We read lots of books here at Books on Asia, so we asked our reviewers to give you their picks for the best books they’ve read this year! For more information on a particular book, click on the book cover. Chad Kohalyk‘s Top Picks Biography The Great Successor: The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade More…
Category: Blog
Waking to Snow — Poems by Robert MacLean
Three Poems from Robert MacLean’s new book Waking to Snow (Isobar Press, Oct. 2020) My First Guide to Kyoto Next-door neighbour’s pug-nosed Sakura tied up all day whimpering beneath the stairwell: no way to treat the earliest cherry blossoms in Kyoto. So I take him for a walk – rather he takes me, charging More…
Review—Japan in Asia: Post-Cold-War Diplomacy
Is Asia becoming one common, shared culture?
Tanaka Akihiko suggests it may be possible to say that a common culture—what might be called an ‘East Asian way of life’—is emerging, especially among the East Asian urban middle class.
Review—Finding the Heart Sutra by Alex Kerr
Powerful, mystical and concise, the Heart Sutra is believed to contain the condensed essence of all Buddhist wisdom.
Kerr has proven an excellent student of friendship and fellowship and has himself become a vessel of wisdom which he now passes on to us readers.
Book Excerpt—Walking in Circles: Finding Happiness in Lost Japan
Todd Wassel walks the 750-Mile, 88-Temple Pilgrimage in Shikoku, Japan and finds some surprising things along the way.
E-Book Deal: Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Woman’s Life in 19th Century Japan
Stanley introduces the vibrant social and cultural life of early nineteenth-century Japan and one woman who lived it.
Review—The Territory of Japan: Its History and Legal Basis
Serita Kentaro retraces and analyzes the history of negotiations over the Northern Territories, Takeshima and Senkaku Islands.
Japan’s three territorial disputes with neighbouring countries — the Northern Territories (Russia), Takeshima (Korea), and the Senkaku Islands (China) — all arose in the post-war period. The battle over them is being waged not by guns and butter, but through peaceful means in the courts of law. Less dangerous though this might be, it is no less complicated.
Review—My Heart Sutra: A World in 260 Characters
The Heart Sutra is the most widely read, chanted, and copied text in East Asian Buddhism. Schodt’s journey takes him to China, America and Japan.
Review By Amy Chavez All over Asia the Heart Sutra soothes minds and eases the burdens people encounter in their every day lives. In Japan, one might catch its rising timbre across a graveyard as a Buddhist Priest chants to the departed in a ceremony honoring the family’s ancestors. A tourist might stumble upon followers More…
Blast to the Past: “Japan Inside Out,” by Jay, Sumi & Garet Gluck
Gluck’s guidebook, at over 1,000 pages, serves as an enduring source of reference material on Japan.
Review—Inaka: Portraits of Life in Rural Japan
In eighteen chapters, this anthology takes an epic journey the length of Japan, from subtropical Okinawa, through the Japanese heartland, all the way to the wilds of Hokkaido.
Review by Renae Lucas-Hall “It’s easy to fall under the spell of rural Japan” is the first sentence in the introduction to this anthology that sets the reader upon a path to enchantment. Each essay acts as a beguiling incantation that will amplify one’s desire to explore the Japanese countryside. If you’re an avid reader More…