The following list of books are must reads for those who are interested in Japanese culture, anime, and manga. This list focuses on important events and sections of Japanese culture that anime doesn’t examine.
Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II by Yuki Tanaka
Tanaka examines little-discussed crimes against humanity Japan did against Chinese and other people during World War II. While the Nazi war crimes are well known, Japan’s crimes were no less heinous. In labs nestled in Manchuria, Japanese doctors conducted human medical experiments in order to find cures for diseases afflicting Japanese troops. Like the Nazis, many Japanese viewed Chinese and other prisoners of war as subhuman, subjecting them to bioweapons and other experiments. Tanaka’s book is a difficult read, and relentless in its descriptions of massacres, rapes, executions, and death marches. But for those who have only a positive view of Japan and Japanese history, this book is a necessary read.
Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan by Lafcadio Hearn
Hearn sits at the foundation of Western Japan studies. His work, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, provides a summary of the culture he encountered, its stories, and its practices. It remains useful for research despite how it reflects the Orientalism of Hearn’s time. The Western view of Japan is as interesting as the details Hearn accounts. Hearn doesn’t fall as deeply into Orientalism as other writers from the time did, fortunately. Despite its age and writing style, it remains readable and interesting with its breadth.
Geisha: The Secret History of a Vanishing World by Lesley Downer
Downer’s book provides an inside look at the world and history of geisha. First published in 2000, the book examines a world that is only vanishing faster thanks to COVID-19 and other modern pressures. Downer digs into the practices, the relationships, and the loneliness many geisha and maiko feel. She also reveals home life, tea parties, and the business of living as a geisha. This is one of the few inside accounts of a world that is quickly disappearing, and its culture along with it.
Autobiography of a Geisha by Saya Masuda
Published in 1953, Masuda explains her life as “half a lifetime of pain and struggle” as a hot spring geisha. A hot spring geisha sits on the bottom of the geisha class division (with Gion sitting on top). Sold into the profession at 12 years old, she is one of the women who sat on the line dividing prostitutes and geisha. Sometimes she crossed from one to the other in order to survive. As a hot spring geisha, more often than note, sex at the end of the evening was expected. Whereas, Downer examines the top tiers of the geisha world, Masuda lived at the bottom. Masuda’s autobiography offers a quiet, sad counterbalance to the glamorous and mysterious world of geisha we in the West know.
Kitsune, Japan’s Fox of Mystery, Romance, and Humor by Kiyoshi Nozaki
I debated about adding Kitsune to this list because it is hard to find. It’s been out of print for decades, and it isn’t easy to find online. However, it is one of the best summaries of the Japanese fox I’ve found. Nozaki goes into detail about the origin of the word kitsune, the origin of the stories, and traces the development of the literature over time. This book serves as the foundation for my own book about kitsune, Come and Sleep: The Folklore of the Japanese Fox. Nozaki explains the characteristics of the Japanese fox, her relationship with Inari, and more. If you find Nozaki’s book in a thrift store, be certain to buy it!
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I can suggest many, many other books fans of anime, manga, and Japanese culture should read. Hiroko Yoda’s fun book Yokai Attack! is a great afternoon read. Japanese Mind edited by Roger Davies and Osamu Ikeno provides an academic look at Japanese culture. Of course, I also recommend Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn and the beautiful, cold novel Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata. Snow Country compliments Masuda’s autobiography. Of course, if you want to dive deep, read the Tale of Genji, but I don’t recommend reading that work casually.
But I also have to say you should read books about Chinese culture to get a better handle on Japan’s early history. Chinese culture influenced Japan for centuries, with works like Sun Tzu’s Art of War folding into later bushido thought.
As a librarian, I urge you to turn to books for deeper understanding of complex topics like Japanese history or even manga. Online articles can’t go into depth like a book can. Sadly, online reading has eroded our ability to focus. I struggle with focus too nowadays despite being an avid reader. Fortunately, focus is a mental muscle that strengthens with use. So if you feel your mind wondering as you read a book, remember that practicing focus will make it easier. Also don’t beat yourself up about it. That only leads to discouragement, and discouragement will make you stop reading. It helps to put your phone away–not just silence it. Put it in a different room or even leave it at home. Phones erode our ability to focus more than other other device. Your ability to read decreases when a phone is around.
If you limit your information intake to newspapers and books–as strange as it seems to those of us who are always plugged into the Internet–your ability to process that information improves. The human mind has hard limits. Multitasking isn’t possible; it’s merely an illusion. You can only process so much incoming data, and that data is measured, to borrow a computer term, in bytes and kilobytes, not in the gigabytes or petabytes of information we are exposed to each day. Most of all, stop using social media. Few of us can limit our use of it to a healthy level (such as once a day for 10 minutes or once a week) because of how it’s designed. Social media kills your ability to focus. If you want to learn more about this, read Stolen Focus by Johann Hari. I will likely write a more in-depth article about this. Focus is critical because it is life. What you focus upon is what you live, and if you can’t focus for more than a few seconds….you can’t truly live.
If you make a reading list for fans of Japan, what books would you add?
