Best Books on Japan

This is one of the few books with the word "samurai" in the title that describes the samurai as they really were rather than glamorizing their supposed "code" which was not even articulated until the 17th century--when the advancement of peace throughout the land had already vanquished the samurai from their proper role as warriors.

Father Heinrich Dumoulin, the author of this detailed overview of Japanese Zen Buddhism, approached his subject from a surprising angle in that he was a Catholic priest. Nevertheless, he was regarded as one of the world's foremost Zen scholars when he passed away in 1995, at the age of 90.

First published in 1990 and reissued in 2005 with an updated forward, this history was his crowning achievement. It is the most comprehensive history of Zen (together with a seperate volume on the history of Zen in India and China) available in English. At the same time, it is not just a dry accounting of names and dates; being a religious man, Father Dumoulin approaches his subject with a profound respect for the spirituality inherent in one of the world's great religions, but thankfully without the obsequious awe and mystification that mar many other publications available on the topic of Zen Buddhism.

This book is a very readable translation of Taira Shigesuke's Bushido Shoshinshu, or Bushido for Beginners. Taira Shigesuke was born in 1639, one year after the implementation of Japan's national isolation policy, so he was a warrior without any wars to fight. Even so, neither he nor his translator, Thomas Cleary, glamorize the samurai. Actually, I'll let Mr. Cleary explain his book himself. Here's an excerpt from the introduction:

"In many respects, whether at home or interacting with outsiders, one of the most powerful cumulative and residual influences of history on the Japanese culture and mentality, even to the present day, has been the extraordinarily long duration of military rule in Japan...This handbook, written after five hundred years of military rule in Japan, was composed to provide practical and moral instruction for warriors, correcting wayward tendencies and outlining the personal, social and professional standards of conduct characteristic of Bushido, or the way of the warrior, the Japanese chivalric tradition...The Code of The Samurai presents a remarkably faithful mirror of many of the characteristics and habits of modern-day Japanese civilization, representing as it does a core tradition of longstanding prestige and power. Personal responsibilities, familial relations, public duties, education, finance, ethics, and so on...Even the forms of professional and political incompetence and corruption with which Japan struggles today are described with uncanny accuracy in this 300-year-old-book, so deeply did the military modes of rule that spawned them strike roots in Japanese society. This handbook is thus an essential resource for all who wish to understand Japan and the Japanese people realistically."

Soul of the Samurai is a must-read for anyone interested in martial arts. In this slim volume, Thomas Cleary has included his very readable translations of Martial Arts: The Book Of Family Traditions, and The Inscrutable Sublety Of Immovable Wisdom by Yagyu Munemori (1571-1646), and Tai-A Ki: Notes On The Peerless Sword by Zen Master Takuan Soho(1573-1645).

"As you can see by their birth and death dates, the authors were almost exact contemporaries. They lived in interesting times, seeing in their lifetimes the transition from Japan's so-called "Warring State Period" to an era of relative security under the stable, albeit draconian, rule of the first Tokugawa Shogun. Yagyu Munenori was employed as the shogun's sword teacher and chief of the secret police, while Takuan Soho was Zen mentor to the emperor.

Both were learned men, so they naturally make reference to ancient Chinese Taoist texts, Sun-tzu's The Art of War, and other writings that are obscure to most readers today. Fortunately for us, Thomas Cleary understands these references and explains them clearly and succinctly in his annotations--which appear literally on every page--transforming what would otherwise seem to be cryptic musings into lucid expositions on how the martial artist, through Zen, becomes the ideal warrior. Thomas Cleary's annotation follows-up this excerpt from Martial Arts: The Book Of Family Traditions, in italics:

"To learn all the sword strokes, the physical postures, and to focus the eyes, to learn and to practice it, is the meaning of consummating knowledge. Then when you have succeeded in learning, when everything you've learned disappears from your concious mind and you've become innocent, this is the meaning of perfecting things.
When you have perfected all sorts of excercises and built up achievement in cultivation of learning and practice, even as your hands, feet, and body act it does not hang on your mind. You are detached from your learning, and yet do not deviate from your learning. Your action is free whatever you do.
At this time there's no telling where your mind is--not even the celestial devil, or outsiders either, can spy into your heart. The learning is for the purpose of reaching this state. Once you have learned this successfully, learning disappears.
This is the ultimate sense and the progressive transcendentalism of all Zen arts. Forgetting learning, relinquishing mind completely, harmonizing without any subjective awareness of it, is the consummation of the Way. This stage is a matter of entering from learning into freedom from learning.

Here the swordmaster is alluding to the stage of accomplishment known in Zen as mindlessness. The image of being inaccessible is a classic Zen motif, taken directly from Zen literature. In Zen psycho-cosmology, the celestial devil stands for the conceptual consciousness. It is called celestial because this devil inhabits the 'heaven of command of others' emanations,' which symbolizes conceptual manipulation of information of the senses and perceptions.
The term 'outsiders' in Zen parlance refers to attachments to external objects, including abstract objects such as doctrines, philosophies, or conceptual interpretations of experience in general. In Buddhist terms, the process of getting to this transcendence is called 'learning,' while the result, competence beyond conceptual manipulation and interpretation, is called 'freedom from learning'."

