Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
19
into a great modern city. Its sequel, Tokyo
Rising (Harvard University Press, 1991),
describes the metropolis after the Great
Earthquake of 1923 and follows its
remarkable development through the
postwar years until the end of the 1980s.
Describing the daily lives of samurai,
farmers, craftsmen, merchants, courtiers,
and outcasts, with a special section devoted
to life in Edo, is Charles J. Dunn's fasci-
nating Everyday Life in Traditional Japan
(Tuttle, 2000).
SOCIETY Reischauer's The Japanese
Today (Tuttle, 1993) offers a unique per-
spective on Japanese society, including the
historical events that have shaped and
influenced Japanese behavior and the role
of the individual in Japanese society; an
updated version is Reischauer's Japanese
Today: Change and Continuity (Belknap
Press, 1995). A classic description of the
Japanese and their culture is found in
Ruth Benedict's brilliant The Chrysanthe-
mum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese
Culture (New American Library, 1967),
first published in the 1940s but reprinted
many times since. For a more contempo-
rary approach, read Robert C. Christo-
pher's insightful The Japanese Mind: The
Goliath Explained (Linden Press/Simon &
Schuster, 1983).
For a look into life in the capital—edu-
cation, employment, home life, and
more—check your school or public library
for Life in Tokyo: The Way People Live
(Lucent Books, 2001), by Stuart A. Kal-
len. More entertaining is Tabloid Tokyo:
101 Tales of Sex, Crime, and the Bizarre
from Japan's Wild Weeklies (Kodansha,
2005), by Mark Schreiber, and its sequel,
Tabloid Tokyo 2 (Kodansha, 2007).
CULTURE & THE ARTS Introduction to
Japanese Culture, edited by Daniel Sos-
noski (Tuttle, 1996), gives a great over-
view and covers major festivals, the tea
ceremony, flower arranging, Kabuki,
sumo, Buddha, kanji, and much more. For
a historical perspective on Tokyo's cultural
development through the centuries,
including literature, architecture, Kabuki,
and the arts, see Tokyo: A Cultural History
by Stephen Mansfield (Oxford University
Press, 2009).
The Japan Travel Bureau puts out nifty
pocket-size illustrated booklets on things
Japanese, including Eating in Japan, Living
Japanese Style, Martial Arts & Sports in
Japan, and Japanese Family & Culture. My
favorite is Salaryman in Japan (JTB,
1986), which describes the private and
working lives of Japan's army of white-
collar workers who receive set salaries.
FICTION Tokyo bookstores have entire
sections dedicated to English translations
of Japan's best-known modern and con-
temporary authors, including Mishima
Yukio, Soseki Natsume, Abe Kobo, Tani-
zaki Junichiro, and Nobel prize winners
Kawabata Yasunari and Oe Kenzaburo. An
overview of Japanese classical literature is
provided in Anthology of Japanese Litera-
ture (Grove Press, 1955), edited by Don-
ald Keene. Modern Japanese Stories: An
Anthology (Tuttle, 1962), edited by Ivan
Morris, introduces short stories by some of
Japan's top modern writers, including
Mori Ogai, Tanizaki Junichiro, Kawabata
Yasunari, and Mishima Yukio.
Soseki Natsume, one of Japan's most
respected novelists of the Meiji Era, writes
of Tokyo and its tumultuous time of
change in And Then (Putnam, 1982),
translated by Norma Moore Field, and in
Kokoro (Regnery Publishing, 1985), trans-
lated by Edwin McClellan. Although not
well known in the West, Enchi Fumiko
writes an absorbing novel about women
trapped by social constraints in 19th-cen-
tury Tokyo in The Waiting Years (Kodan-
sha, 2002), first published in 1957.
Favorite writers of Japan's baby-boom
generation include Murakami Ryu, who
captured the undercurrent of decadent
urban life in his best-selling Coin Locker
Babies (Kodansha, 1995) and wrote a
shocking expose of Tokyo's sex industry in
2
 
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