The most recommended books about Tokyo

I could potentially recommend any of Sedaris’ early works. Pick one, you won’t regret it.

Sedaris has a way of taking our most mundane lives and making them hilarious. His style can be best described as memoirs meet standup comedy. We’ve all had those weird, awkward family moments. Sedaris does a great job of making them funny. Warning: people tend to look at you rather oddly and give you space when you listen to the audiobook while out walking alone. 

I loved the quirky premise of Diary of a Void, which tells the story of Ms. Shibata, a Japanese single woman who fakes a pregnancy to take a leave of absence from her dull office job—a role in which she makes many cups of tea but finds her intelligence consistently overlooked.

Emi Yagi’s witty prose, translated by David Boyd and Lucy North, brilliantly captures Japan’s workplace culture, expectations of men and women, and the seemingly inescapable loneliness of modern-day society.

Since Ms. Shibata’s ruse hardly seemed to be one she could keep up forever, I wondered as I turned the pages about how her increasingly complicated deception would end. I was very interested to discover how things worked out for her.

Cities often look quite different from the bottom up than from the top down. The practical demands of making cities work often rest on the shoulders of the most local of officials.  Consequently, neighborhood officialdom often engages with citizens and residents more openly, even in authoritarian systems. Such engagement may hold the seeds of future democratic change. Hastings’ study of Honjo Ward and other proletarian Tokyo districts before World War II reveals a surprisingly robust participatory political and cultural environment across the early twentieth century.

I doubt there is a flyer anywhere in the world who doesn’t know of Jimmy Doolittle. He did it all: stunt pilot, scientist, pioneer “blind-flyer,” Schneider Cup and Mackay trophy winner, first to perform an outside loop, Medal of Honor winner for the 1942 Tokyo Raid, and three-star general leading the Eighth Air Force against the Axis.

The writing is remarkably fluid (ably assisted by aviation writer C.V. Glines); Doolittle’s humility is always on display. We also learn of how critical his loving, understanding wife of seventy years, “Joe,” was to his success. In particular, she was instrumental in Jimmy earning his Ph.D in Aeronautical Engineering at M.I.T. One wonders how it all would have worked out without her!

This is a collection of short stories by one of China’s modernist masters, mostly translated by Andrew Field. However, Mu is largely forgotten and rarely read now either in Chinese or in translation. The reason is simple – he chose to collaborate with the Japanese in World War Two. Yet his short stories are so emblematic of old Shanghai, its dancehalls and bars; nightclubs and bordellos. Mu moves through a Shanghai demimonde of Chinese and foreigners, gangsters and tycoons, imported whisky, and Shanghainese cuisine. His writing is the epitome of the nighttime neon-lit old photography of the city we are so familiar with; his characters those we see on the old pre-war black and white movies from Shanghai’s film studios.

This book was addictive. A curious café with time travel. But this isn’t science fiction but rather a heartfelt and tender exploration of the self, human relations, and understanding. Yet this is less science fiction and more a heartfelt and tender exploration of the self, human relations, and understanding.

Kawaguchi takes us on a journey of redemption, loss, joy, despair, reconciliation, sorrow, acceptance, grief, and love with his simple and touching story that pulls you into its orbit and reaches deep inside.

This is one of those rare books that is both pleasing and improving and does so before the coffee gets cold.

This new edition combines under one cover Edward Seidensticker’s colossal Low City: Tokyo from Edo to the Earthquake and Tokyo Rising.  Few cities have been so fortunate as to have such erudite-yet-accessible books written about them; by an outsider, no less. A towering figure on late twentieth-century Japanese studies and letters, Seidensticker arrived in Tokyo weeks after General Douglas MacArthur had assumed control of the country. His work on major twentieth-century Japanese writers earned him graduate degrees and faculty appointments at major American universities; his freelance writing on Japanese life extended the reach of his work well beyond the halls of academia. Most strikingly, his historical works about Tokyo demonstrate a deep knowledge of, and passionate devotion to,  the city on every page.

While I enjoyed this book while I was reading it, it was only after I’d digested it (pun intended) that I really came to appreciate its value. I think one of the real measures of an artwork is how much it sits with you in the months and years after the initial read/watch/listen, and this is one I think about often. The story follows a documentarian attempting to serve the corporate hierarchy and produce an asinine show about American wives and the meat-filled dinners they serve their husbands, but the novel gradually unfolds as a complex critique of misogyny, corporate control, Japanese and American culture, and the brutal nature of the modern livestock industry. 

Despite the complexities of the main character’s situation—raising a daughter alone in Japan, and having to make ends meet on a tight budget—Jessie is not only assisted by friends, but also a couple of kind strangers, when she decides to re-open the Butterfly Café—a café she has inherited.

I kept wondering what was going to happen next. At first, I thought the tone would be serious, the gravitas overarching, but it curiously wasn’t. Jessie manages to provide a loving home to her daughter.

The dialogue is credible, and the pacing—perfect. The book also paints a good picture of modern day Japan, along with insight into the country’s rich history. It is truly life-affirming. An insightful and fascinating read!

This Is the World War II memoir of Lieutenant General Robert Eichelberger, one of our nation’s most aggressive and effective field commanders.

MacArthur ordered him forward again and again to salvage battles that were tilting in favor of the Japanese. Eichelberger often lived at the front with his men in New Guinea and the Philippines and shared their hardships as he led them to victory at nearly forgotten battlefields such as Buna, Los Negros, Hollandia, Biak, and Batangas.  

Despite his success and promotion to command of the Eighth Army, few have heard of Eichelberger. The primary reason was his superior’s need to hog the limelight…or else. Check out this highly readable first-hand report of the advance to Tokyo that Eichelberger called, “The Hard Way Back.”