Japan Focus

Translated by Ivan Morris As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams is a unique autobiography in which the anonymous writer known as Lady Sarashina intersper...

translated by Howard Hibbett The successful writer Oki has reached middle age and is filled with regrets. He returns to Kyoto to find Otoko, a youn...

Despite years of stagnation, Japan remains one of the world's largest economies and a country which exerts a remarkable cultural fascination. David...

'What Japan was she owed to the samurai. They were not only the flower of the nation, but its root as well.' Inazo Nitobe's book, the most influent...

Ineko has lost the ability to see things. At first it was a ping-pong ball, then it was her fiancé. The doctors call it 'body blindness', and she i...

Fumio Sasaki is a writer in his thirties who lives in a tiny studio in Tokyo with three shirts, four pairs of trousers, four pairs of socks and not...

It is told through the eyes of people who greeted this change not with the confidence and grasping ambition of Japan's modernizers and nationalists...

In this collection of classic ghost stories from Japan, beautiful princesses turn out to be frogs, paintings come alive, deadly spectral brides hau...

Translated by Stephen Dodd When Hanio Yamada realises the future holds little of worth to him, he puts his life for sale in a Tokyo newspaper, thus...

An enchanting and fascinating insight into Japanese landscape, culture, history and future. Originally written in Japanese, this passionate, vividl...

In this short introduction to Zen Buddhism, a practising Japanese monk shares the many lessons he has learned from life inside a temple. With charm...

All eyes are upon Rikio. And he likes it, mostly. His fans cheer from a roped-off section, screaming and yelling to attract his attention. They wou...

Translated by Michael Brase The daily lives of ordinary people are replete with objects, common things used in commonplace settings. These objects ...

This is a celebration of the Japanese short story from its modern origins in the nineteenth century to remarkable contemporary works. It includes t...

One sunny spring morning in the 1970s, an unlikely Englishman set out on a pilgrimage that would take him across the entire length of Japan. Travel...

In 1613 the missionary Father Pedro Velasco's dream comes true. For the first time, the Japanese are going to cross the Pacific Ocean. And he is go...

Ogata Shingo is growing old, and his memory is failing him. At night he hears only the sound of death in the distant rumble from the mountain. The ...

translated by Edward G. Seidensticker Kikuji has been invited to a tea ceremony by a mistress of his dead father. He is shocked to find there the m...

These are unique stories of timeless wisdom and understanding from the Zen Masters. With rich and fascinating tales of swords, tigers, tea, flowers...