Mimi considers herself to be TJa typical Japanese person. At thirty years old, she has earned a masters degree in social work and has been making coffee for eight years at Doutor, a Japanese chain of coffee houses. Shes sure she could get a better job if she tried, but she still wonders if shes wasting her life. Having saved enough money, Mimi embarks on a vacation to Paris, Francea holiday that turns her life upside down. While experiencing Frances art and culture, she meets Eddie, a Frenchmen enamored with all things Japanese. Though from different cultures and different worlds, the two fall in love, and Eddie returns with Mimi to Japan. But what promises to transform her life is her contact with all things Chinese. This growing dragon of a country threatens to swallow up its Asian neighbors, like Japan. Could China be the source of opportunity and fulfillment that Mimi is looking for? Mimi Tokyo Paris follows Mimi as she makes her life choices against the backdrop of her relationships; her story provides an introspective look at the Japanese culture and way of life.

A discussion of one of the great interpreters of Japan. The Japanese have always revered Hearn and this book shows the West why he is revered. Experts look at his writings and discuss his integrity as an observer and interpreter of Japan and the Japanese.

This edition makes available once again Thunberg’s extraordinary writings on Japan, complete with illustrations, a full introduction and annotations. Carl Peter Thunberg, pupil and successor of Linnaeus – of the great fathers of modern science – spent eighteen fascinating months in the notoriously inaccessible Japan in 1775-1776, and this is his story. Thunberg studied at Uppsala University in Sweden where he was a favourite student of the great Linnaeus, father of modern scientific classification. He determined to travel the world and enlisted as a physician with the Dutch East India Company. He arrived in Japan in the summer of 1775 and stayed for eighteen months. He observed Japan widely, and travelled to Edo (modern Tokyo) where he became friends with the shogun’s private physician, Katsuragawa Hoshû, a fine Scholar and a notorious rake. They maintained a correspondence even after Thunberg had returned to his homeland. Thunberg’s ‘Travels’ appeared in English in 1795 and until now has never been reprinted. Fully annotated and introduced by Timon Screech.

Isaac Titsingh was intermittently head of the Japan factory (trading station) of the Dutch East India Company 1780-94. He was a career merchant, but unusual in having a classical education and training as a physician. His impact in Japan was enormous, but he left disappointed in the ability of the country to embrace change. After many years in Java, India and China, he came to London, and then settled in Paris where he devoted himself to compiling translations of prime Japanese texts. It is one of the most exciting anthologies of the period and reveals the almost unknown world of eighteenth-century Japan, discussing politics, history, poetry and rituals. The Illustrations of Japan appeared posthumously in 1821-1822 in English, French and Dutch. This fully annotated edition makes the original English version available for the first time in nearly two centuries

Vol. for 1859-1893 includes a facsimile reprint of: Léon Pagès, Bibliographie japonaise dated 1859; vol. for 1894-1906 includes a supplement to Léon Pagès' Bibliographie japonaise and a list of the Swedish literature on Japan by Miss Valfrid Palmgren.

Taking mainly Japanese and other Asian case studies as examples, Ogino examines the motivations behind the preservation of objects and sites considered to be of cultural significance. Using mainly the perspectives of Japanese approaches to cultural heritage, the book critiques the European logic of cultural heritage enshrined by UNESCO. It contrasts a Western emphasis on monuments and sites, with an Asian emphasis on more intangible forms of heritage, which place less emphasis on a linear view of time. More practically, the authors also analyse the positive and negative impacts that UNESCO-listed status has had on sites in Asia, including Angkor Wat, Nagasaki, and Lijiang. Finally, they address fundamental questions about who gets to decide what counts as cultural heritage, and what the underlying rationale is for actively preserving heritage in the first place. This books is a thoughtful and provocative analysis of issues that will be of interest to sociologists, as well as scholars and students of cultural heritage.