The author put this wonderful collection of some of Japan's most famous fairy tales together in 1903. The stories themselves are of course much older than that, but many of them, like "Momotaro", "My Lord Bag of Rice", "Urashima Taro", and "Kintaro", are still often referred to by Japanese people today. If you want to know what your Japanese friends are talking about when they reference certain folk tales, I recommend getting this book.

This book is fairly heavy-going, but I think it's important because it points out how often assumptions about Japan are based on "tatemae" rather than objective reality. "Tatemae" is often translated as "principle" or "facade" but I usually explain it as being like the parable "The Emperor's New Clothes"--but absent the little boy who points out that the Emperor is parading down the street buck-naked. Here is an excerpt from the introduction:

... "It was only from the 1760s, I contend, that this space became object-based, and the manner in which a 'Japanese culture' was materialized is our theme. What was willed then continues to be influential, perhaps even fundamentally disciplines our sense of what Japan is, to this day. Those who work in the field of Japanese cultural history today are, I think, often unaware of how many of their assumptions derive from an enclosure established just two centuries ago, and part of my intention is to bring this issue to the fore."

Ernest Satow came to Japan in 1862, nine years after it was forcibly opened up to the outside world by Commander Perry's "black ships." He stayed for twenty-one years, during which time he was an observant and reliable witness to Japan's transition from a hermit kingdom at the furthest edge of the Far East, to a nation-state bent on modernizing itself in order to escape the fate of so many of its neighbors: colonization by the Western powers.

This is a fun book. Basil Chamberlain was a contemporary of Ernest Satow's, and no less perspicacious, but certainly more opinionated. He worked on this tome for years, constantly updating it. The result is an idiosyncratic but fascinating encyclopedia of the early Meiji period.
This is a book not to be read exactly, but rather to be kept at eye level on the bookshelf, or on the bedstand, and browsed through at random from time to time. Here's one of the 'J' entries:

"Japan. Our word 'Japan,' and the Japanese 'Nihon' or 'Nippon,' are alike corruptions of 'Jih-pen,' the Chinese pronunciation of the characters which mean literaly 'sun-origin,' that is, 'the place the sun comes from,'--a name given to Japan by the Chinese on account of the position of the archipelago to the east of their country. Marco Polo's 'Zipangu' and the poets' 'Cipango' are from the same Chinese compound, with the additional word 'kuo' (Jap. 'koku') which means 'country.'
The name 'Nihon' ('Japan') seems to have been first officially employed by the Japanese government, in A.D. 670. Before that time, the usual native designation of the country was 'Yamato,' properly the name of one of the central provinces. Yamato and 'O-mi-kuni,' that is 'the Great August Country,' are the names still preferred in poetry and belle-lettres. Japan has other ancient names, some of which are of learned length and thundering sound, for instance, 'Toyo-ashi-no-chi-aki-no-naga-i-ho-aki-no-mizu-ho no kuni,' that is, 'the Luxuriant-Reed-Plains-the-Land-of-Fresh-Rice-Ears-of-a-Thousand-Autumns-of-Long-Five-Hundred-Autumns.' But we shall not detain the reader with an enumeration of them."

This is the most fascinating travelogue I've ever read, set in Japan or any other locale. In 1878, just ten years after the Meiji Restoration, Isabella bird traveled from Tokyo to Hokkaido alone except for a Japanese interpreter. What most interested me in her account were the things that haven't changed since that time. She constantly remarks on the diligence of ordinary Japanese; describes an efficient system of travel available even in the remotest areas by rented horses, and cleverly designed toy boats she saw the boys of one village playing with; on a less positive note, she complains about the noise she constantly encountered in Japan.

Anyone who has taken even a cursory look into Japanese fiction will be aware that it constitutes one of the world's great bodies of literature.

For the very reason that the list of works of fiction that are pertinent to an understanding of Japan--not to mention enjoyable in and of themselves--is inexhaustible, I decided to limit myself to just one recommendation. I chose this book because I like Akutagawa, and because this one volume comprises the world famous "Rashomon", along with some of the author's lesser known works, excellent background notes, and a concise synopsis of the historical period in which he lived.

Contrary to the perception of many, Japanese is not a difficult language to learn. Japanese has a smaller range of sounds than most languages do, so pronunciation and listening comprehension are not major barriers for most students, and Japanese grammar is relatively simple.

The Japanese writing system, on the other hand, is probably the world's most complicated, and can be a major barrier to literacy, if not properly approached. Personally, I find Kanji to be a great aid in my reading comprehension because they convey meaning rather than sound. What got me up, over, and on the right side of the "kanji barrier" was the unique approach of James W. Heisig's book. Boiled down to it's essentials, it's a mnemonic system; a little more complicated than, "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Nine Pizzas" to remember the order of the eight planets, and the demoted Pluto, but still an effective mnemonic system. It's billed as "A complete course on how not to forget the meaning and writing of Japanese characters." The blurb from the back cover, which I can wholeheartedly vouch for, has this to say:

"Whether you are an absolute beginner dreading the thought of acquiring literacy in Japanese or a more advanced student looking for some relief to the constant frustration of forgetting the kanji, once you have cracked the covers of this book, you will never be able to look at the kanji with the same eyes again. Its self-teaching methods will enable you to accomplish in a short time what years in the classroom can never do: remember the writing and meaning of the kanji by harnessing the powers of your own imagination.

