It is no accident that the age of the great Japanese swordsmen coincided with that country's transition from a loose group of warrior states to a stable nation. As you will discover in The Sword & the Mind, this pivotal seventeenth-century how-to guid
Over the decades the reputation of the samurai has grown to mythical proportions, owing to such films as Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and Yojimbo as well as works such as James Clavell's epic Shogun. In Legends of the Samurai, Hiroaki Sato confronts bot
Modernist poet Sakutarō Hagiwara’s first published book, Howling at the Moon, shattered conventional verse forms and transformed the poetic landscape of Japan. Two of its poems were removed on order of the Ministry of the Interior for “disturbing soc
Perhaps the most admired childhood memoir ever written in Japan, The Silver Spoon is a sharp detailing of life at the end of the Meiji period (1912) through the eyes of a boy as he grows into adolescence. Innocence fades as he slowly becomes aware of hims
The original Hagakure contains the teachings of the samurai-turned-priest Jōchō Yamamoto (1659-1719), and was for generations preserved as moral and practical instructions for daimyo and samurai of Saga Han, a large domain in northwestern Kyushu. It lat
C'est en lisant La Vie du Marquis de Sade de Tatsuhiko Shibusa que pour moi, en tant qu'écrivain, se posa l'énigme de comprendre comment la marquise de Sade, qui avait montré tant de fidélité à son mari pendant ses longs emprisonnements, a pu l'aban
Dans le «bric-à-brac» de la société japonaise des années 60, les fantômes des ci-devant aristocrates hésitent encore à danser avec les premiers parvenus du miracle économique. Les rues sont pleines de jeunes filles qui n'en sont plus, de petits
"Taking us into the houses, streets, villages, cities - and hearts - of people around the globe, this exciting collection makes accessible a truly cross-cultural selection of important short fiction. Twenty-five contemporary stories from five cultures far
