Murasaki Shikibu, the real-life author of "The Tale of Genji," uses her imagination and storytelling abilities to escape from loneliness, and later to entertain the empress and express the political a
In a wonderful world shaped by beauty and poetry, ancient traditions and popular intrigue, a young woman at the centre of the eleventh-century Japanese imperial court observes the exotic world around
In this classic best seller, Liza Dalby, the first non-Japanese ever to have trained as a geisha, offers an insider's look at the exclusive world of female companions to the Japanese male elite. A new
"To read East Wind Melts the Ice is to slip into a time stream that is both as long and sinuous as history and as ephemeral as the present moment. Drawing inspiration from the thousand year old histor
According to Buddhist theology, the world is suffering through a final corrupt era called mappo. As mappo continues, chaos will increase until the center can no longer hold. Then the world will end.H
Written over a century ago when Japan was abandoning its rich traditions to embrace the hysteria of colonization, this classic written by Okakura Kakuzo helped preserve the masterpieces of Japanese ar
