Lucie Blackman - tall, blond, twenty-one years old - stepped out into the vastness of Tokyo and disappeared forever. For months, the police's only lead was a suspicious message left with Lucie's best friend claiming she had joined a religious cult. The truth would prove much darker.

A biography of the Japanese emperor reveals a powerful man who successfully cultivated an image of a reluctant king while manipulating important events behind the scenes for five decades

The emergence of Japan as a political and economic global power has been one of the most remarkable success stories of modern history. Though small in geographic area, the archipelago is the tenth most populous country, with 128 million inhabitants crowded into an area the size of Montana. Its natural resources are almost nonexistent, yet today it ranks only second after the much larger United States as the most affluent and economically productive...

"'Meticulously researched and beautifully written, the true story of a Japanese American family that found itself on opposite sides during World War II--an epic tale of family, separation, divided loyalties, love, reconciliation, loss, and redemption this is a riveting chronicle of U.S.-Japan relations and the Japanese experience in America. After their father's death, Harry, Frank, and Pierce Fukuhara--all born and raised in the Pacific Northwest--moved...

Mitsuko Hanamura was born wanting very little out of life: a place to call her own, maybe a small garden where she could grow flowers, just a little house with a shelf for some books, where she could live alone, with no need to share a bed, or a meal, or clothes, with anyone.But she was born in 1916 in rural Japan, the oldest girl in a family with eight children and no money, with nothing to depend on but her clever brain and indomitable spirit. Sent...

"Throughout the late 1970s and early '80s, dozens of Japanese citizens were abducted from coastal Japanese towns by North Korean commandos. In what proved to be part of a global project, North Korea attempted to reeducate the abductees and train them to spy on the state's behalf. When the project faltered, the abductees were hidden in a series of guarded communities known as "Invitation-Only Zones"--the fiction being that these were exclusive enclaves,...

The Japanese have two kinds of ghosts in their folklore-the spirits of the dead, and the spirits of the living. This classic of Japanese literature invites you to take your choice, if you dare. In Ghostly Japan collects twelve ghostly stories from Lafcadio Hearn, deathless images of ghosts and goblins, touches of folklore and superstition, salted with traditions of the nation. While some of these stories contain nightmare imagery worthy of a midnight...

Biography of Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston relating her experiences of living at the Manzanar internment camp during World War II and how it has influenced her life.

Gretel Ehrlich returned to the earthquake-and-tsunami-devastated Tohoku coast to hear the stories of survivors. The result, a blend of reportage, poetic observation, and deeply felt reflection, tells the stories of rice farmers, monks, fisherman, and others who lived to tell about the disaster.

Isabella Bird's 1878 expedition through Japan, chronicled in 'Unbeaten Tracks in Japan,' immerses readers in an extraordinary odyssey across the seldom-explored territories of Japan's remote northern and central regions. Breaking away from conventional travel narratives, Bird adopts an unconventional prose style, crafting a captivating tale of her off-the-beaten-path escapades. Rather than confining herself to the urban bustle, Bird ventures deep...