The first book to chronicle the golden age of Japanese bicycle design.

Japanese bicycles have long been at the forefront of both competitive and recreational cycling — from top-flight racing bicycles to collectible custom fixed-gear frames. This comprehensive and stunningly illustrated book presents a fascinating overview of the most prolific and celebrated period of Japanese bicycle design, between the 1950s and the ’80s, when uniquely talented artisanal craftsmen produced some of the most iconic bicycles of the twentieth century.

From the recognizable silhouettes of major manufacturers like Fuji, Panasonic, and Bridgestone to the rarest frames from artisanal builders like 3-Rensho or Nagasawa, Japanese bicycle designers dominated the cycling world and created machines that are still revered today. Illustrated with specially commissioned photographs of fully restored bikes, and supplemented with artifacts and ephemera from technical manuals to photography of the legendary Keirin racing circuits, this book is must-have for anyone with an interest in cycling and the phenomenon of Japanese design.

About the Author:

William Bevington is an information and product development designer, a passionate collector of Japanese bicycles and cycling ephemera, and the foremost authority on the leading Japanese brand Fuji.

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Пролистать книгу Japanese Steel: Classic Bicycle Design from Japan на сайте издательства.

Thinking of getting a Japanese-style tattoo? Want to avoid a permanent mistake? 

"Japanese Tattoos" is an insider's look at the world of Japanese "irezumi" (tattoos). 

"Japanese Tattoos" explains the imagery featured in Japanese tattoos so that readers can avoid getting ink they don't understand or, worse, that they'll regret. This photo-heavy book will also trace the history of Japanese tattooing, putting the iconography and "kanji" symbols in their proper context so readers will be better informed as to what they mean and have a deeper understanding of "irezumi." 

Tattoos featured will range from traditional "tebori" (hand-poked) and "kanji" tattoos to anime-inspired and modern works as well as everything in between. For the first time, Japanese tattooing will be put together in a visually attractive, informative, and authoritative way. 

Along with the 350+ photos of tattoos, "Japanese Tattoos" will also feature interviews with Japanese tattoo artists on a variety of topics. What's more, there will be interviews with clients, who are typically overlooked in similar books, allowing them to discuss what their Japanese tattoos mean to them. 

Those who read this informative tattoo guide will be more knowledgeable about Japanese tattoos should they want to get inked or if they are simply interested in Japanese art and culture.

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Пролистать книгу Japanese Tattoos: History. Culture. Design на Google Books

Fujoshi, or Yaoi fandom supporters of femme gay media aimed at teenage girls represent an ever-increasing market in Japan. Best of Bishonen presents an up-to-date art collection of beautiful boys popular with Fujoshi or Yaoi girls. 

Seventy-nine artists are featured within, with details in Japanese and English. 

Some of the artworks are actually sought-after illustrations taken from the popular online game Touken Ranbu (in which players control legendary swords anthropomorphized as attractive young men) and Vocaloid PV. 

Best of Bishonen promises to satisfy Fujoshi girls with its unique claim as the complete Yaoi art collection! Best of Bishonen is also an indispensable book for anyone wishing to sample the visual pulse of this exciting trend. Additionally, five artists have created new original works exclusively for this project. 

Featured illustrators include: Shishunnki Suzuki Jiro Naoe Marimo Nao Tsukiji Fuji Mitsuya Toinana Aomiya Kara Shikimi Nagarenaitessyu And more!...

In the field of graphic design, Japanese graphics has established its unique reputation around the world. This book sorts out the development of Japanese graphics into three stages: postwar 40 years, the golden 10 years and the 21st century to the current. Along the way, briefly talk about Japanese aesthetics, Japanese tea ceremony, Japanese traditional painting and manga in order to explore the cultural roots of Japanese graphics.

A large quantity of graphic works by Japanese designers are displayed under four categories: Logo, Poster & Book, Branding and Packaging. To deepen the understanding of Japanese graphics and its development, this book features articles written by renowned designers, including Masaaki Hiromura, Daigo Daikoku, Eisuke Tachikawa, Masaomi Fujita, Eriko Kawakami and Ren Takaya.

1. A comprehensive introduction of the development of Japanese graphics after WWII and masters emerging from corresponding stages.
2. A brief talk the cultural roots of Japanese graphics — Japanese aesthetic, Japanese tea ceremony, Yamato-e, Ukiyo-e and manga
3. Articles written by eminent designers, such as Masaaki Hiromura, Daigo Daikoku
4. A collection of excellent graphic works by Japanese designers

An in-depth exploration spanning 800 years of the art, essence, and enduring impact of the Japanese garden

The most comprehensive exploration of the art of the Japanese garden published to date, this book covers more than eight centuries of the history of this important genre. Author and garden designer Sophie Walker brings fresh insight to this subject, exploring the Japanese garden in detail through a series of essays and with 100 featured gardens, ranging from ancient Shinto shrines to imperial gardens and contemporary Zen designs. Leading artists, architects, and other cultural practitioners offer personal perspectives in newly commissioned essays.