I would highly recommend Alan Booth’s “The Roads to Sata.” This gentleman spent four months walking all the way from Cape Soya on the very northernmost point of Japan all the way to the southernmost tip. He made this journey starting in the early summer of 1977. Even though he had plenty of opportunities to hitch rides, he still chose to walk and write about his observations of the Japanese countryside. I loved the book because it gives one a sense of what traveling was like before cellphones, wi-fi, and mobile internet. Plus, as someone that really enjoys walking, I was intrigued by how he managed to walk over 2,000 miles braving unpredictable weather. “The Roads to Sata” is definitely a classic in the travelogue genre.
They definitely had that in common. The biggest difference is that Booth wrote prose, while Basho wrote haiku. No doubt, Booth was inspired by Basho to some extent.
I think you’ve managed two articles here: some good sources of information on Japanese culture, and advocating for the value of focus as expressed in the reading of an actual book.
In both regards, I’ll suggest an academic text that one might use to set up a general foundation upon which to dig deeper into a specific aspect: the Cambridge University Press, “The Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese Culture”. It’s relatively dry, academic reading; but it’s also broken up into several short, concise entry points into each topic. (replace the “[DOT]”) doi[DOT]org/10.1017/CCOL9780521880473
Conversely, I’m drawn to “Genji Monogatari” as a broad entry into the feel of the underlying Japanese cultural ethos that arose from the fusion of Chinese values with Japanese pragmatism. But as you suggest, it’s something that needs to be read with a great deal of understanding, both historically and contextually. There are many annotated versions and companions to the story (even manga); but I can’t recommend anything in particular. However, if you can walk away from it with a deeper grasp of its meaning, then you’ll probably also understand the two opposing manifestations of the Japanese psyche: the extraordinary result of individual focus, versus the simultaneous subjugation the individual into a soulless, cultural mass-experience.
Worth mentioning in this regard is that Yosano Akiko, who first fully translated the most commonly used version of Genji Monogatari from its archaic Heian form, likely contributed much to its underlying feel. The text has been translated by others, most notably by Fumiko Enchi, and by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, each with their own variations on its interpretation.
Yes, I went a bit off-topic at the end of the article during my rewrite :). Thanks for your suggestions! My copy of “Genji Monogatari” is Jun’ichiro Tanizaki’s translation. It is amazing how fresh the world’s first novel still feels despite the difficulty of reading between the lines. Translators are often co-writers because of the differences in language. This is even the case when you are reworking a text written in an older version of a language.
thanks for info.
You’re welcome!
I would highly recommend Alan Booth’s “The Roads to Sata.” This gentleman spent four months walking all the way from Cape Soya on the very northernmost point of Japan all the way to the southernmost tip. He made this journey starting in the early summer of 1977. Even though he had plenty of opportunities to hitch rides, he still chose to walk and write about his observations of the Japanese countryside. I loved the book because it gives one a sense of what traveling was like before cellphones, wi-fi, and mobile internet. Plus, as someone that really enjoys walking, I was intrigued by how he managed to walk over 2,000 miles braving unpredictable weather. “The Roads to Sata” is definitely a classic in the travelogue genre.
Oh! I definitely need to give that one a read. It sounds like he tapped into Basho’s travel writing tradition.
They definitely had that in common. The biggest difference is that Booth wrote prose, while Basho wrote haiku. No doubt, Booth was inspired by Basho to some extent.
I think you’ve managed two articles here: some good sources of information on Japanese culture, and advocating for the value of focus as expressed in the reading of an actual book.
In both regards, I’ll suggest an academic text that one might use to set up a general foundation upon which to dig deeper into a specific aspect: the Cambridge University Press, “The Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese Culture”. It’s relatively dry, academic reading; but it’s also broken up into several short, concise entry points into each topic. (replace the “[DOT]”)
doi[DOT]org/10.1017/CCOL9780521880473
Conversely, I’m drawn to “Genji Monogatari” as a broad entry into the feel of the underlying Japanese cultural ethos that arose from the fusion of Chinese values with Japanese pragmatism. But as you suggest, it’s something that needs to be read with a great deal of understanding, both historically and contextually. There are many annotated versions and companions to the story (even manga); but I can’t recommend anything in particular. However, if you can walk away from it with a deeper grasp of its meaning, then you’ll probably also understand the two opposing manifestations of the Japanese psyche: the extraordinary result of individual focus, versus the simultaneous subjugation the individual into a soulless, cultural mass-experience.
Worth mentioning in this regard is that Yosano Akiko, who first fully translated the most commonly used version of Genji Monogatari from its archaic Heian form, likely contributed much to its underlying feel. The text has been translated by others, most notably by Fumiko Enchi, and by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, each with their own variations on its interpretation.
Yes, I went a bit off-topic at the end of the article during my rewrite :). Thanks for your suggestions! My copy of “Genji Monogatari” is Jun’ichiro Tanizaki’s translation. It is amazing how fresh the world’s first novel still feels despite the difficulty of reading between the lines. Translators are often co-writers because of the differences in language. This is even the case when you are reworking a text written in an older version of a language.