100 Books Like At Home in Japan

This is a diverse collection of stories told by ex-pats living in “inaka," the Japanese word for the countryside. An array of ex-pat authors describe their experiences: Some came to Japan as English teachers, journalists, or spouses, one cycled through Japan, another walked in the footsteps of haiku poet Basho, and another became a Buddhist priest.

The collection starts in Okinawa and moves up the archipelago to Hokkaido. For me, it’s the most diverse collection of voices on the topic of countryside living. 

Lowitz, a poet, and novelist who founded a popular Tokyo yoga studio, writes of her journey from a broken home in Berkeley, California to love, marriage, and motherhood in Japan, stopping off at an ashram in India along the way. She endures the pain of infertility in a country where motherhood is revered, and contemplates adoption in a society where bloodlines are valued above all else, After obtaining permission from her Japanese father-in-law, Lowitz, and her Japanese husband successfully adopted a Japanese toddler, who becomes her greatest teacher. This is a beautiful and deeply moving book, written by a prize-winning poet and novelist.

Anton, a former columnist for The Japan Times, grew up in New York City, one of three children raised solely by an African American father. (Her mother was institutionalized due to mental illness.) She studied dance with Martha Graham, modeled for the pages of LOOK magazine at a time when African American models were few and far between, and copy-edited for Joseph Heller. Later, she traveled to Europe where she met Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton when she interviewed to be their house-sitter in Gstaad, fell in love and gave birth in Denmark, then later journeyed overland from Europe to Asia with her childhood friend and future husband, Billy. Any one chapter of her life could have been the basis for an entire book. Anton is an engaging storyteller with an exceptional story -- an unbeatable combination. I highly recommend this memoir to anyone interested in Japan, multicultural families,… show more.

When Wakabayashi first arrived in Japan, as a journalist and curious traveler, she was not particularly religious. She met and married a Japanese acupuncturist with an affluent background, and began a family of her own. Later, she began to seek meaning in Judaism, even managing to engage with a small Jewish community in Tokyo. The heart wants what the heart wants, but Wakabayashi shows how difficult it can be to reconcile the conflicting desires of the mind and soul in an interfaith and intercultural family. Her deeply engaging story provides insight into rarely-scene subcultures in Japan, while detailing her spiritual development, and her eventual decision to leave. Wakabayashi is a skilled, veteran storyteller, with a story absolutely worth reading. This book is for anyone with an interest in Judaism, Japan, motherhood, marriage, and/or intercultural relationships.

In 2017, Scotsman Iain Maloney and his acerbic Japanese wife Minori decided to buy a house in rural Japan. This was no small decision, as Japan houses begin to depreciate almost as soon as they are built. Nevertheless, the author is resigned to spending the remainder of his days in Japan and is ready to commit. The book is ostensibly about one year in rural Japan, but Maloney veers frequently from the narrative path, flashing back and forth in time, riffing on, among other things, soccer, crowded trains, and tired tropes in memoirs written by foreigners.

While many have written about their experiences in Japan, few have taken readers quite so far off the beaten path – literally. Maloney’s understanding of the Japanese language and his immersion in Japanese culture (he’d first arrived in 2005) add credibility and depth, while his self-deprecation and humor make this an entirely enjoyable read.

This is one of the first books on Japan that I read when I moved to the country in 1997, and it still resonates with me. While still a college student, Alex Kerr buys a rundown farmhouse in the Iya Valley of Shikoku, re-thatches it, and maintains the traditional Japanese architecture of pre-WWII Japanese wooden houses.

Kerr went on to write many more books on Japan, most of which have become classics. He is the foundation of the akiya movement, lectures widely around the archipelago, and is responsible for revitalizing country villages around Japan.

Saga was a country doctor who, after work hours, interviewed his patients about their lives. While this book was published way back in 1974, the stories he uncovers helped me understand the foundations of Japanese country folk today.

From life on the Tone River, where fishing families lived on their vessels, to farming families, where infanticide was accepted due to lack of birth control methods, Dr. Saga’s interviews are ripe with detail and confessions of the good times and the bad of his compatriots in Showa era Japan, before and after WWII.

Miyamoto is a famous ethnologist who walked the length of Japan, padding through its far-flung hamlets, to compile books about provincial livelihoods in the 1930s. The result is a look into the hard lives of rice farmers and their wives.

Miyamoto’s interviews revealed many of the cultural quirks, such as the promiscuous ways of certain country women and their equally unrestrained suitors—often traders passing through town. The characters Miyamoto interviews offer fascinating, frank, and impactful voices, especially from women who would not have otherwise been heard.

Iyer’s prose is beautiful, and he’s best known for his travel writing. In this book, he stays put, living in Japan and immersing himself in Zen and the pleasures of traditional life in Kyoto. He also meets his wife, and the combination of cultural study and personal memoir makes for an absolutely lovely read. 

Written by a Kyoto expat of many years, this book is an excellent way to explore all the nooks and crannies of Japan’s ancient capital.

Rich in history, the city is primed for exploration on foot, and this book details 18 strolls, from the top shrines to the city’s infamous backstreets. The super detailed maps and exhaustively researched historical notes really enhanced my last trip to Kyoto, as while I have been there many times, I didn’t actually know much about many of the places!