Equipped with a needle and a rice bowl, Issun Bãoshi, an inch-tall boy, leaves home for the city and finds work as the companion to a nobleman's daughter, whom he uses his wits to save from a gigantic ogre.

Children will love the ancient tale of Issun Boshi, a one-inch-tall boy who falls in love with a princess, slays a monster, and, through the power of a magical hammer, returns to normal size.

Read--in Japanese--about a tiny, yet brave samurai who ends up saving a princess and seeing his wish come true. The second story is the famous moon-princess Kaguya, who was found in a bamboo stalk. Kaguya-hime is one of the oldest Japanese tales and perhaps the world’s first science fiction story. Yes, you can read real Japanese—even if you are just starting out in Japanese. Perfect for beginning and upper beginning students of Japanese who have mastered hiragana and know basic Japanese grammar and sentence structure. This affordable Japanese reader contains two complete stories of very famous Japanese traditional tales. PLUS! Get FREE Sound Files of the stories read by a native Japanese speaker. Listen while reading. Each story has a slow and normal speed recording. The link is found on the last page. • All Japanese have furigana • Two full traditional Japanese stories: Inch-high Samurai and Princess Kaguya • Every sentence is broken down word-for-word and with explanation of the grammar. • The full story in Japanese only (without the running gloss) is also provided so you can practice reading without interruption. • Finally, we have included a simple and mostly literal English translation for you to check your understanding (Don’t cheat! Work through the Japanese first!). • Download the FREE sound files to listen while you study. • Download FREE Anki flashcard decks to learn all the vocabulary found in the stories While beginners to Japanese can get a lot from this, hiragana knowledge and understanding of basic Japanese grammar and sentence structure is required. Finally, we invite the reader to contact us with questions or requests for future Japanese readers. You will find our personal email addresses in the book. To your Japanese!

These are classic Japanese fairy tales, retold in a lively rhyming style with accompanying classic illustrations to appeal to both children and adults. The charming stories revolve around the timeless themes of love, bravery, and faithfulness. Urashima and the Kingdom Beneath the Sea is the story of a young fisherman who discovers a magical kingdom and of what happens when he finally returns to earth. The Inch-high Samurai, a Japanese cross between Tom Thumb and The Beauty and the Beast, is the story of a tiny but brave warrior who vanquishes monsters and wins the love of a beautiful woman.

A groundbreaking history that considers the attack on Pearl Harbor from the Japanese perspective and is certain to revolutionize how we think of the war in the Pacific. When Japan launched hostilities against the United States in 1941, argues Eri Hotta, its leaders, in large part, understood they were entering a war they were almost certain to lose. Drawing on material little known to Western readers, and barely explored in depth in Japan itself, Hotta poses an essential question: Why did these men—military men, civilian politicians, diplomats, the emperor—put their country and its citizens so unnecessarily in harm’s way? Introducing us to the doubters, schemers, and would-be patriots who led their nation into this conflagration, Hotta brilliantly shows us a Japan rarely glimpsed—eager to avoid war but fraught with tensions with the West, blinded by reckless militarism couched in traditional notions of pride and honor, tempted by the gambler’s dream of scoring the biggest win against impossible odds and nearly escaping disaster before it finally proved inevitable. In an intimate account of the increasingly heated debates and doomed diplomatic overtures preceding Pearl Harbor, Hotta reveals just how divided Japan’s leaders were, right up to (and, in fact, beyond) their eleventh-hour decision to attack. We see a ruling cadre rich in regional ambition and hubris: many of the same leaders seeking to avoid war with the United States continued to adamantly advocate Asian expansionism, hoping to advance, or at least maintain, the occupation of China that began in 1931, unable to end the second Sino-Japanese War and unwilling to acknowledge Washington’s hardening disapproval of their continental incursions. Even as Japanese diplomats continued to negotiate with the Roosevelt administration, Matsuoka Yosuke, the egomaniacal foreign minister who relished paying court to both Stalin and Hitler, and his facile supporters cemented Japan’s place in the fascist alliance with Germany and Italy—unaware (or unconcerned) that in so doing they destroyed the nation’s bona fides with the West. We see a dysfunctional political system in which military leaders reported to both the civilian government and the emperor, creating a structure that facilitated intrigues and stoked a jingoistic rivalry between Japan’s army and navy. Roles are recast and blame reexamined as Hotta analyzes the actions and motivations of the hawks and skeptics among Japan’s elite. Emperor Hirohito and General Hideki Tojo are newly appraised as we discover how the two men fumbled for a way to avoid war before finally acceding to it. Hotta peels back seventy years of historical mythologizing—both Japanese and Western—to expose all-too-human Japanese leaders torn by doubt in the months preceding the attack, more concerned with saving face than saving lives, finally drawn into war as much by incompetence and lack of political will as by bellicosity. An essential book for any student of the Second World War, this compelling reassessment will forever change the way we remember those days of infamy.

Introduces a versatile world of meatless, dairy-free dishes built on whole-food ingredients and includes recipes for dressings.

A kind old woodcutter and his greedy neighbor are appropriately rewarded for their deeds.

This collection of Japanese fairy tales is the outcome of a suggestion made to me indirectly through a friend by Mr. Andrew Lang. They have been translated from the modern version written by Sadanami Sanjin. These stories are not literal translations, and though the Japanese story and all quaint Japanese expressions have been faithfully preserved, they have been told more with the view to interest young readers of the West than the technical student of folk-lore.... In telling these stories in English I have followed my fancy in adding such touches of local color or description as they seemed to need or as pleased me, and in one or two instances I have gathered in an incident from another version. At all times, among my friends, both young and old, English or American, I have always found eager listeners to the beautiful legends and fairy tales of Japan, and in telling them I have also found that they were still unknown to the vast majority...

Covers the art of war, focusing on the psychology and physics of lethal assault and decisive victory as the essence of warfare.