About the Author:

In 2014 Sophie Walker became the youngest woman to design a garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Having studied art history, Sophie later qualified in horticulture, plant science, and garden design. Based in London, she practises globally. In addition to designing gardens, Sophie lectures on conceptual design, the Japanese garden, planting, and the garden environment.

Shunmyo Masuno, Japan's leading garden designer, is at once Japan's most highly acclaimed landscape architect and an 18th-generation Zen Buddhist priest, presiding over daily ceremonies at the Kenkoji Temple in Yokohama. He is celebrated for his unique ability to blend strikingly contemporary elements with the traditional design vernacular. He has worked in ultramodern urban hotels and in some of Japan's most famous classic gardens. In each project, his work as a designer is inseparable from his Buddhist practice. Each becomes a Zen garden, "a special spiritual place where the mind dwells."

This beautiful book, illustrated with more than 400 drawings and color photographs, is the first complete retrospective of Masuno's work to be published in English. It presents 37 major gardens around the world in a wide variety of types and settings: traditional and contemporary, urban and rural, public spaces and private residences, and including temple, office, hotel and campus venues. Masuno achieved fame for his work in Japan, but he is becoming increasingly known internationally, and in 2011 completed his first commission in the United States which is shown here.

Zen Gardens divided into three chapters, covers: "Traditional Zen Gardens," "Contemporary Zen Gardens" and "Zen Gardens outside Japan." Illustrated with photographs and architectural plans or sketches, each garden is described and analyzed by author Mira Locher, herself an architect and a scholar well versed in Japanese culture.

Celebrating the accomplishments of a major, world-class designer, Zen Gardens also serves as something of a master class in Japanese garden design and appreciation: how to perceive a Japanese garden, how to understand one, even how to make one yourself. Like one of Masuno's gardens, the book can be a place for contemplation and mindful repose.

About the Author:

Mira Locher is an architect and professor who works in the U.S. and Japan. She studied at Smith College before receiving her Master of Architecture degree from the University of Pennsylvania. After working for Team Zoo Atelier Mobile in Japan for seven years, she set up an architectural practice in the U.S. with Takayuki Murakami. Mira Locher is Dean of the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Manitoba (Canada). She is the author of Super Potato Design, Zen Gardens and Zen Garden Design.

In The Art of the Japanese Sword, master swordsmith Yoshindo Yoshihara offers a comprehensive view on the making, finishing and appreciation of Japanese blades.

The Japanese sword, a unique work of art in steel, can be appreciated from a number of viewpoints. Its functionality as a weapon, the sophisticated metallurgy and scientific thinking utilized by the swordsmith, the shape of the blade itself, and the different crystalline forms in the steel all contribute to the beauty of these remarkable weapons. The Art of the Japanese Sword conveys to the reader a basic background regarding the Japanese sword, as well as an explanation of how to view and appreciate a blade. It also illustrates the details of how a sword is made and finished today.

Modern craftsmen use completely traditional methods from the past to prepare their steel, forge the sword and create the unique hardened edge. By gaining a good understanding of how a sword is actually made, the reader will be able to appreciate the Japanese sword more fully.

Japanese sword art stands out in many ways: functionality as a weapon, sophisticated metallurgy and metalsmithing, the shape of the blade itself--all contribute to the beauty of these remarkable weapons. The Art of the Japanese Sword conveys to the reader Japanese samurai sword history and Japanese sword care, as well as explaining how to view and appreciate a blade.

With 256 full-color pages, this sword book illustrates in meticulous detail how modern craftsmen use traditional methods to prepare their steel, forge the sword and create the unique hardened edge. By gaining a good understanding of how a sword is made, the reader will be able to appreciate the samurai sword more fully. Topics include:

- Appreciating the Japanese sword
- History of the Japanese sword
- Traditional Japanese steelmaking
- Making the sword
- Finishing the sword

About the Authors:

Yoshindo Yoshihara is a third-generation swordsmith. His grandfather Kuniie began making swords in 1933 in Tokyo and was ranked among the top swordsmiths in Japan during his career. Yoshindo lives and works in Tokyo with his son, who represents the fourth generation of swordsmiths in the family. Yoshindo, who is always training young swordsmiths and currently has five apprentices working with him, has been named an Important Cultural Property of the city and prefecture of Tokyo and is a mukansa (top-ranked swordsmith) in Japan.

