Japan Travel Guide

The one thing the world is not short of is books about Japan. Virtually every foreign writer and journalist who has passed through the country has felt compelled to commit to paper their thoughts and experiences. Many of these accounts are hopelessly out of date (or just plain hopeless), but we've picked out a personal selection of the best that provide a deeper understanding of what is too easily assumed to be the world's most enigmatic country. As throughout this guide, for Japanese names we have given the family name first. This may not always be the order in which it is printed on the English translation.

Drawing on over a thousand years of literature and navel-gazing, the Japanese also love writing about their own country and culture. The vast bulk of translated works widely available in the Britain and the US are novels, spanning from the courtly elegance of Genji Monogatari ( The Tale of Genji ) to the contemporary fiction of Nobel Prize winner Oe Kenzaburo and the Generation-Y author Yoshimoto Banana. Such books are often released by Kodansha, one of the world's biggest publishers, and Charles E. Tuttle, a long-established imprint for specialist books on Japan. Both these publishers have an excellent range of reference and coffee-table books on all aspects of Japanese culture, from architecture and gardens to food and martial arts, which are best bought at major bookstores in Japan, such as Kinokuniya and Maruzen. Look out also for the series of pocket-size booklets by JTB on many different aspects of Japanese culture. Books published by Kodansha, Tuttle and JTB are usually cheaper in Japan, but other books won't be, so buy them before your journey.