Guides: Alumni Travel Reading: Insider's Japan

Kyoto

Old Kyoto by John Lowe
Call Number: DS897.K857 L68 2000
ISBN: 0195909402
Publication Date: 2000
This is an accessible and slim volume (only 70 pages!) giving readers an overview of the long history of Japan’s old capital of Kyoto. It covers Kyoto’s early history through the end of the Edo period and explains its culture and society in an engaging way, introducing court life, literature and arts, and the samurai class.
The Old Capital by Yasunari Kawabata; J. Martin Holman (Translator)
Call Number: PL832.A9 K613 1987
ISBN: 0865472785
Publication Date: 1987
Kawabata Yasunari was the first Japanese writer to win the Nobel Prize for literature, and The Old Capital was one of three novels cited by the committee in awarding the prize. In this novel, he tells the story of a young woman who is the daughter of a fabric wholesaler in Kyoto. It embodies the feel of the old city and traditional crafts and festivals in Kyoto, as well as telling a captivating story of a girl who questions her own origins.
Confronting Tradition: Contemporary Art from Kyoto by Samuel C. Morse
Call Number: N7357.K96 M67 2004
Publication Date: 2004
A fascinating introduction to the history of Kyoto and its art, and a good overview of several contemporary artists’ work. It covers a range of art types from installations and multimedia to painting and sculpture. This book is a catalog of an exhibition held at the Smith College Museum of Art in 2004.

Great East Japan Disasters, March 2011

Aftermath of tsunami with buildings destroyed and rubble in shallow water

Natori, Miyagi, by ChiefHira, via Wikimedia Commons

The 3/11 (March 2011) earthquake, tsunami, and reactor meltdown in northeast Japan reverberated through the nation, and continues to impact life today, including in politics and energy policy, community revitalization efforts, activism, and cultural works.

March Was Made of Yarn by Elmer Luke (Editor); David Karashima (Editor)
Call Number: PL782.E1 M29 2012
ISBN: 9780307948861
Publication Date: 2012
This book contains a number of short stories, as well as poetry and a comic, that are reactions by Japanese and foreign authors to the events of March 2011. Some were collected from a variety of literary magazines and others were written for the anthology, and are presented in translation here.
Waseda Bungaku Special Issue: Ruptured Fiction(s) of the Earthquake
Call Number: PL775 .W36 2012
ISBN: 4948717053
Publication Date: 2012
A collection of sixteen short stories written between March and September 2011 for the Waseda Bungaku Shinsai Charity Project. Conversations between authors are also included. Waseda Bungaku is a well-known literary magazine in Japan. This volume contains sixteen stories in English, two in Chinese, and two in Korean, as well as the original Japanese versions of all those that were translated.
No Man's Zone (film) by Fujiwara Toshi (dir.)
Call Number: DVD/PAL 021 835
Publication Date: 2013
This film documents the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster following the earthquake and tsunami that took place in March 2011.

No Man's Zone official trailer

Read a review of the flm from the Berlin Film Review

Insider's Japan

Mt. Fuji, by non-euclidean photography

Japan is rich with culture and history that becomes amplified with captivation when personally adventuring through the nation. Offering visitors the best of all ends of the spectrum, Japan allows travelers to relax during a serene walk through many of their colorful gardens and ancient paths, challenge Mt. Fuji on an unparalleled hike, and enjoy their proclaimed "geek life," within the district exemplifying the country's video-game and anime culture. In addition, visitors can explore history in real-time with the exploration of Hiroshima, and immersing oneself in past and present Japanese culture and customs.

Bibliographer

Selected and Annotated By:

Molly Des Jardin
Japanese Studies Librarian
mollydes@upenn.edu

For more information, visit the Penn Alumni Travel Website.

Geek Culture

Akihabara District at Night, by IQRemix

Train Man by Nakano Hitori
Call Number: PL873.5.A53 D4613 2006
ISBN: 1845293517
Publication Date: 2006
Train Man (Densha Otoko) is a story that originated as a series of forum posts on 2-channel, an online chat board popular in Japan. It is an adaptation of posts relating to a geek’s journey to ask out a stylish, elegant woman who he saved from a drunk man’s rude gestures on a train. Both the novel and the film cleverly use references to chat language and emoticons, and tell a heartwarming story that was extremely popular in Japan at the time. This novel was also adapted into a film, which is available at the Van Pelt Library.
Otaku Spaces by Patrick W. Galbraith; Androniki Christodoulou (Photographer)
Call Number: HM646 .G352 2012
ISBN: 9780984457656
Publication Date: 2012
A unique photo book showing interior spaces inhabited by “otaku,” or geeks, in Tokyo. It contains interviews with many otaku about their hobbies and collections, as well as their lifestyles, and includes photos of their rooms and items important to them. This book is a look inside a variety of interesting subcultures in existence in Tokyo.

