starting to chafe at the proverbial bit, a little tired of being a "free secretary, free assistant, free chef." Fate smiles on Noriko when she lands the chance to do a joint exhibition with her husband (tellingly, he wants to call the exhibit "Roar!"; she successfully names it "Love Is a Roar"). Heinzerling's documentary interweaves fly-on-the-wall footage of the artists' daily lives (and interactions with their alcoholic artist son, Alex), combined with excerpts from a 1970s documentary by Rod McCall entitled Shinohara: The Last Artist. Serving up a delightful portrait of an unusual artist couple, this entertaining documentary is recommended. (R. Pitman). Copyright Video Librarian Reviews 2014.

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Shogun - James Clavell

Shogun - Clavell, James

Summary: A narrative of conflicting cultures, loyalties, motivations, and traditions in early-seventeenth-century Japan, involving the powerful and power-hungry Lord Toranaga, the ambitious Englishman, Blackthorne, and the Lady Mariko, a Catholic convert in love with the barbarian Englishman - (Baker & Taylor)



Kirkus Review
In Clavell's last whopper, Tai-pan, the hero became tai-pan (supreme ruler) of Hong Kong following England's victory in the first Opium War. Clavell's new hero, John Blackthorne, a giant Englishman, arrives in 17th century Japan in search of riches and becomes the right arm of the warlord Toranaga who is even more powerful than the Emperor. Superhumanly self-confident (and so sexually overendowed that the ladies who bathe him can die content at having seen the world's most sublime member), Blackthorne attempts to break Portugal's hold on Japan and encourage trade with Elizabeth I's merchants. He is a barbarian not only to the Japanese but also to Portuguese Catholics, who want him dispatched to a non-papist hell. The novel begins on a note of maelstrom-and-tempest ("'Piss on you, storm!' Blackthorne raged. 'Get your dung-eating hands off my ship!'") and teems for about 900 pages of relentless lopped heads, severed torsos, assassins, intrigue, war, tragic love, over-refined sex, excrement, torture, high honor, ritual suicide, hot baths and breathless haikus. As in Tai-pan, the carefully researched material on feudal Oriental money matters seems to he Clavell's real interest, along with the megalomania of personal and political power. After Blackthorne has saved Toranaga's life three times, he is elevated to samurai status, given a fief and made a chief defender of the empire. Meanwhile, his highborn Japanese love (a Catholic convert and adulteress) teaches him "inner harmony" as he grows ever more Eastern. With Toranaga as shogun (military dictator), the book ends with the open possibility of a forthcoming sequel. Engrossing, predictable and surely sellable. (Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 1975)

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Battle Royale - Koshun Takami

Battle Royale - Koshun Takami

Summary: In an alternative future Japan, junior high students are forced to fight to the death! L to R (Western Style). Koushun Takami's notorious high-octane thriller is based on an irresistible premise: a class of junior high school students is taken to a deserted island where, as part of a ruthless authoritarian program, they are provided arms and forced to kill one another until only one survivor is left standing. Criticized as violent exploitation when first published in Japan--where it then proceeded to become a runaway bestseller--Battle Royale is a Lord of the Fliesfor the 21st century, a potent allegory of what it means to be young and (barely) alive in a dog-eat-dog world. Made into a controversial hit movie of the same name, Battle Royale is already a contemporary Japanese pulp classic, now available for the first time in the English language. A group of high school students are taken to small isolated island and forced to fight each other until only one remains alive! If they break the rules a special collar blows their heads off. Koushun Takami's brutal, high-octane thriller is told in breathless. blow-by-blow fashion. Battle Royale is a contemporary Japanese pulp classic now available for the first time in English. - (Simon and Schuster)

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