Publishing in English in Japan has a long but much neglected history. Our intent is to make more widely available fine publications that have recently been published in Japan, plus some from the past, and quality books published outside Japan by experts. The books below are available at your local bookshop that carries English publications in or related to Japan. If not in stock, the bookshop can obtain all titles shown here through their usual supplier. For other alternatives, see the end of this sheet.
NEWLY PUBLISHED - August 2005 Tokyo Nights A novel by Donald Richie. Introduction by David Cozy. First published in London by Olive Press (1988), revised edition published by Tuttle (1994), second revised edition with introduction by David Cozy, published by Printed Matter Press. ISBN 1-933606-00-2, 223pp, 2005.  "A satire on Tokyo night life ... like a fugue in that the characters are interwoven by their constant changing of partners." (John Haylock in London Magazine). "A bizarre manga, a post-modern comedy of manners full of withering insights into contemporary Japan." (Joseph Lapenta in The Japan Times). As few people could, Richie takes the reader on a joyful ride through Tokyo's (or Japan's) night life. If you have been there, you will enjoy the replay. If you have not, then you will be getting a delicious education without the cost. The language may be English but the style is all too pleasingly Japanese.
The Single Tone A Personal Journey into Shakuhachi Music  by Christopher Yohmei Blasdel Originally written in Japanese and the winner of the Rennyo Award for non-fiction, Blasdel --an American who has resided in Japan since 1972 -- writes about his experiences studying, performing and teaching the traditional shakuhachi bamboo flute. His encounters with various Japanese – from world-famous artists, wealthy patrons, and respected scholars to arrogant diplomats – provide thoughtful insight into the Japanese mind. He also demonstrates the universal appeal of the shakuhachi by performing it around the world: in jungles of Guatemala, ancient banquet halls of the Republic of Georgia, and the wind-swept Indian reservations of New Mexico. ISBN 1-933175-09-5, 167pp, 2005	I Wouldn't Want Anybody to Know: Native English Teaching in Japan edited by Eva P. Bueno & Terry Caesar This collection of essays aims to provide a human face to the teaching of English in Japan by foreigners. Not all of the the writers are critical of what they do. Yet any reader will soon understand why several of the authors adopt pseudonyms in order to write about their experience. There is a vast silence about teaching English in Japan which can only be broken at the risk of losing one's job. Native teaching begins with this fact. But writing about it need not end there, as this collection of candid, personal, reflective essays demonstrates. This is a serious but amusing book on the perils of coming to Japan to teach if you yourself are serious about teaching. ISBN 4-900178-21-7, 252pp, 2003
Green Tea to Go by Leza Lowitz is the latest from this author, poet, translator and yoga instructor. Eastern traditions clash with much more than Western culture in these twelve short stories and a novella set in modern-day Japan. A Zen koan holds the key to the death of a dolphin; a sculptor relives his father's death while shaping his art. A British woman and her Japanese boyfriend fall in love with and old-fashioned scale shop. An edgy English teacherr sets her sights on a rising Japanese boxer. Two feuding American women take a strange trip to the Spice Islands. A housewife arranges one last meeting with her imprisoned Leftist lover. A yakuza charactar actor named Genji finally comes to accept his face. The stories from award-winning poet Leza Lowitz are not about samurai or geisha but people we might meet on a given day in the nameless streets of Tokyo: the strange, the ordinary, the scarred, the real. ISBN 4-900178-24-1, 177pp, 2004	A View from the Chuo Line and Other Stories by Donald Richie   In this collection of twenty-seven short stories Donald Richie has shown people set in their ways but caught off guard by life itself. The minimality of the form emphasizes that moment of truth which James Joyce called an epiphany -- the revelation which he said was the only reason for writing, or reading stories.  The people are almost all Japanese -- and Richie is not. Yet, though the peculiarities of culture may form them, it is a common humanity which is his subject. If, as Henry James once said, a story consists of a movement toward an understanding, then these small works are true stories -- each plants a bonsai-like seed which grows in the mind and achieves its own full form. ISBN 0-9653304-6-X, 127pp, 2004