Leon Kapp, a molecular biologist, lives with his wife Hiroko in San Rafael, California. He has been seriously interested in Japanese swords for over twenty-five years and has spent a great deal of time learning about them from Yoshindo.

Hiroko Kapp is a writer for Senken Shimbun News of Tokyo and writes about fashion and the fashion industry in the US. She graduated from Musashi-no Art University in Tokyo. For twenty-five years, she was active in the apparel business and designed scarves for her own line in the US.

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Пролистать книгу The Art of the Japanese Sword: The Craft of Swordmaking and its Appreciation на Google Books.

Ukiyo-e ("pictures of the floating world") is an art form that originated in the metropolitan culture of Edo (Tokyo) in the early seventeenth century and involved collaboration between artist, carver, printer and publisher. Printed on fragile paper using a technique of woodcut or woodblock printing, the early black and white designs soon gave way to delicate two-colour prints and then to multicoloured prints. Favourite subjects were portraits of beautiful geisha and courtesans, popular kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers, erotica, scenes from nature, historical subjects and even foreigners in Japan.

The charming, carefully selected ukiyo-e in this book reflect not only Japan's rich history and way of life but also reveal the author's love affair with an art form that has captured the imagination of people all over the world./p>

At the heart of a Japanese garden is harmony with nature. More than simply a landscape of trees and flowering shrubs, a Japanese garden provides a place of serenity and rest, filled with peaceful spots that lend themselves to meditation and contemplation. Japanese Gardens celebrates and illustrates this ideal, showcasing the exquisite natural beauty of more than 20 quintessentially Japanese gardens-big and small, urban and rural, traditional and contemporary.

The expert author-and-photographer team behind this book excels at capturing and explaining the essential elements and techniques that distinguish Japanese gardens from those of other countries. The featured sites range from large feudal period gardens, temple gardens and private and countryside gardens to mountain flower gardens, tea gardens and gardens devoted to miniature bonsai.

For the art enthusiast, the doll collector, as well as the casual reader, the world of Japanese dolls is a fascinating one to explore. For many centuries Japanese doll artisans created spectacular works of art, invested with both significant cultural meaning and elemental beauty. The focus of this book is on collecting: What types of ningyo are available for the collector of today? What are some of the features and characteristics which will help collectors identify the ningyo they find and evaluate them? Who were some of the earliest collectors in Japan, Europe, and the United States? and, How do we preserve and care for these invaluable artifacts from Japan's past?

About the Author:

Alan Pate was born in Florida and studied in France, Korea and the US. He has an MA in East Asian Studies from Harvard University. He is the owner of the Japanese antique firm Akanezumiya in St Ignatius, Montana, specializing in the religious and figural art of Japan from the Edo period and earlier. He is the leading expert on Japanese dolls in the US, where he has curated exhibitions and lectured extensively. He has also published widely in journals focusing on Japanese antiques. He has been appointed Guest Curator for an exhibition on important US collections of Japanese dolls to be held at the Mingei International Museum in San Diego, CA, in 2005.

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Пролистать книгу Japanese Dolls: The Fascinating World of Ningyo на Google Books.

Following up on Layout Now and Color Now, SendPoints continues to craft practical guidebooks for readers in the design cosmos. This time, it is about the type, which we read and use every day.

Typography Now guides readers through everything they need to know to understand, create, and use Latin, Chinese, and Japanese typefaces in an increasingly interrelated world. The fundamentals, including typographic terms, character structures, style classifications, size, weight, text families, and more will provide readers with prerequisite knowledge to understand and identify different types. Typography Now introduces readers to esteemed type foundries and their design processes and techniques to demonstrate how type is created. The coverage of layout rules will help readers grasp how to effectively design with text on the page as well as combine text with mixed scripts (Chinese, Japanese, and Roman).

In addition, you will find some of the best examples of typographic choices, as well as talks with experts at type foundries about the present and future of type, and demonstrations of some of the hottest new typefaces.

'a mixture of artistic sensibility and imagery that leaves nothing to the imagination'  - The Telegraph

In early modern Japan, thousands of sexually explicit paintings, prints, and illustrated books with texts were produced. These were euphemistically called ‘spring pictures’ (shunga) and were originally created by the artists of the ukiyo-e school of the floating world to advertise brothels in 17th-century Yoshiwara, including the celebrated artists Utamaro and Hokusai.

