Japan's output of manga is massive, accounting for 40 per cent of everything published in the country annually. There has also been a boom in sales outside Japan, with the manga aesthetic spreading from comics into all areas of Western youth culture through film, computer games, advertising and design. This book presents an accessible, entertaining and highly illustrated introduction to the development and diversity of Japanese comics from 1945 to the present. The chapters explore topics such as: the career of Osamu Tezuka, creator of Astro Boy and originator of manga strip stories; girls' and women's comics; and the darker, more violent gekiga manga, featuring samurais and apocalyptic science fiction.

Japan has long been a breeding ground for innovative approaches to Western traditions, like movies and baseball. But, the fanatical embrace with which Japanese artists have welcomed graffiti has made for a form of graffiti wholly apart from its Western origins. Photographed by Remo Camerota, Graffiti Japan captures the culturally unique aspects of Japanese street art, providing the most complete look at Japan’s contemporary graffiti scene ever compiled.

Camerota could never have guessed that his first, on-a-whim trip to Japan would result in him moving to Tokyo and befriending the scene’s most prolific and talented artists. The more time he spent with them traveling from city to city, meeting local luminaries, the more photographs he took, the more excited the artists became about helping Camerota delve deeper and deeper.

Interviews with KRESS, BELX2, FATE, TENGA, EMAR, SUIKO, QP and many more reveal how these artists define their work as specifically Japanese, musing on everything from replicating the calligraphic intricacies of the Japanese language with spray paint, to foreign influences and national pride. Every single photograph in Graffiti Japan was shot in Japan, featuring anime and manga characters, kanji, sprawling legal murals and illegal hidden spots, all of which comprise this spectacular scene that could not exist in any other country.

The dazzlingly varied cloths presented in this book are the visual record of one of the great stories of Asian design history.

John Guy has produced a brilliant account of the Indian textile trade in examining the cloth-for-spices trade, focusing on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when the thousand-year-old trade was at its peak.

With beautiful photographs of the textiles themselves (outstanding among them the famous cotton chintzes and tie-and-dye silks), illuminating images of people and places, and vivid first-hand descriptions by travellers and merchants, this is both an indispensible resource and a visual feast for students and lovers of textiles.

Contents:
Textiles, Culture and Spices
Techniques and Production Centres
Indian Cloth and International Trade
The Asian Trade before European Intervention
The Malay World
Indonesia
'Cloths in the Fashion of Siam'
China
'Strange Painteinges': The Japan Trade
Notes
Bibliography
Radiocarbon-Dated Indian Textiles
Glossary
Illustration Credits and Notes
Index

250 photos/illustrations

Pattern design has a long history within Japanese culture. This book presents a collection of carefully selected traditional Japanese patterns in 60 categories for use by designers and artists in their projects and personal work. An companion CD-ROM provides 250 patterns in high resolution JPEG format along with PSD format from which you can freely manipulate and modify the patterns to customize them for your own use. This is an inspirational and highly practical reference and sourcebook for anyone working in the area of visual art.

Shigeki Nakamura (Japan) began his carrier as an art director in 1964 in Japan. He established his office, cobble collaboration in 1987, which and has produced design pattern books under its own brand. He is a member of JAGDA (Japan Graphic Designers Association).

Illustrations: over 180 color photos

This book features Japanese inns, or ryokan, both old and new-from inns with a history dating back a thousand years to modern inns with the latest facilities that nonetheless capture the spirit of old Japan. Each of the properties has been handpicked by the authors for their strong design aesthetic, commitment to service and purity of their spring waters. The photographs showcase the resorts at their best, and accurately express the unique architectural design of each ryokan.
Each chapter begins by introducing the area surrounding the inns and their spas, or onsen, and provides a background of its local history, culture and traditions, as well as the natural environment. The text provides information on the design and development of each ryokan, and descriptions of the owners and their clientele. For those planning a visit to an onsen, this book provides contact details and information on the number of rooms, type of facilities and food, as well as vital information on travel and booking procedures and whether English is spoken. For those fascinated by Japanese culture and design, this book is an absolute delight.

The Japanese stone garden is an art form recognized around the globe. These gardens provide tranquil settings where visitors can shed the burdens and stresses of modern existence, satisfy an age-old yearning for solitude and repose, and experience the restorative power of art and nature. For this reason the value of the Japanese stone garden today is arguably even greater than when many of them were created.

Japanese Stone Gardens provides a comprehensive introduction to the powerful mystique and dynamism of the Japanese stone garden—from their earliest use as props in animistic rituals, to their appropriation by Zen monks and priests to create settings conducive to contemplation and finally to their contemporary uses and meaning. With insightful text and abundant imagery, this book reveals the hidden order of stone gardens and in the process heightens the enthusiast's appreciation of them.

Enter the world of the stylish Japanese house, where every object in sight is a work of art. Japan Style introduces 20 special residences. With more than 200 color photographs, this book showcases the stunning beauty of old homes, and reveals how they are cared for by their owners.

Traditional Japanese homes, with superbly crafted fine wood, great workmanship and seasonal interior arrangements, have an aesthetic of infinite simplicity. Unlike Japanese inns and historical buildings, the houses featured in this book are private property and are not open to public viewing.

Japan Style offers a rare glimpse into the intimate world of the everyday Japanese and fascinating insight into the traditional architecture of Japan.

