The Most Dangerous Man in America: The Making of Douglas MacArthur by Mark Perry

The Most Dangerous Man in America zeroes in on what might be called the critical years of MacArthur's military career -- the close to 13 years of FDR's presidency.

Boiled down it's the story of creative conflict -- between FDR and MacArthur through those years, and between MacArthur in command of the army and Ernest King from the navy over who should run the campaign against Japan.

21st Century Tokyo: A Guide to Contemporary Architecture by Julian Worrall, Erez Golani Solomon, Joshua Lieberman

It's like a trip to Tokyo in black and white and without the long flight. In this COVID world it's wonderful to look at the late architecture of the city that is Tokyo. Some buildings I have seen - and admired - and others I wish I had found the time to visit.

The level of the architectural descriptions is just right - simple enough to get the concepts across to non-architects, but with enough details and explanation to reveal why the building carries some importance.

Looking for the Lost: Journeys Through a Vanishing Japan by Alan Booth

Something that seems lost these days are great English-language travel books about Japan. I do not mean guides — those come out a plenty on a regular basis. I mean travel narratives. There have been a few food based ones.

Booth's death was such a great loss. His keen observations during his odd and wonderful walks around Japan, collected in this volume, capture so much of a way of life that has likely passed.

Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John W. Dower

This is an amazing history that explains the Japan of today (though published in 1999) by peeling back how both Japan and the United States reacted to the results of the Second World War.
It's a complex and intricate relationship and it is thoroughly explored here.

Chronicles of My Life: An American in the Heart of Japan by Donald Keene

What a wonderful journey and what a wonderful life.

Donald Keene traces the chains of his long life (he's passed just over a year ago in his 90s) that lead from sitting next to a Chinese student in his youth to a life as one of the world's preeminent experts on Japanese literature (and quite the writer on culture and history as well).

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

What connects us through time and space is at the heart of A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki. It connects the story of a young Japanese girl told through her diary and a Japanese-American novelist reading that diary on the isolated Cortes Island of British Columbia. 

Both are outsiders - the girl who wrote the diary spent her formative years in the States so she's culturally more American than Japanese. The novelist is from the big city and living on a remote island. 

Wabi Sabi: The Japanese Art of Impermanence by Andrew Juniper

There is probably no Japanese concept more mentioned and less understood than wabi sabi.

It seems that any exploration of Japanese aesthetics has the term thrown around — sometimes correctly, and other times wildly inaccurately. It’s often imperfectly defined as the Japanese art of imperfection. But it is so much more.

Drinking Japan: A Guide to Japan's Best Drinks and Drinking Establishments by Chris Bunting

Though a few years old now Drinking Japan: A Guide to Japan's Best Drinks and Drinking Establishments is a hand dandy guide to alcoholic beverages in Japan. 

More than just a guide to sake bars, whisky bars, and great craft brewers, it's a great introduction to Japan's native and adopted alcohols and their history. 

Super Sushi Ramen Express: One Family's Journey Through the Belly of Japan by Michael Booth

When I first came across Super Sushi Ramen Express I was genuinely excited. I was looking for an interesting expose of food across the Japan. While I got a hint of that, it was a bit too superficial a journey.

There are some aspects that were great - the visit to the kaiseki restaurant in Kyoto, konbu harvesting in Hokkaido, and the creation of healthy salt.

The Little Exile by Jeanette Arakawa

I’ve always known the broad story of Japanese internment during the Second World War, both at home in Canada and next door in the United States.

The Little Exile by Jeanette Arakawa brings this tragic time to life through a unique novel that carries a lot of reality in its pages.

The Little Exile traces aftermath of this shift from normal child to prisoner through various camps and ultimately a return to freedom. It’s an illuminating glimpse inside a stolen life.

Tokyo: A View of the City by Donald Richie

It's common to get nostalgic. It seems there are entire industries based on looking back 50 years, and lamenting the damage progress has done in consuming what made the past a golden age.

Donald Richie's Tokyo: A View of the City is just this kind of look back from circa 1999 - a look at the culture and every day life that built the core neighbourhoods of Tokyo, what had gone, what had come, and what was just ahead.

