Books about Tokyo?

January 15, 2007 6:13 PM

I'm off to Tokyo in a few months and would love to read some interesting books about/set there before I go...

I've read a few pieces of Haruki Murakami's work - including A Wind Up Bird Chronicle which seems to be the most repeatedly recommended. I really enjoyed that book and would love to get more suggestions in this modern vein (fiction or non fiction). Also books discussing wider Japan would be great too!

posted by teststrip to travel & transportation around Tokyo, Japan (17 answers total)

Maybe this isn't quite what you're looking for, but web pioneer Justin Hall has a cool, idiosyncratic little guidebook on Tokyo, called "Just In Tokyo," available free on his website.

He also has a bunch of other writings about Japan on his website.
posted by jayder at 6:32 PM on January 15, 2007

"Norwegian Wood" by Murakami very eeriely catches the everyday atmosphere of Tokyo. It's very different from his other books - a realist love story.

For non-fiction, I recommend "Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Modern Japan" by Alex Kerr if you want to know what's really going on. It might spoil your holiday though - the truth is a bit of a bummer.
posted by dydecker at 6:37 PM on January 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

In the Pool by Hideo Okuda is good. It's about an offbeat psychiatrist and the equally unique patients that come to him for treatment. You might get a general sense of how crazy people can get over here. It's also been made into a film starring Joe Odagiri (mmm Joe Odagiri).

Not set in Tokyo, but because it's a great book, I'm also going to toss in The Gift of Numbers by Yoko Ogawa. This also has been made into a fine film called Hakase no Aishita Suushiki.

Note: I've read these in Japanese, so I've no idea how good the translations are.
posted by misozaki at 8:04 PM on January 15, 2007 [2 favorites]

Naomi by Junichiro Tanizaki
posted by Methylviolet at 8:54 PM on January 15, 2007

Bruce Feiler's Learning to Bow: http://www.brucefeiler.com/books/bow.html
posted by zachlipton at 9:47 PM on January 15, 2007

The only book written by a foreigner that made any sense of Japanese culture is Roland Barthes' Empire of Signs - which, having lived in Tokyo for several years, is really worth reading.

A slightly less meditative take is Legless in Ginza (a take on Eyeless in Gaza?) - which was reasonably entertaining (a good plane read).
posted by strawberryviagra at 10:38 PM on January 15, 2007

Reads like a novel, but non-fiction: Confucius Lives Next Door by T.R.Reid. Definitely non-fiction, more of a tourist guidebook, and dated, but quite worthwhile: Foot-loose in Tokyo by Jean Pearce. Fiction: Audrey Hepburn's Neck by Alan Brown.
posted by Rash at 10:41 PM on January 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

And if science fiction is acceptable, anything by William Gibson whenever the action moves to Tokyo, especially Idoru.
posted by Rash at 10:48 PM on January 15, 2007

The only book written by a foreigner that made any sense of Japanese culture is Roland Barthes' Empire of Signs - which, having lived in Tokyo for several years, is really worth reading.

Barthes never set foot in Japan.
posted by dydecker at 10:54 PM on January 15, 2007

oh, I tell a lie. He went there a few times, but he certainly didn't live there. But that's beside the point really. He was careful to point out that he is not analyzing the real Japan but rather one of his own devising - The book is a good one.
posted by dydecker at 10:59 PM on January 15, 2007

Edward Seidensticker wrote an excellent two book history of the rise of modern Tokyo starting from 1867.
posted by lovejones at 11:13 PM on January 15, 2007

And just to clarify - it was I who lived in Smokyo - not Roland. Apparently he only spent 12 days there - but that is the trick, not to overly immerse oneself in trying to make sense of the place.
posted by strawberryviagra at 11:34 PM on January 15, 2007

It's certainly not the feel-good-book of the decade, but neither is it relentlessly or unreasonably critical: I quite liked Dogs and Demons: Tales From the Dark Side of Japan, by Alex Kerr. He has some other interesting work worth reading on Japan (and himself, there), as well.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:48 PM on January 15, 2007

confessions of a yakuza was an entertaining read. not exclusively about tokyo and not about contemporary tokyo, though.
posted by snofoam at 4:26 AM on January 16, 2007

It's about Kyoto, technically, but Brad Leithauser's Equal Distance does a better job than any other book I have found in terms of capturing the slippery 'otherness' of life in Japan from an intellectually hungry but inescapably western perspective.
posted by rokusan at 5:00 AM on January 16, 2007 [1 favorite]

And if science fiction is acceptable, anything by William Gibson whenever the action moves to Tokyo.

I have found that Tokyo, more pointedly, is slowly but surely moving toward William Gibson.
posted by rokusan at 5:02 AM on January 16, 2007

I'll third Dogs and Demons, but be prepared to be surprisingly depressed for the state of Japan after finishing it. That, or it'll set you up to be happily surprised, but I haven't traveled to Japan to see if that occurs or not.
posted by Atreides at 6:25 AM on January 16, 2007