History:

Shutting Out the Sun
How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation
Written by Michael Zielenziger

Format: eBook, 352 pages
On Sale: May 6, 2009
Price: $14.95

The world’s second-wealthiest country, Japan once seemed poised to overtake America. But its failure to recover from the economic collapse of the early 1990s was unprecedented, and today it confronts an array of disturbing social trends. Japan has the highest suicide rate and lowest birthrate of all industrialized countries, and a... Read more >

The Great Wave
Gilded Age Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics, and the Opening of Old Japan
Written by Christopher Benfey

Format: eBook, 352 pages
On Sale: December 18, 2007
Price: $16.00

When the United States entered the Gilded Age after the Civil War, argues cultural historian Christopher Benfey, the nation lost its philosophical moorings and looked eastward to “Old Japan,” with its seemingly untouched indigenous culture, for balance and perspective. Japan, meanwhile, was trying to reinvent itself as a more cosmopolitan, modern... Read more >

Shutting Out the Sun
How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation
Written by Michael Zielenziger

Format: Trade Paperback, 352 pages
On Sale: September 4, 2007
Price: $14.95

The world's second-wealthiest country, Japan once seemed poised to overtake America as the leading global economic powerhouse. But the country failed to recover from the staggering economic collapse of the early 1990s. Today it confronts an array of disturbing social trends, notably a population of more than one million hikikomori: the... Read more >

Wrong About Japan

Written by Peter Carey

Format: Trade Paperback, 176 pages
On Sale: January 3, 2006
Price: $11.95

When Peter Carey offered to take his son to Japan, 12-year-old Charley stipulated no temples or museums. He wanted to see manga, anime, and cool, weird stuff. His father said yes. Out of that bargain comes this enchanting tour of the mansion of Japanese culture, as entered through its garish, brightly... Read more >

Inventing Japan
1853-1964
Written by Ian Buruma

Format: Trade Paperback, 208 pages
On Sale: November 9, 2004
Price: $12.95

In a single short book as elegant as it is wise, Ian Buruma makes sense of the most fateful span of Japan’s history, the period that saw as dramatic a transformation as any country has ever known. In the course of little more than a hundred years from the day Commodore... Read more >

The Great Wave
Gilded Age Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics, and the Opening of Old Japan
Written by Christopher Benfey

Format: Trade Paperback, 352 pages
On Sale: August 10, 2004
Price: $16.00

When the United States entered the Gilded Age after the Civil War, argues cultural historian Christopher Benfey, the nation lost its philosophical moorings and looked eastward to “Old Japan,” with its seemingly untouched indigenous culture, for balance and perspective. Japan, meanwhile, was trying to reinvent itself as a more cosmopolitan, modern... Read more >

Inventing Japan
1853-1964
Written by Ian Buruma

Format: eBook
On Sale: February 4, 2003
Price: $12.95

In a single short book as elegant as it is wise, Ian Buruma makes sense of the most fateful span of Japan’s history, the period that saw as dramatic a transformation as any country has ever known. In the course of little more than a hundred years from the day Commodore... Read more >

Women of the Pleasure Quarters
The Secret History of the Geisha
Written by Lesley Downer

Format: Trade Paperback, 304 pages
On Sale: April 9, 2002
Price: $15.95

Ever since Westerners arrived in Japan, they have been intrigued by Japanese womanhood and, above all, by geisha. This fascination has spawned a wealth of extraordinary fictional creations, from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly to Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha. But as denizens of a world defined by silence and mystery, real... Read more >

Women of the Pleasure Quarters
The Secret History of the Geisha
Written by Lesley Downer

Format: eBook, 304 pages
On Sale: January 8, 2002
Price: $15.95

From critically acclaimed author and Japanese scholar Lesley Downer, an enchanting portrait of the mysterious world of the geisha.

Ever since Westerners arrived in Japan, they have been intrigued by Japanese womanhood and, above all, by geisha. This fascination has spawned a wealth of extraordinary fictional creations, from Puccini's Madama Butterfly to... Read more >

The Yamato Dynasty
The Secret History of Japan's Imperial Family
Written by Sterling Seagrave and Peggy Seagrave

Format: Trade Paperback, 424 pages
On Sale: August 14, 2001
Price: $23.00

In The Yamato Dynasty, Sterling Seagrave, who divulged the secrets of Mao Tse-tung and the ruthlessness of Chiang Kai-shek in the New York Times bestseller The Soong Dynasty, and his wife and longtime collaborator, Peggy, present the controversial, never-before-told history of the world’s longest-reigning dynasty–the Japanese imperial family–from its nineteenth-century origins... Read more >

Underground
The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche
Written by Haruki Murakami

Format: Trade Paperback, 384 pages
On Sale: April 10, 2001
Price: $14.95

From Haruki Murakami, internationally acclaimed author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Norwegian Wood, a work of literary journalism that is as fascinating as it is necessary, as provocative as it is profound.

In March of 1995, agents of a Japanese religious cult attacked the Tokyo subway system with sarin, a gas... Read more >

Tokyo Underworld
The Fast Times and Hard Life of an American Gangster in Japan
Written by Robert Whiting

Format: Trade Paperback, 400 pages
On Sale: September 26, 2000
Price: $15.00

"A fascinating look at some fascinating people who show how democracy advances hand in hand with crime in Japan."--Mario Puzo

In this unorthodox chronicle of the rise of Japan, Inc., Robert Whiting, author of You Gotta Have Wa, gives us a fresh perspective on the economic miracle and near disaster that is... Read more >