Finding Japan: Early Canadian Encounters with Asia by Anne Shannon

Finding Japan is a huge - and pleasant - surprise. Many readers will be just like me having never realized that the connections between Canada and Japan were so rich, varied, and deep.

Finding Japan: Early Canadian Encounters with Asia looks at this long history. It starts even before U.S. gunboats opened a closed island Japan to the world -- with the story of the Canadian son of an HBC trader who marooned himself in Japan, and ended up teaching English to the man who would translate for the Americans when the arrived in their black ships.

Message to Adolf by Osamu Tezuka

The best literature serves to open your eyes to something new, to reveal something you haven’t seen before. Books that meet this test are few and far between — and Message to Adolf by manga master Osamu Tezuka is firmly one of them. 

It’s all the more surprising through Western eyes because we just don’t expect to come across idea shaking literature in graphic form — manga, comic, or graphic novel. Message to Adolf shows we probably should.

Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture by Matt Goulding

Rice, Fish, Noodle is the Japanese food travel book that I have been searching for. I also suspect it could be the food travel book the world has been waiting for. 

So many books of this genre scrape the surface. They revisit the same old things. They offer up yet another tired old description of the long traditions and wacky (to Westerners) food of Japan. Sushi. Ramen. Kaiseki. 

The Very Small Home by Azby Brown

Tiny houses seem to be all the rage these days. I’ve seen them profiled on talk shows, on news programs, and online. If you want to go back to the start, a great place is The Very Small Home: Japanese Ideas for Living Well in Limited Space by Azby Brown.

First published in Japan in 2005 and in English in 2012, the book profiles 18 very small homes in Japan - their layout, the features that make the space seem larger, and their techniques for packing a full life into a small home. The brilliant designs for storage are fascinating. 

Whisky Japan: The Essential Guide to the World's Most Exotic Whisky by Dominic Roskrow

Whisky Japan: The Essential Guide to the World's Most Exotic Whisky is a sad book.

Don't get me wrong - it's an amazing book. But it's sad because it is also clear that so much of the amazing stuff described is going or gone. Specific age single malts from Nikka are gone. Bottles are investments not tasting delights. The future - at least how it will play out for whiskies - remains to be determined.

Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism by Fumio Sasaki

I don't think I've ever called a book life changing. Being a procrastinator at heart, whenever a book says “close this book and take this action NOW” my response is “nah later.” 

Well Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism is life changing and I'm already taking action. For the record, I am not becoming a minimalist. At least I am not planning to. I won't get down to just one small towel. I won't have just one plate. But I am already minimizing - and it’s the start of a journey. 

Kyoto Gardens: Masterworks of the Japanese Gardener's Art by Judith Clancy

It seems that the more gardens you see in Kyoto the more gardens and temples there are left to see. And even though I told myself I'd seen enough gardens during my most recent four-day trip to the old Japanese capital, Kyoto Gardens had made me realize how I have scratched the surface. 

The book captures the essence of the key gardens and grounds each in four page profiles. Packed with pictures and accompanying short descriptions you get a quick look at and a bit of history of the garden and its temple or palace home. 

The Art of Japanese Architecture by Michiko and David Young

The Art of Japanese Architecture is a wonderful journey through the history of buildings in Japan. The book traces the origins of what we see today right back to pre-historic times. 

It's amazing to see influences traced back hundreds and even more than 1,000 years. It says something about the timeless nature of Japanese design.

The story is a lesson in Japanese culture - and how much it's always been about taking in other cultures and making them Japanese. The blending of the native Shinto and imported Buddhist architecture is the perfect example.  

Orbital Cloud by Taiyo Fujii

Orbital Cloud offers up a vision of a near future that runs the risk of being bleak (the vision - not the story).

Set just a few years in the future it's not your typical wild end of the world read. Instead it offers up a believable tale of spy shenanigans, terrorism, and technology teaming up to take control of the edge of space - low earth orbit. 

What's most likeable about this is almost everything is believable. With stories of economic terrorism and spying led by North Korea, and the rest of the world trying to sort out how to co-operate to deal with the situation.