Donald Richie

In 1971, author and film scholar Donald Richie published a poetic travelogue about his explorations of the islands of Japan's Inland Sea, recording his search for traces of a traditional way of life as well as his own journey of self-discovery. Twenty years later, filmmaker Lucille Carra undertook a parallel trip inspired by Richie2s by-then-classic book, capturing images of hushed beauty and meeting people who still carried on the fading customs...

The Japanese version goes beyond the stereotypical images of Japan that are too often presented to Americans, and asks the questions: What happens to Western cultural ideas and objects when they are placed in a new setting? How have the Japanese navigated the flood of foreign influences that has been inundating their culture for a thousand years? With its series of entertaining yet revealing sequences, The Japanese Version is truly a cross-cultural...

"Edward Seidensticker's A History of Tokyo 1867-1989 tells the fascinating story of Tokyo's transformation from the Shogun's capital in an isolated Japan to the largest and the most modern city in the world. With the same scholarship and sparkling style that won him admiration as the foremost translator of great works of Japanese literature, Seidensticker offers the reader his brilliant vision of an entire society suddenly wrenched from an ancient...

Tells the story of a sixteenth-century village whose desperate inhabitants hire seven out-of-work warriors to protect them from invading bandits.