 | Japan: The Story of A Nation by Edwin Reischauer
Buy used from: $1.41 Remains the best single-volume history of Japan.
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 | The Enigma of Japanese Power: People and Politics in a Stateless Nation by Karel Van Wolferen
Buy new: $20.52 / Used from: $0.01 The premier volume in analyzing the interaction between Japanese society and its political power structure.
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 | Japanese Culture, 4th Edition (Updated and Expanded) by H. Paul Varley
Buy new: $19.68 / Used from: $8.88 Still the best one-volume overview of the various elements of Japanese culture, from the beginnings of the nation's history down to the present day.
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 | Japan: A Short Cultural History by George Sansom
Buy new: $84.95 / Used from: $31.50 In its own way more enjoyable than Varley's book. Not that there's anything wrong with Varley's, but Sansom's book dates from the days when writers were not shy about offering their own evaluations -- and had the erudition to back them up.
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 | Lost Japan (Travel Literature) (Lonely Planet Lost Japan) by Alex Kerr
Buy new: $10.19 / Used from: $6.20 A sensitive, behind-the-scenes look at traditional Japanese culture, much of what is disappearing before our very eyes.
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 | Gateway to Japan (Kodansha Guide) by June Kinoshita
Buy used from: $8.80 This guidebook is one step behind Lonely Planet regarding hotels and transportation, and one mile ahead when it comes to teaching the traveler about the history of the culture. If you are an intrepid traveler who wants to peer beneath the surface of Japanese culture, this is the guidebook to get.
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 | Dogs and Demons: The Fall of Modern Japan by Alex Kerr
Buy used from: $0.82 The book that is the flip side of Kerr's Lost Japan. The book is a searing indictment of a culture destroyed by a political system run amok.
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 | The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan (Kodansha Globe) by Ivan Morris
Buy new: $11.56 / Used from: $4.48 Morris puts the reader in the Heian Period -- one comes away understanding the lives of Japanese a millenium ago much more clearly.
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 | You Gotta Have Wa by Robert Whiting
Buy used from: $0.01 Ostensibly about baseball, this book is a penetrating cultural examination about the interaction between Japanese baseball players and their foreign teammates.
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 | Living Buddhist Statues in Early Medieval and Modern Japan by Prof. Sarah J. Horton
Buy new: $80.00 / Used from: $68.11 A remarkable book that is a primer on both Japanese Buddhist deities and how those deities -- incarnated as statuary -- continue to play a role in the lives of Japanese.
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 | Pictures From Water Trade by John Morley
Buy used from: $0.01 Fiction? Autobiography? The line is blurred in this affecting book.
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 | Saving the Sun: How Wall Street Mavericks Shook Up Japan's Financial World and Made Billions by Gillian Tett
Buy new: $12.44 / Used from: $2.99 A business book that reads like a thriller. Ms. Tett dug out the stories that were shaping Japan's economic resurgence and published this book in near-real time. A worthy example of intrepid reporting.
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 | Things Japanese: Being Notes on Various Subjects Connected with Japan (Stone Bridge Classics) by Basil Hall Chamberlain
Buy new: $13.16 / Used from: $1.54 A tome more than a century old, but still fresh and lively. Chamberlain is certainly opinionated, but his conclusions are well-reasoned.
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 | Straitjacket Society: An Insider's Irreverent View of Bureaucratic Japan by Masao, M.D. Miyamoto
Buy used from: $5.75 A book that is wicked fun -- all the more so because the author was smack-dab in the heart of Japan's notorious bureaucracy. Truly a precious point of view!
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