The Idea of Japan: Western Images, Western Myths

A hundred and fifty years ago Japan was a country so remote from the West that it might have existed on another planet. Today its influence touches all of us, yet in the West we know almost as little about it as we did in the days when Henry Adams, visiting Japan, called it “a toy-world.” Ian Littlewood’s Idea of Japan offers a framework for making sense of a culture that puzzles us. His book is about the Japan we encounter when we turn on the television, open a newspaper, or flip through a...