Carol Gluck is one of the most respected Japanologists working today, and I would recommend reading anything she's written.

This book is particulary relevent because it focuses on the ideologies and ideologists that came to the fore in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and underpinned the ultranationalism which propelled Japan down the path of militarism and ultimate disaster. Here is an excerpt:

"In general, the ideologists belonged to two generations, both of which possessed an extraordinary longevity of influence. The events of the Restoration thrust the first generation, born in the 1830s and 1840s, into positions of power very early in their careers. And there many of them stayed, long after they had been called "The old men of Tenpo." Yamagata, their premier ideological representative, lived from 1838 until 1922. From his thirties until his eighties he played a preeminent role in government and ideology throughout the long and eventful period between the early Meiji reforms of the 1870s and the years following the First World War. The second generation, the "young men of Meiji," were born in the 1860s and 1870s. Like Tokutomi Soho, who gave them this label, they also rose to prominence when they were young. Where those of Yamagata's generation had risen to fill a vacuum of leadership, this next generation rushed in to fulfill what they had been brought up believing was the promise of Meiji. The years of their prime coincided with the late Meiji period, from the 1880s through the 1910s. Thus this age group produced many of the most active ideologues, including the younger bureaucratic and military disciples of Yamagata, the career officials who occupied middle-level posts in the central bureaucracy, and the men of influence who constituted and perpetuated the ranks of the local elite. This was true of the so-called "public opinion of the people" as well, since the minkan commentators of this generation contributed their views to the emerging ideology in the same years. Tokutomi himself remained active through the 1940s, long enough to be arrested by the Americans as an "imperialistic intellectual" after the war. He died at the age of 94 in 1957."

This book offers a glimpse into the history of World War II from the less often seen perspective of a Japanese colonist born in Manchuria. Kazuko Kuramoto's journey from fervent patriotism, to disillusionment with and disappointment in her country, to a final acceptance of her own personal history is, by turns, heart-wrenching and inspiring.

Dr. Hasegawa, a history professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, has produced the most thorough and balanced account of how and why the Japanese finally surrendered, thereby ending the Pacific War.

By examining the motivations of Japan, America, and the Soviet Union, he convincingly argues that the final blow to Japan was not the atom bomb, but rather the fact that Stalin had entered the war on the side of the allies. In his account, none of the main actors come off as having been particularly noble, but he backs up his account of events with documentation that leaves little doubt as to its historical accuracy.

Japan is sometimes held to be "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma", but in reality, Japan is no harder to understand than any other country. That is not to say that Japan is easy to understand, or that certain aspects of the society are not elusive to someone raised in the Western tradition.

One puzzle for a lot of Western observers is the question of by whom and what means Japan is governed. That question is the theme of Karel Van Wolferen's classic treatise on Japanese power.

For sheer comedy, this is the best book on this list. It began life as a series of newspaper articles lampooning the Ministy of Health and Welfare that Dr. Miyamoto wrote while he was working at the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

This book was originally published in 1996, but it is very pertinent to America's economic troubles today. Here is a quote from the front jacket-flap of The Weight of the Yen:

"In eight years America plummeted from financial grace, from its perch as the world's largest creditor to a financially beleagured country, the world's largest debtor."

The eight years under discussion here are the Reagan years, from 1980 to 1988. The dirty little secret of those years is that the "Reagan Revolution" was financed in Tokyo. The only difference today is that the money to finance George W. Bush's tax relief for the rich and spending on the Iraq war mostly came from Beijing. Taggart Murphy was prescient in that he predicted the Japanese economy would continue to go from strength to strength at a time when most everybody else had written the country off as a financial basket case.

Eammon Fingleton is another prescient author who bucked the accepted wisdom about the Japanese economy being in the toilet after the bursting of the "bubble economy."
He also provides a detailed but clear description of the ways in which the Japanese economy differs from that of the U.S.

Cartels of the Mind tackles one of the less attractive aspects of Japanese society, namely, its exclusivity. The prevalence of xenophobia in Japan has been receding, in fits and starts, over the last 30 years or so. But it is still very much alive in the halls of academia; especially in the small number of institutions, such as the University of Tokyo or Waseda University, that are the unofficial portals into the ranks of the Japanese elite.

I think anyone who has spent any length of time in Japan will have noticed that Japanese people sometimes say extraordinary things. For example, you might hear this declared: "Japan has four seasons" as if this were an extraordinary attribute that only Japan can lay claim to.

One of the main reasons that Japanese tend to make dubious claims about "Japan" or "the Japanese" is that they have been going through a national identity crisis that has lasted at least 150 years and perhaps as long as one and a half millennia.
In this book Eiji Oguma traces what the epithet "Japanese" has signified to the Japanese themselves in both the prewar and postwar years.