Illustrations: over 250 color photos

Natural serenity, unostentatious refinement, clean lines and the balancing of light and space are all hallmarks of Japanese interior design. In the new book from noted authors Marcia Iwatate and Geeta Mehta, Japan Living continues the themes of their highly successful Japan Houses with 30 specially designed houses that transcend function and resonate with spirit.
The houses represented in Japan Living reflect the many changes in the dynamics of the new Japanese society, including an aging population and the desire to remain single; while others embody plenty of creativity, self-expression and individuality. Throughout, a return to traditional materials and design elements is married with such present-day requirements as minimalism, flexibility, a small kitchen, a beautiful bathroom, energy efficiency and electronic gadgetry. Each of these homes is an exquisite representation of the integrity consistently found within Japanese interior design, both in new construction and old.

Illustrations: over 250 color photos and 40 architectural plans

Japanese residential design has evolved as a distinctive response to social, political, and climatic pressures-along with the powerful individual ideas of its architects. Japan Houses presents 28 of the country's finest contemporary houses. Each house is beautifully captured through breathtaking photographs, showcasing the creativity of Japan's leading architects and designers and their innovative use of building materials, spatial concepts, and aesthetic surprise.

Illustrations: 450 color photos

Japan Living, this new book from noted authors Marcia Iwatate and Geeta Mehta, continues to explore the themes of their highly successful Japan Houses
. Some houses represented in Japan Living reflect the many changes in the dynamics of the new Japanese society, including an aging population and the desire to remain single, while others embody plenty of creativity, self-expression and individuality. Throughout, a return to traditional materials and design elements is married with such present-day requirements as minimalism, flexibility, energy efficiency and electronic gadgetry. Each of these homes is an exquisite representation of the integrity consistently found in Japanese interior design, in both new construction and old.

A compendium of the golden age of Japanese prints from one of the worlds foremost collections.

The dazzling variety of Japanese woodblock prints, from serene landscapes to portraits of flamboyant actors and courtesans, is captured in this captivating volume. The book is divided into four chapters: "Primitives" (the term for Japanese woodblock prints produced between approximately 1660 and 1765); Courtesans; Actors; and Landscapes. Most of the images are printed in multiple colours and range from the seventeenth century to the late nineteenth century. The artists include such masters as Hiroshige, Hokusai, and Utamaro, who are represented by lesser-known treasures as well as by some of their most celebrated series, including Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji and One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.

Project Japan is the product of a long journey by author Graham Cooper. A sustained rolling programme relating to contemporary art and architecture in Japan, this project involved over a decade of commitment, more than a dozen research and documentation visits to Japan and the help of an influential network of participants.

A full-colour introduction to art in the context of architecture, it includes buildings by such renowned contemporary architects as Toyo Ito, Shigeru Ban, Kazuyo Sejima and Yoshio Taniguchi as well as schemes by other leading or emerging architects and artists.

Project Japan celebrates a special time when artists in Japan regained their self-belief, rediscovering confidence in their own distinctive cultural identity. It also recognises that traditional buildings, classical gardens and historic townscape are keys to understanding the current scene.

Beyond Kurosawa
Exploring the work of the greatest Japanese filmmakers

Until recently, the western world has viewed Japanese cinema through a very narrow prism. For years, Westerners interested in Japanese film had to content themselves with the collected works of Akira Kurosawa, a spotty sampling of films by Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujiro Ozu, gobs of anime, and badly dubbed monster movies. Many great filmmakers like Mikio Naruse and Keisuke Kinoshita have remained unknown in the West, and Japanese musicals and comedies are hardly known outside Asia. This volume sets the record straight, illustrating an in-depth history of Japanese cinema with vivid posters and stunning photography.

The author:
Stuart Galbraith IV is the author of seven books. He also makes DVD audio commentaries and liner note essays, writes a DVD column for the English edition of The Daily Yomiuri, and reviews DVDs at DVDTalk.com. He lives in Kyoto.

The art of the Ukiyo-e reflected the artistic expression of an isolated civilisation which, when it became accessible to the West, significantly influenced a number of European artists. The three masters of Ukiyo-e, Hokusai, Utamaro and Hiroshige, are united here for the first time to create a true reference on Japanese art. The three masters rank highly among the most famous Japanese artistic productions of all time.
This new title of the Prestige of Art collection will be a reference for art students and Japanese art lovers.

The Author:

Edmond de Goncourt was a French writer belonging to the naturalist movement. He was friends with Zola, Flaubert and Daudet. From 1850, he wrote on art history with his brother. Together, they were the witnesses of the artistic life of the second half of the nineteenth century. His last will was to create a literary academy to honour the memory of this brother. The Goncourt Prize is today the most prestigious literary distinction in France.
Mikhail Uspensky was a leading art historian and curator of the Japanese art collections of the Hermitage Museum.

280 colour and b/w illustrations, hardcover

This richly illustrated book presents the Jeffrey Montgomery collection of Japanese folk art, one of the foremost collections of this art in the world. Superb examples of lacquer and metalwork, basketry, textiles, furniture, masks, sculpture, paintings, toys and ceramics, organised by medium into five sections. These utilitarian objects of everyday life date from the Muromachi period (1392-1568) to the early Meiji period (1868-1912), and were crafted by hardworking artisans for farmers, fishermen, town merchants and the upper-class elite. The pieces these artisans produced reflect an honesty and respect for all things both animate and inanimate, while at the same time they served as vehicles of ritual and symbols of cultural identity. The significant feature of all the objects in the collection is that they possess a unique and inherent quality of timeless beauty. The introduction written by Dr. Edward de Waal, a potter and a writer whose works are held in many museum collections, focuses on the history of the appreciation of Japanese Folk arts in the West. Indeed, the influence of Japanese folk art on modernist design and on the growth of the craft movement within the West has been extremely important. The book continues with extensive texts written by four highly respected Japanese art historians. The entries are divided into five sections: ceramics, textiles, metalworks, masks, and additional objects (furniture, toys, sculptures, etc.) The book includes a chronology, a map of Japan, an index and bibliography.