Getting Both Feet Wet: Experiences Inside the JET Program edited by David Chandler & David Kootnikoff Gives a balanced view of one of the world's largest and most successful cultural exchange, work, and teaching programs. Successful former JETs look back and tell about their experiences. Japanese teachers write about their success and failure in working with JETs. The Program has made a tremendous impact on the teaching of English in Japanese public schools. But, rose colored glasses are not appropriate. These fourteen essays, seven by former JETs, seven by Japanese experienced in working with JETs, are filled with clues to potential problems and to their solutions. ISBN 4-900178-20-9, 222pp, 2002	Cosplay by Guy Vinciguerra Photographs of Japanese --mostly young girls- who dress in outlandish self-created styles and hang out in places like the Harajuku and Shibuya districts of Tokyo. Rebels in a non-rebelious society. Slaves to their own trends.  Australian engineer and photographer, Guy Vinciguerra, visits Tokyo with his camera and a sense for dramatic photos with sharp colors. The result becomes an exhibition at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts and this fine and disquieting book. This is not the Japan of modern industry or of sun-blackened farmers raising rice. But this is at least as real. ISBN 0-9579094-1-1, 60pp, 2004
The Couch Potato's Guide to Japan Grab a seat on the bus and get ready for a rollicking ride through the world of Japanese television. Drama, news, comedy and variety are all included in this guided tour of the TV archipelago. Wm. Penn, a native of Pittsburgh, Pa., arrived in Japan in 1973, bought a TV in 1982 and has been watching it all over the archipelago ever since. Penn has written the weekly TV column "Televiews" for the Daily Yomiuri -- the English-language edition of Japan's largest newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun -- since 1987. The Couch Potato's Guide is about watching TV. I contains nothing about technological innovations and no insider secrets, but it is packed with information. Here is an informative and fun book that will help anyone to enjoy Japanese TV, and that adds up to enjoying life in Japan. ISBN 4-902-422-01-8, 202pp, 2003	The Coat that Covers Him and Other Stories Michael Hoffman's characters are, willy-nilly, participants in plots that don't add up. Some emerge stronger; others, shadows of their former selves. The six stories and one novel that make up this collection are set, wholly or primarily, in Japan, the land of the artful mask. Meet the man who loses his key and sets in motion a chain of events whose incomprehensibility he will never understand; a small girl who accosts a fugitive murderer (is he really a murderer?) for sex, only to be admonished to go back to school; a murdered body who is resurrected (is he really?) and wreaks his mad revenge; and finally, Sidney Levin, whose reunion twenty years later with a lost Japanese girlfriend ends in a hopeless entanglement with her growing daughter. ISBN 1-4184-9440-2, 632pp, 2004
All Worldly Pursuits by Hillel Wright The story of Wiley Moon. “He has a lust for life and a passion that involves the reader in his story.” (W.P. Kinsella, Books in Canada). “Readers with a taste for nautical fiction will find much to enjoy ... The salt all but sprays from the page.” (Peter O'Connor, The Daily Yomiuri Tokyo). ISBN 0-9687317-6-7, 141pp, 2001	Rotary Sushi by Hillel Wright is the latest book by this self-declared hack writer. Short stories published previously by the author in Canada, stories from his years in Japan, plus several translations into Japanese by Mihori Kizuki. Miracles, strippers, belly dancers, ghosts, sordid romance, true crime, and more. A rollicking read. ISBN 4-900178-22-9, 216pp, 2003
Vicious Vocabulary will stretch both teacher and student, and be fun. Teaching vocabulary can be hell for both teacher and student. Boring. Fancy words with little relevance to real life. Pair words together and they take on life. Use the difficult word in an insult and it will be remembered. Professor Snurd (Phil Eisenhower) has chosen words that students are likely to need to know for their SAT and GRE examinations. ISBN 0-9722001-0-X, 325pp, 1992.	Lori Goods at Najima High Is the perfect text for use by a non-Japanese teacher teaching practical English at a Japanese high school. There are twenty-eight chapters in the Lori Goods story. Each chapter begins with a listen only page. Students put down their pencils, focus on the picture and listen to the corresponding CD track. (For classroom use.Inquiries for 10 or more copies preferred.)
