Japanese House

As they do every year, a small group of acquaintances pay a visit to the remote castle-like Water Mill House, home to the reclusive Fujinuma Kiichi, son of a famous artist, who has lived his life behind a rubber mask ever since a disfiguring car accident. This year, however, the visit is disrupted by an impossible disappearance, the theft of a painting, and a series of baffling murders. The brilliant Kiyoshi Shimada arrives to investigate.

In the spring of 1972, twelve-year-old Tomoko leaves her mother behind in Tokyo and boards a train alone for Ashiya, a coastal town in Japan, to stay with her aunt’s family. Tomoko’s aunt is an enigma and an outlier in her working-class family, and her magnificent home—and handsome foreign husband, the president of a soft drink company—are symbols of that status. The seventeen rooms are filled with German-made furnishings; there are sprawling gardens and even an old zoo where the family’s pygmy hippopotamus resides.

In Japan, cats are a symbol of good luck. As the myth goes, if you are kind to them, they'll one day return the favor. And if you are kind to the right cat, you might just find yourself invited to a mysterious coffee shop under a glittering Kyoto moon. This particular coffee shop is like no other. It has no fixed location, no fixed hours, and seemingly appears at random to adrift young people at crucial junctions in their lives. It's also run by talking cats.

When Yui loses both her mother and her daughter in the tsunami, she begins to mark the passage of time from that date onward: Everything is relative to March 11, 2011, the day the tsunami tore Japan apart and when grief took hold of her life. Yui struggles to continue on, alone with her pain. Then, one day she hears about a man who has an old disused telephone booth in his garden. There, those who have lost loved ones find the strength to speak to them and begin to come to terms with their grief. As news of the phone booth spreads, people travel to it from miles around.

The 24 stories that make up Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman generously express the incomparable Haruki Murakami’s mastery of the form. Here are animated crows, a criminal monkey, and an ice man, as well as the dreams that shape us and the things for which we might wish. From the surreal to the mundane, these stories exhibit Murakami’s ability to transform the full range of human experience in ways that are instructive, surprising, and entertaining.

In the early 1920s, Japanese college professor Masao Takashimaya of Kyoto had a passion for modern ideas that was as strong as his wife's belief in ancient tradition. Twenty years later, his 18-year-old daughter Hiroko, torn between her mother's traditions and her father's wishes, boarded SS Nagoya Maru to come to California for an education, and to make her father proud. It was August 1941.

In the wake of a devastating earthquake and tsunami, Yui, fleeing her violent husband, and Hiyori, a young orphan, are taken in by a strange but kind old lady named Kiwa in the small town of Kitsunezaki​​. The newly formed family finds refuge in a mayoiga, a lost house, perched atop a beautiful cape overlooking the sea. While helping to rebuild Kitsunezaki, the three adapt to their new lives and supernatural new home, slowly healing from their troubled pasts.

From the internationally acclaimed Haruki Murakami comes a mind-bending new collection of short stories, all touching beautifully on love and solitude, childhood and memory...all with a signature Murakami twist. The eight stories in this new book are all told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator. From memories of youth, meditations on music, and an ardent love of baseball, to dreamlike scenarios and invented jazz albums, together these stories challenge the boundaries between our minds and the exterior world.

From the author of Clean Green Eats, a Japanese-inspired guide to finding balance, joy, and good health - A Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up for wellness - that emphasizes a simple, streamlined method for cleaning up your eating habits and offers modern-day applications of ancient Japanese healing practices and philosophy. Candice Kumai has always treasured the Japanese traditions that shaped her childhood. In recent years, she’s been spending more time in Japan, meeting with relatives and absorbing the culture. It was on one of those trips that she visited a Kintsugi master and found the guiding inspiration for her next book.

K is madly in love with his best friend, Sumire, but her devotion to a writerly life precludes her from any personal commitments. At least, that is, until she meets an older woman to whom she finds herself irresistibly drawn. When Sumire disappears from an island off the coast of Greece, K is solicited to join the search party—and finds himself drawn back into her world and beset by ominous visions. Subtle and haunting, Sputnik Sweetheart is a profound meditation on human longing.

After Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. military was desperate to find Americans who spoke Japanese to serve in the Pacific war. They soon turned to the Nisei—first-generation U.S. citizens whose parents were immigrants from Japan. Eager to prove their loyalty to America, several thousand Nisei—many of them volunteering from behind barbed wire—were selected by the Army for top-secret training, then were rushed to the Pacific theater. Henderson reveals the harrowing untold story of the Nisei and their major contributions in the war of the Pacific.

A Heian-era mansion stands abandoned, its foundations resting on the bones of a bride and its walls packed with the remains of the girls sacrificed to keep her company. It’s the perfect venue for a group of thrill-seeking friends, brought back together to celebrate a wedding. A night of food, drinks, and games quickly spirals into a nightmare as secrets get dragged out and relationships are tested. But the house has secrets too. Lurking in the shadows is the ghost bride with a black smile and a hungry heart.

A certified World Class Manufacturing Instructor shows you how to methodically turn your home into a place of peace, joy, and mindful living. “The 1st Simple Step to Your Perfect Home” is the first book of the 5 Steps series. Ivan Kuznietsov takes us on a decluttering tour of our own houses and apartments, showing us how to decide what to get rid of and what to keep. He both offers practical guidelines for simplifying our lifestyle at home and addresses underlying issues that contribute to over-accumulation in the first place. The purpose is not just to create a more inviting living ...

Spark Joy is an in-depth, room-by-room guide to decluttering and organising your home. It covers every room in the house, from bedrooms and kitchens to bathrooms and living rooms, as well as a wide range of items in different categories, including clothes, photographs, paperwork, books, cutlery, cosmetics, shoes, bags, wallets and valuables. The secret to Marie Kondo's unique and simple KonMari tidying method is to focus on what you want to keep, not what you want to get rid of.

An engaging guide to the art of forest bathing, inspired by the Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku, for anyone who wants to explore the transformative power of nature in promoting health and happiness.

With the Second World War only a few years in the past, and Japan still reeling from its effects, two sisters—born to the same father but different mothers—struggle to make sense of the new world in which they are coming of age. Asako, the younger, has become obsessed with locating a third sibling, while also experiencing love for the first time. While Momoko, their father’s first child—haunted by the loss of her kamikaze boyfriend and their final, disturbing days together—seeks comfort in a series of unhealthy romances.

En Malasia, en los albores de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, tras un matrimonio concertado, Parvathi vive sin grandes alicientes en la opulenta mansión de su marido, un hombre mucho mayor que ella que prácticamente la desprecia. Solo gracias a la ayuda de una cocinera llena de sabiduría y a un criado quien la ama en secreto, Parvathi logra seguir adelante. Pero la invasión japonesa del país cambia su vida ya que, tras el saqueo y la ocupación de su propio hogar, Parvathi se ve obligada a convertirse en la geisha y amante del oficial japonés al mando.

When a writer fascinated by the macabre is approached by an acquaintance, he finds himself investigating an eerie house for sale in Tokyo. At first, with its bright and spacious interior, it seems the perfect first home. But upon closer inspection, the building’s floor plans reveal a mysterious "dead space” hidden between its walls. Seeking a second opinion, the writer shares the floor plans with his friend Kurihara, an architect, only to discover more unnerving details throughout.

Tokyo-ing! is an apt title for this trio of tales that chime with anyone even slightly interested in Asia’s most dynamic metropolis and its glazing of layers – be they cultural, sexual … or taking-wing exuberant.About Face — An American professor is trophy hunted by a wily student who then boasts of her conquest, sparking a full-blown scandal. Brought to heel in tradition, he fights for his dignity. Sobering Love — A Japanese career woman is obligated to join after-work drinking sessions with her colleagues, leading to alcohol addiction and deteriorating health. There seems to be ...

A new selection of 14 of Yukio Mishima's best short stories from the 1960s—his final decade—Voices of the Fallen Heroes offers a unique glimpse into the mind of one of Japan’s greatest writers. In the title story, "Voices of the Fallen Heroes," a séance brings forth the spirits of young officers in the Imperial Army and the kamikaze pilots of World War II, who reproach the Emperor and mourn Japan’s modern decline. In another, Mishima recounts the true story of the time a deranged fan broke into his home at dawn, insisting on meeting the author and imploring him to "tell the truth."