This catalogue of an exhibition in 2013/4 at the British Museum aims to answer some key questions about what shunga is and why was it produced. Erotic Japanese art was heavily suppressed in Japan from the 1870s onwards and it is only in the last twenty years or so has it been possible to publish unexpurgated examples in Japan. 

Drawing on the latest scholarship and featuring over 400 images of works from major public and private collections, this book sheds new light on this unique art form within Japanese social and cultural history.

About the author:

Timothy Clark, Head of Japanese Section, British Museum

Station to Station. A historic trail through the heart of Japan, as told by two legendary woodblock artists

This XXL edition reprints Keisai Eisen and Utagawa Hiroshige’s legendary series The Sixty-Nine Stations along the Kisokaidō, a stunning representation of the historic route between Edo (Tokyo) and Kyoto. Sourced from one of the finest surviving first editions, this vivid tapestry of 19th-century Japan is in equal parts a major artifact of its imperial past and a masterwork of woodblock practice.

The Kisokaidō route through Japan was ordained in the early 1600s by the country’s then-ruler Tokugawa Ieyasu, who decreed that staging posts be installed along the length of the arduous passage between Edo (present-day Tokyo) and Kyoto. Inns, shops, and restaurants were established to provide sustenance and lodging to weary travelers. In 1835, renowned woodblock print artist Keisai Eisen was commissioned to create a series of works to chart the Kisokaidō journey. After producing 24 prints, Eisen was replaced by Utagawa Hiroshige, who completed the series of 70 prints in 1838.

Both Eisen and Hiroshige were master print practitioners. In The Sixty-Nine Stations along the Kisokaidō, we find the artists’ distinct styles as much as their shared expertise. From the busy starting post of Nihonbashi to the castle town of Iwamurata, Eisen opts for a more muted palette but excels in figuration, particularly of glamorous women, and relishes snapshots of activity along the route, from shoeing a horse to winnowing rice. Hiroshige demonstrates his mastery of landscape with grandiose and evocative scenes, whether it’s the peaceful banks of the Ota River, the forbidding Wada Pass, or a moonlit ascent between Yawata and Mochizuki.

Taken as a whole, The Sixty-Nine Stations collection represents not only a masterpiece of woodblock practice, including bold compositions and an experimental use of color, but also a charming tapestry of 19th-century Japan, long before the specter of industrialization. This TASCHEN XXL edition revives the series with due scale and splendor. Sourced from the only-known set of a near-complete run of the first edition of the series, this legendary publication is reproduced in optimum quality, bound in the Japanese tradition and with uncut paper. A perfect companion piece to TASCHEN’s One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, it is at once a visual delight and a major artifact from the bygone era of Imperial Japan.

The editor and author:

Andreas Marks studied East Asian art history at the University of Bonn and obtained his PhD in Japanese studies from Leiden University with a thesis on 19th-century actor prints. From 2008 to 2013 he was director and chief curator of the Clark Center for Japanese Art in Hanford, California, and since 2013 has been the Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese and Korean Art, head of the Department of Japanese and Korean Art, and director of the Clark Center for Japanese Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

The author:

Rhiannon Paget studied at Tokyo University of the Arts and received her doctorate in Japanese Art History from the University of Sydney, Australia. The curator of Asian art at the John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida, she has published research on Japanese woodblock prints, textiles, board games, and nihonga.

Woodblock Wonders. A visual history of 200 Japanese masterpieces

The Japanese woodblock print is a phenomenon with no Western equivalent, one where breathtaking landscapes exist alongside blush-inducing erotica; where demons and otherworldly creatures torment the living; and where sumo wrestlers, kabuki actors, and courtesans are rock stars. This XXL book lifts the veil on a much-loved but little-understood art, revealing the stories and people behind the 200 most exceptional prints from 1680–1938. Drawing from the finest impressions in museums and private collections around the world, it features the work of 89 artists as well as 17 fold-outs.

From Edouard Manet’s portrait of naturalist writer Émile Zola sitting among his Japanese art finds to Van Gogh’s meticulous copies of the Hiroshige prints he devotedly collected, 19th-century pioneers of European modernism made no secret of their love of Japanese art. In all its sensuality, freedom, and effervescence, the woodblock print is single-handedly credited with the wave of japonaiserie that first enthralled France and, later, all of Europe — but often remains misunderstood as an “exotic” artifact that helped inspire Western creativity.