ISE: Japan's Ise Shrines: Ancient Yet New by Svend M. Hvass A book for anyone who enjoys the peace and quiet of the shinto shrine. Especially, a book for those who love beauty and beautiful wood in particular. The Ise Shrines are many things to many people: historical, religious, cultural, a tourist destination for both Japanese and foreign visitors, but few fully understand the history, the architecture and the constant renewal that is so typical of Japanese architecture and that is so fitting for a nation that builds of wood more than of stone. Hvass is one of the few foreigners ever to do serious research on the shikinen sengu rite. The result is a book that makes interesting and informative reading. And the photography brings Ise shrines to life even for those who will have no chance to visit them. Hardcover, 146pp.
LIVING IN JAPAN, 14th Edition, has for decades been the most consistently excellent guide to Japan for English-speaking expatriates who live and work in this country. Started by the ACCJ (American Chamber of Commerce in Japan) for American members in Tokyo and Osaka, this edition was edited by Carter Witt Media, the Nagoya based company that publishes Japanzine. The writers of each section were chosen from among U.S., U.K., Australian, Canadian and other native English speakers to make sure the book is useful for all. The writers are also based in different parts of Japan so that they can write with authority on their geographic or other specialty. This book is for all whether they live in Japan or are in Africa, Asia, America or Europe and have an ongoing cultural or working interest in this country. 4-915682-23-4, 466pp, 2004	Faces in the Crowds a Tokyo International Anthology edited by Hillel Wright Donald Richie, writing on this book, comments that "Expatriate literature takes many forms," and many of those will be found in this lively anthology. Tokyo expatriates may yet produce another Hemingway, Fitzgerald or Nabokov though this is a city noted for terrible examples of fractured English. For two decades Printed Matter Press has provided an outlet for the best resident poets, creative writers, translators and also for Japanese who write in English. An eclectic group of journalists, printers, artists, teachers and others, these craftsmen and craftswomen of the English word meet on the first Sunday of each month at the What the Dickens British pub in Ebisu, Tokyo. ISBN 0-935086-02-1, 254pp, 2002
Being a Broad in Japan includes everything the Western woman needs to make the most out of life: case studies of Western working in almost 50 different types of jobs; anecdotes from many of the 200 Western women interviewed; profiles of 23 women's organisations; essential Japanese words and phrases; and indespensable resource section listing tele numbers and website. Doctors, day care centers, employment agencies, labour unions, and much more. This is the most popular book for women coming to Japan. ISBN 4-9900791-0-8, 515pp, 3^rd printing 2004.	The Russian Far East: A Reference Guide for Conservation and Development is the most comprehensive English-language reference text on the region to be published in more than ten years. With contributions from an interdisciplinary team of ninety specialists from Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom, the book overviews and analyzes the region’s geography and ecology, natural resources, major industries, infrastructure, foreign trade, demographics, protected area system, and legal structure. ISBN (softcover) 1-880284-75-8, ISBN (hard) 1-880284-76-6, 463pp, 2004
Now online POETRY and HAIKU titles here! http://www.imcbook.net/imcbook-catalogs/pressPOET01.htm
Promoting Japan's Best English Small Presses and Authors Bringing you the best of English publishing in Japan The book business is made up of a network of people. Book retailers generally prefer to obtain books from one or more local distributors. Here in Japan most of the local distributors do not directly handle books printed overseas or even those published in Japan but aimed at a foreign audience. It may also be that the retailer's staff are not fluent in English (or other language) and they may mainly interface with a similar person at the local distributor. So what to do? You want a book and you want to order it from your friendly local retailer. The books that we catalog are ALL available. If your local bookstore does not order directly from a distributor that handles English books they surely order from Tohan or Nippan (the giants of Japanese book distribution). You may have to push, but the system works and is usually efficient. Each link knows and trusts the next link. Of course, you or your local retailer could skip the chain, but then prepayment is required and delivery costs may raise the price. In any case, you can always contact us at IMC whether you want to order from us directly or just ask a question. A human will reply, not a software program. kunikoi@attglobal.net. http://imcbook.net. Fax 03-3876-3627. Telephone 03-3876-3073
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