Describes many things which originated in Japan, including inventions, art, food, fashion, furniture, toys, animals, musical instruments, and sports.

When the United States entered the Gilded Age after the Civil War 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 state, ultimately transforming itself, in the course of twenty-five years, from a feudal backwater to an international power. This great wave of historical...

In this newly revised edition of their classic work, Mason and Caiger trace the enthralling evolution of modern Japan from its early pre-history through the post-Cold War period to the collapse of the Bubble Economy in the early 1990s. New findings shed additional light on the origins of Japanese civilization and the birth of Japanese culture. Not merely a chronology of wars, imperial successions, and treaties, A History of Japan provides an in-depth...

"The Bells of Old Tokyo is a remarkable literary debut by Anna Sherman that is an elegant and insightful tour of Tokyo and its residents, as well as a meditation on Japanese culture and society. The book is structured around Anna's search for the eight lost bells that once surrounded the city. These bells marked the city's neighborhoods and kept time for its inhabitants before the introduction of Western-style clocks. The bells are tangible vestiges...