Here are 100 books that The Pillow Book fans have personally recommended if you like
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Kyoto is one of the world’s great cities. I first came here in 1994, its 1200th anniversary, and was entranced by its many treasures. In the city’s river basin were fostered the traditional arts and crafts of Japan. This is the city of Zen, Noh, the tea ceremony, geisha, moss and rock gardens, not to mention the aristocratic aesthetes of the Heian Era. Here in the ancient capital are imperial estates and no fewer than 17 World Heritage sites, including the Golden Pavilion and the divine Byodo-in. Faced with this wealth of wonders, I tried to weave them into a coherent story – the story of a most remarkable city.
This was my introduction to the major sights of Kyoto. As well as providing essential information, there is an extra section suggesting how to value each sight on a deeper level. It helped me appreciate just how special Kyoto is. That it has stayed in print for so long is testimony to its worth.
This Kyoto travel guide presents the best tourists sites in Japan's spiritual and historical capital.
With this guide the visitor needs no further assistance to learn all that a place has to offer. It is factual, concise, and complete. This Japan travel book is generously illustrated with photographs, maps, route plans, and building plans, as well as a selection of reproductions from old prints and picture scrolls.
The sights were specifically chosen to give foreign visitors a broad understanding of Kyoto's political, religious, and cultural history. Among them are the ancient Phoenix Hall of the Byodo-in, the famous rock garden…
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman
by
Alexis Krasilovsky,
This fiercely feminist novel catalogues the obstacles encountered by a young woman fighting to become a filmmaker in the 1970s and 1980s.
The novel begins with Ana Fried struggling to step out of her mother's shadow. While filming Indian goddesses at Mount Abu, a bout of malaria sends her back…
Kyoto is one of the world’s great cities. I first came here in 1994, its 1200th anniversary, and was entranced by its many treasures. In the city’s river basin were fostered the traditional arts and crafts of Japan. This is the city of Zen, Noh, the tea ceremony, geisha, moss and rock gardens, not to mention the aristocratic aesthetes of the Heian Era. Here in the ancient capital are imperial estates and no fewer than 17 World Heritage sites, including the Golden Pavilion and the divine Byodo-in. Faced with this wealth of wonders, I tried to weave them into a coherent story – the story of a most remarkable city.
Kyoto is known for its many famous sights. But wandering around the backstreets and through the many pockets of nature brings rewards of a completely different kind. Armed with this guide by long-term resident Judith Clancy, I enjoyed many happy days exploring lesser-known routes while appreciating the advice about places to eat and what to look at.
This revised and updated edition of the Japan travel classic and cultural guide gets you wandering from downtown quarters to remote mountaintop temples and features expanded information on new museums and gardens now open year-round for viewing.
Judith Clancy's expert research weaves a rich narrative of Kyoto's history, local lore, and artistic and religious background to guide you through your journey.
Includes:
31 explorations including 5 mountain routes, 17 World Heritage Sites, Arashiyama, Kiyomizu-dera, Philosopher's Walk, the city's 6 Zen temple complexes, and much more Detailed maps tracing each route Over 30 descriptive photos Tips on etiquette and behavior A…
Right after college, I lived abroad in Asia, in the small, landlocked country of Laos. A key theme of the book is the role of the U.S. in the world. During the Vietnam War, Laos was subject to a massive bombing campaign by the U.S., and decades later, the country was still coping with the effects. As unexploded bombs continued to kill people every year, how would my colleagues and neighbors react to an American living among them? The book is mainly about the joys of navigating another culture, and while Laos is unique, I’ve read a lot of books about living abroad in Asia, and common themes certainly emerge.
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.
When Pico Iyer decided to go to Kyoto and live in a monastery, he did so to learn about Zen Buddhism from the inside, to get to know Kyoto, one of the loveliest old cities in the world, and to find out something about Japanese culture today -- not the world of businessmen and production lines, but the traditional world of changing seasons and the silence of temples, of the images woven through literature, of the lunar Japan that still lives on behind the rising sun of geopolitical power.
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman
by
Alexis Krasilovsky,
This fiercely feminist novel catalogues the obstacles encountered by a young woman fighting to become a filmmaker in the 1970s and 1980s.
The novel begins with Ana Fried struggling to step out of her mother's shadow. While filming Indian goddesses at Mount Abu, a bout of malaria sends her back…
Kyoto is one of the world’s great cities. I first came here in 1994, its 1200th anniversary, and was entranced by its many treasures. In the city’s river basin were fostered the traditional arts and crafts of Japan. This is the city of Zen, Noh, the tea ceremony, geisha, moss and rock gardens, not to mention the aristocratic aesthetes of the Heian Era. Here in the ancient capital are imperial estates and no fewer than 17 World Heritage sites, including the Golden Pavilion and the divine Byodo-in. Faced with this wealth of wonders, I tried to weave them into a coherent story – the story of a most remarkable city.