The fact is that the Japanese woodblock print is a phenomenon of which there exists no Western equivalent. Some of the most disruptive ideas in modern art — including, as Karl Marx put it, that “all that is solid melts into air” — were invented in Japan in the 1700s and expressed like never before in the designs of such masters as Hokusai, Utamaro, and Hiroshige in the early 19th century.

This book lifts the veil on a much-loved but little-understood art form by presenting the 200 most exceptional Japanese woodblock prints in their historical context. Ranging from the 17th-century development of decadent ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating world,” to the decline and later resurgence of prints in the early 20th century, the images collected in this edition make up an unmatched record not only of a unique genre in art history, but also of the shifting mores and cultural development of Japan.

From mystical mountains to snowy passes, samurai swordsmen to sex workers in shop windows, each piece is explored as a work of art in its own right, revealing the stories and people behind the motifs. We discover the four pillars of the woodblock print — beauties, actors, landscapes, and bird-and-flower compositions — alongside depictions of sumo wrestlers, kabuki actors, or enticing courtesans — rock stars who populated the “floating world” and whose fan bases fueled the frenzied production of woodblock prints. We delve into the horrifying and the obscure in prints where demons, ghosts, man-eaters, and otherworldly creatures torment the living —stunning images that continue to influence Japanese manga, film, and video games to this day. We witness how, in their incredible breadth, from everyday scenes to erotica, the martial to the mythological, these works are united by the technical mastery and infallible eye of their creators and how, with tremendous ingenuity and tongue-in-cheek wit, publishers and artists alike fought to circumvent government censorship.

Three years in the making, this XXL edition presents reproductions of the finest extant impressions from the vaults of museums and private collections across the globe — many newly photographed, especially for this project. Some 17 stunning fold-outs invite us to study even the subtlest details, while extensive descriptions guide us through this frantic period in Japanese art history.

Features:

- The work of 89 artists, from the world-renowned to the unfamiliar
- 7 chapters organized chronologically to trace the history of the medium from 1680 to 1938
- 17 fold-outs, which had to be hand-folded due to their size and specifications
- Exclusive reproductions from museums and private collections
- An appendix listing all artists and works

The author:

Andreas Marks studied East Asian art history at the University of Bonn and obtained his PhD in Japanese studies from Leiden University with a thesis on 19th-century actor prints. From 2008 to 2013 he was director and chief curator of the Clark Center for Japanese Art in Hanford, California, and since 2013 has been the Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese and Korean Art, head of the Department of Japanese and Korean Art, and director of the Clark Center for Japanese Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

A fascinating journey through the world of anime and manga, their genres and styles, roots and creators.

An accessible, informative and fascinating journey through the world of anime and manga, their genres and styles (from the most commercial to the most cutting-edge), their roots and their creators. With a wealth of iconographic content, this book will be the reference book for anyone interested in discovering the diversity and originality of manga and anime.

About the Authors:

Philip Brophy is a musician, filmmaker, writer and academic.
Carlo Chatrian is a film critic and consultant for several film festivals.
Jonathan Clements is the author of Schoolgirl Milky Crisis: Adventures in Anime and co-author of The Anime Encyclopedia.
Luca Della Casa is a selector of anime and Asian films for Bologna’s Future Film Festival.
Stephane Delorme is Editor-in-chief of Cahiers du cinéma.
Davide Di Giorgio is a film critic and author of a Japanese animation column for the webmagazine Sentieri Selvaggi.
Daniele Dottorini is a film critic, lecturer and consultant for several film festivals.
Stefano Gariglio works in movie subtitling and is a member of the neo(N)eiga cultural association.
Paul Gravett is a critic, lecturer, curator and historian specializing in international comic art.
Erwan Higuinen is a journalist and film critic for Libération, Cahiers du cinéma and Les Inrockuptibles.
Fabrizio Liberti is film programmer for Italian television channel Rai Uno.
Helen McCarthy is the author of The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga and co-author of The Anime Encyclopedia.
Fabrizio Modina is a multitalented creative and an internationally renowned collector of toys.
Giona A.Nazzaro is a film critic and programmer at the Festival dei Popoli, Florence.
Maria Roberta Novielli teaches Japanese cinema at the University Ca’ Foscari, Venice.
Grazia Paganelli is a film critic and film programmer at the National Museum of Cinema, Turin.
Gianni Rondolino is an internationally renowned cinema historian and columnist for La Stampa.
Michel Roudevitch is a cartoonist, screenwriter, animator and director who has worked in the animated cinema industry since the Sixties.
Mario A. Rumor is editor of MANGA! magazine.
Stephen Sarrazin is a film and media art critic, curator and professor.
David Surman teaches Computer Game Design at the University of Wales, Newport.