Traveling to the Countryside

The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches by Matsuo Basho
Call Number: PL794.4 .A29
ISBN: 0140441859
Publication Date: 1967
This famed work of poetry and travel narrative documents Matsuo Bashō’s journey to the north of Japan on foot in the late 1600s. It is one of the great classics of premodern Japanese literature.
Okuribito (Departures) [film] by Takita Yōjirō (dir.)
Call Number: DVD 019 376
ISBN: 1417232919
Publication Date: 2008
This film is a heartwarming story of a man from the city who comes back to his hometown in a small town in the countryside to run his family’s funeral home business.
Japanese Inn by Oliver Statler
Call Number: TX941.M56 S7 1961
Publication Date: 1961
This book covers centuries of events in a Japanese inn in the countryside on the Tōkaidō road running from Edo (Tokyo) to western Japan (Kyoto and Osaka). Experience the Edo period (roughly 17th-19th centuries) through the people who passed through the inn and the family who ran it for hundreds of years.
The Sarashina Diary by Sonja Arntzen (Translator); Moriyuki Ito (Translator)
Call Number: PL789.S8 Z4713 2014
ISBN: 9780231167185
Publication Date: 2014
The “Sarashina Lady” (name unknown), daughter of a court noble in the Heian period (794-1185), traveled in the countryside outside of Kyoto and recorded the events of her life and her inner monologues in a diary respected as one of the classics of Japanese literature. In addition, she writes about acquiring and reading another great classic, The Tale of Genji, written at the time in the Heian court. This is a new translation of her diary along with commentary.

Japanese History

Lost Japan by Alex Kerr
Publication Date: 1996
Alex Kerr documents his thirty years in Japan, covering various cultural trends and experiences living as a foreigner, with a focus on environmental degradation and cultural disappearance that is the “hidden” side of contemporary Japan. This book was originally written in Japanese and won the Shinchō Gakugei Literature Prize. He now lives on the island of Shikoku in a small village and continues to write on Japan, in particular the book Dogs and Demons which continues the themes of Lost Japan.
Japan Before Perry by Conrad Totman
Call Number: DS835 .T58
ISBN: 0520041348
Publication Date: 1982
This is an accessible, classic work of Japanese history by a major figure in the field. Totman approaches Japan’s premodern history through the perspective of the environment and its influence on Japanese society. It gives a good overview of Japan’s long and complex history, from pre-history to aristocratic courts and through the military government, up to Commodore Matthew Perry’s visit to Japan in 1852.

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan

Read this book online through Hathitrust.org

Underground Tokyo

tokyo from the mori art museum, by non-euclidean photography

Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan by Jake Adelstein
Call Number: HV7113.5 .A34 2009
ISBN: 9780307378798
Publication Date: 2009
This memoir is a fascinating look into the daily life of an American reporter working for the largest newspaper in Japan, the Yomiuri Shinbun, and his experiences as a Japanese corporate employee – and, of course, on the vice and organized crime beats as a journalist. He pulls no punches about the nature of the content he covers, so this book is not for the faint of heart, but it’s full of valuable insights into the ways in which the media, police, and organized crime interact in Japan.
Tokyo Sonata (film) by Kurosawa Kiyoshi (dir.)
Call Number: DVD 022 651
ISBN: 1417233451
Publication Date: 2007
This film narrates the troubled life of a salary-man who has been downsized from his company and seeks to hide his unemployment from his family. It simultaneously focuses on his son, who wants more than anything to play the piano and does so on the sly to hide this un-manly activity from his father. Tokyo Sonata sensitively depicts the complexity of what it means to be a man in twenty-first-century Japan and issues of gender and family in contemporary life.

Enjoy Japan's Natural Beauty

Netherlands in Japan, by Agustin Rafael Reyes

Foreigners' Travels in Old Japan

Lafcadio Hearn, by Frederick Gutekunst, via Wikimedia Commons

These books offer accounts of travelers to Japan as it was modernizing in the late 1800s, providing valuable evidence of the ways in which early modern Japan was existing alongside Western influences. They give an interesting picture of Japanese daily life and customs in a time period vastly different from present day Japan.

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan by Lafcadio Hearn; Donald Richie (Foreword by); Ethel Longstreet
Call Number: DS809 .H43 2009
ISBN: 9784805310250
Publication Date: 2009
Lafcadio Hearn, who adopted the Japanese name Koizumi Yakumo, lived in Japan in the late 1800s and is famous for his translations of Japanese ghost stories such as Kwaidan. This book is some of his observations of less-frequented parts of Japan. Also available on HathiTrust.
Unbeaten Tracks in Japan by Isabella Bird
Call Number: DS809 .B612 1984
Publication Date: 1984
Isabella Bird wrote a number of travel narratives in the mid-to-late 1800s, including of Korea, China, and here, Japan.

Tokyo Sonata

Preview Tokyo Sonata at Youtube