For many tourists, Kyoto is synonymous with geisha and maiko (geisha in training). With their gorgeous clothing and white faces, they epitomise exoticism. However, those of us who live here see them with greater respect, for we know how hard the training is and how they embody the rich tradition of Kyoto arts and crafts. Memoirs of a Geisha was a worldwide hit, but the fiction gave an outdated picture. Personally, I find the Geisha of Gion to be more revealing and written by a true insider.
The extraordinary, bestselling memoir from Japan's foremost geisha. 'A glimpse into the exotic, mysterious, tinged-with-eroticism world of the almost mythical geisha' Val Hennessy, Daily Mail '[An] eloquent and innovative memoir' The Times
'I can identify the exact moment when things began to change. It was a cold winter afternoon. I had just turned three.'
Emerging shyly from her hiding place, Mineko encounters Madam Oima, the formidable proprietress of a prolific geisha house in Gion. Madam Oima is mesmerised by the child's black hair and black eyes: she has found her successor. And so Mineko is gently, but firmly, prised away…
I'm a retired economics professor from the US who studied Japan for most of my 46-year career and have lived in Kyoto since 2008. I first visited Kyoto in 1981, naively hoping to revel in the splendors of the Heian era, and was disappointed to find that the physical manifestations of medieval Japan as evoked in The Tale of Genjihad vanished. But the persisting legacy of that ancient age is still evident to the trained observer. Japan today embodies its past. It's not enough to know that Japan today is a prosperous country. Curious people also want to know how it got that way. The roots lie deep in the past.
This is essential background for any reader of the Tale of Genji, the famous novel written by Murasaki Shikibu in the early 11th century. In a breezy style that pulls the reader along, Morris describes how the court nobles of Heian—the original name for Kyoto—had created a distinctive high culture inspired by borrowings from China but uniquely Japanese. We learn about a polygamous society in which males among the court nobles competed for the affection of high-born females through poetry and aesthetics. Political ambitions were channeled into the pursuit of higher social rank rather than into government works and policies. That last sentence could describe Japanese politics of today. Readers of this book will learn that even in the eleventh century, Japan already had a sophisticated culture, government, and style of life. The nation’s economic development has roots that extend at least that far into the past.
Ivan Morris’s definitive and widely acclaimed portrait of the ceremonious and melancholy world of ancient Japan.
Using The Tale of Genji and other major literary works from Japan’s Heian period as a frame of reference, The World of the Shining Prince recreates an era when women set the cultural tone. Focusing on the world of the emperor’s court—a world deeply admired by Virginia Woolf, among others—renowned scholar of Japanese history and literature Ivan Morris explores the politics, society, religious life, and superstitions of the period.
Offering readers detailed portrayals of the daily lives of courtiers, the cult of beauty they…
When I was studying Japan in graduate school, my advisor once told me that he hoped I wouldn’t pursue research in women’s history, calling it a fad. He was wrong, but it took me well over ten years to figure that out. Thanks to colleagues and friends, I helped build the field of Japanese women’s history in English, especially for the early modern period. As professor emerita at the University of California, Irvine, I remain committed to the possibility of uncovering the lives of yet more amazing women who challenge the stereotypes of docile wife and seductive geisha all too prevalent in fiction set in Japan.
In recounting Nakanoin Nakako’s history, Rowley affords us insight into three worlds—the imperial court in Kyoto, a remote village on the Izu Peninsula, and a Buddhist convent. Born into a family of court nobles in early seventeenth-century Kyoto, Nakako’s life of privilege as an imperial concubine came to an abrupt end when the emperor discovered that she participated in wild parties and sexual escapades. Furious, he wanted her killed. Instead the shogun, his titular subordinate and de facto boss, sentenced her to exile on a distant island. She ended up working as a teacher for farmers before returning to the city of her birth fourteen years later and becoming a nun. Hers is the remarkable story of a resilient woman and her war-torn world.
Japan in the early seventeenth century was a wild place. Serial killers stalked the streets of Kyoto at night, while noblemen and women mingled freely at the imperial palace, drinking sake and watching kabuki dancing in the presence of the emperor's principal consort. Among these noblewomen was an imperial concubine named Nakanoin Nakako, who in 1609 became embroiled in a sex scandal involving both courtiers and young women in the emperor's service. As punishment, Nakako was banished to an island in the Pacific Ocean, but she never reached her destination. Instead, she was shipwrecked and spent fourteen years in a…
Early in life, I felt the presence of a “guardian angel” who would take my hand and accompany my mind to imagine distant cultures. I grew up in Florence, and in our history, there were so many tales of people coming from afar, and of Florentines traveling across deserts and oceans. And as time passed, I would be drawn to beautifully written true stories which opened windows onto different epochs and dramas of life in both near and far-flung places of the world.
