First published in 1937 this is a collection of articles written by the author under the pseudonym 'Waseda Eisaku' for the Japan Tourist Bureau's magazine over twenty five years. Intended to satisfy the intellectual curiosity of cultivated tourists from abroad by giving the insider's view of all things Japanese, it was published as a book just before the outbreak of World War II. Writing in the first person, Katsumata becomes both guide and confidante, writing about his own travel experiences in Japan and about Japanese customs and practices that interest him, such as traditional incense ceremonies, or fishing with rod and creel. This personal approach results in an unusual selection of topics and itineraries including tray landscapes, old Japanese clocks, hot springs, Japanese humour, sumo wrestling, pines in Japanese scenery, the Japanese sun flag and Buddhist temple bells. The author not only describes, but draws the reader into his own experiences - his joy on buying an antiquarian book he cannot really afford, the monotony he feels when travelling too long through snowy landscapes, the delight he takes in telling you that the best bait for carp fishing is sweet potato. Katsumata's unconventional choice of subjects and his informal and individualistic writing style make this a refreshingly different guide to Japan, and a valuable record of the period in which it was written.

Provides an invaluable and very accessible addition to existing biographic sources and references, not least because of the supporting biographies of major writers and the historical and cultural notes provided.

Renaissance in Japan is a superb survey of Japan's literary giants—forerunners of today's modern Japanese writers. Called the "Kyoto epoch," the age in which these writers lived was the period in which Japanese cultural development made many of its greatest advances. In these years of the early Tokugawa era, the old aristocratic culture was confronted with the new plebeian awakening, giving rise to dynamic social developments, in effect a peaceful revolution. The humanistic movement that emerged during this period is epitomized in and popular arts and letters by such famous figures as Basho, the pilgrim poet; Saikaku, novelist of the gilded age, and Chikamatsu, Japan's greatest playwright. In that stirring period Basho wrote such undying poetry as: "The lark sings through the long spring day, but never enough for its heart's content." Saikaku noted that "love is darkness, but in the land of love the darkest night is bright as noon." Chikamatsu wrote wisely that "art is something which lies in the slender margin between the real and the unreal." In Japan it was the beginning of the end of the feudal Dark Ages—even though the political ramifications would not be manifest until the advent of the Meiji Restoration.

List of transactions, v. 1-41 in v. 41.

"An elegiac prose celebration . . . a classic in its genre."—Publishers Weekly In this acclaimed travel memoir, Donald Richie paints a memorable portrait of the island-studded Inland Sea. His existential ruminations on food, culture, and love and his brilliant descriptions of life and landscape are a window into an Old Japan that has now nearly vanished. Included are the twenty black and white photographs by Yoichi Midorikawa that accompanied the original 1971 edition. Donald Richie (1924-2013) was an internationally recognized expert on Japanese culture and film. Yoichi Midorikawa (1915-2001) was one of Japan's foremost nature photographers.