This masterpiece - believed to be the oldest full-length ‘novel’ in existence - is an extraordinary exploration of human feelings, emotions, and relations as fresh and beguiling today as when it was first written one thousand years ago. I include this as non-fiction because it is a true account of daily life at the Heian Japanese court. Lady Murasaki’s characters draw the reader into their passion and terrors in an uncannily modern way, still so alive today. Readers will find themselves immersed in a strange and distant culture whose inhabitants’ loves, rivalries, suffering and follies they can easily identify with. It is an astonishing diary disguised as a “novel”, one of the greatest classics of all time, surprisingly written by a woman.
"What Waley did create is literary art of extraordinary beauty that brings to life in English the world Murasaki Shikibu imagined. The beauty of his art has not dimmed, but like the original text itself retains the power to move and enlighten."-Dennis Washburn, from his foreword
Centuries before Shakespeare, Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji was already acknowledged as a classic of Japanese literature. Over the past century, this book has gained worldwide acceptance as not only the world's first novel but as one of the greatest works of literature of all time.
I’m a grown-up who struggles to stay in the here and now, vastly preferring to live in the stories in my head or in the book in front of me. I grew up in New England, Spain, and now have settled in Colorado after traveling around most of the lower 48 states. I’ve been a fan of well written fantasy since I learned to read, and at 35 I started writing my own fantasy stories. Now when I need a perfect getaway escape, I read my own books!
When a character is craftier and sneakier than me, it is so, so fun and I could barely keep up!
This is one of my favorite fantasy books ever! Also, the banter between Jude and Cardan gave me life. It is so perfectly written, and I lived for every time the two of them faced off in a battle of words.
Watching them go from intellectual enemies to lovers is the best of the best.
The enchanting and bloodthirsty sequel to the New York Times bestselling novel The Cruel Prince. You must be strong enough to strike and strike and strike again without tiring. The first lesson is to make yourself strong. After the jaw-dropping revelation that Oak is the heir to Faerie, Jude must keep her brother safe. To do so, she has bound the wicked king, Cardan, to her, and made herself the power behind the throne. Navigating the constantly shifting political alliances of Faerie would be difficult enough if Cardan were easy to control. But he does everything in his power to…
I’ve loved creating and writing stories since childhood, and my ambitions started early. I started one of my largest and longest writing endeavors back in middle school—novelizing a popular video game called Chrono Trigger—and even into adulthood, it stretched into a serious effort. I used it to hone my writing craft for years, constantly bouncing feedback off others. Eventually, people started to tell me that the best parts of that story were the scenes I added to enhance it, and I finally decided that I wanted to pursue the creation of my own fantasy series.
This particular book/series by Sanderson is a quickly-paced fantasy heist with a very cool magic system involving different metals. The main character, Vin, is a lowly commoner who ends up navigating the complex social web of nobility. It’s a fascinating progression with a fascinating and satisfying result.
This book has loosely inspired some aspects of action, nobility, and the gem-based magic system found in my Heroes of Time series. One review of my book Murdoch’s Choice called it “Mistborn on a Boat.”
Brandon Sanderson - the international phenomenon who finished the Wheel of Time sequence - introduces a fantasy trilogy which overturns the expectations of readers and goes on to tell the epic story of evil overturned in a richly imagined world.
A thousand years ago evil came to the land and has ruled with an iron hand ever since. The sun shines fitfully under clouds of ash that float down endlessly from the constant eruption of volcanoes. A dark lord rules through the aristocratic families and ordinary folk are condemned to lives in servitude, sold as goods, labouring in the ash…
I’m the author of the Storybook Valley chick-lit series, which includes Fooling Around With Cinderella and Prancing Around With Sleeping Beauty. I love reading and writing lighthearted novels about young women finding their Prince Charming—and also themselves. Setting is also important to me as a writer. To create my Storybook Valley novels I spied on Cinderellas at amusement parks and discreetly watched employees head off into off-limits areas. I watched hours of YouTube interviews with former Disney World princesses, behind-the-scenes videos with other amusement park employees, and listened to podcast interviews with managers of theme parks. All the novels I chose had well-developed settings that were an integral part of the book.
I stumbled onto this book on Amazon and the hook intrigued me: What if America had a royal family instead of a president? This alternate reality story set in the present day follows Princess Beatrice and her two siblings. As Beatrice gets closer to becoming queen, she feels the intense pressure and it affects her friendships, family relationships, and her love life. I’ve also read the second book in the series, which had some surprising plot twists. While this is actually a young adult novel, adults will enjoy it also. It’s a bit soapier than the other novels on my list, but a tantalizing read.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING SERIES * What if America had a royal family? If you can't get enough of Harry and Meghan or Kate and William, meet American princesses Beatrice and Samantha. Crazy Rich Asians meets The Crown. Perfect for fans of Red, White, and Royal Blue and The Royal We!
Two princesses vying for the ultimate crown. Two girls vying for the prince's heart. This is the story of the American royals.
When America won the Revolutionary War, its people offered General George Washington a crown. Two and a half centuries later, the House of Washington still sits on…
