Here are 100 books that Neighborhood Tokyo fans have personally recommended if you like
Neighborhood Tokyo.
Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.
I am a comparative urban specialist who came to Japanese urban history through my aspiration to place Russian urban studies within a comparative context. Several Japanese and Western Japan specialists encouraged me to advance this exploration by examining capitalist industrial urbanization in Japan. Historians and political scientists -- particularly at Kyoto National University -- provided a platform for me to expand my engagement with Japanese urbanization; relations which have continued for some three decades. More recently, I included Kabuki in The Muse of Urban Delirium, a collection of essays that seeks answers to the challenges of urban diversity, conflict, and creativity using various performing arts – opera, dance, theater, music – as windows onto urban life.
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.
This is a freaking great book and I highly recommend it... if you are passionate about the history of 'the world's greatest city,' this book is something you must have in your collection. JapanThis.com. Edward Seidensticker's A History of Tokyo 1867-1989 tells the fascinating story of Tokyo's transformation from the Shogun's capital in an isolated Japan to the largest and the most modern city in the world. With the same scholarship and sparkling style that won him admiration as the foremost translator of great works of Japanese literature, Seidensticker offers the reader his brilliant vision of an entire society suddenly…
I am a comparative urban specialist who came to Japanese urban history through my aspiration to place Russian urban studies within a comparative context. Several Japanese and Western Japan specialists encouraged me to advance this exploration by examining capitalist industrial urbanization in Japan. Historians and political scientists -- particularly at Kyoto National University -- provided a platform for me to expand my engagement with Japanese urbanization; relations which have continued for some three decades. More recently, I included Kabuki in The Muse of Urban Delirium, a collection of essays that seeks answers to the challenges of urban diversity, conflict, and creativity using various performing arts – opera, dance, theater, music – as windows onto urban life.
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.
In this pre-World War II analysis of working-class areas of Tokyo, primarily its Honjo ward, Hastings shows that bureaucrats, particularly in the Home Ministry, were concerned with the needs of their citizens and took significant steps to protect the city's working families and the poor. She also demonstrates that the public participated broadly in politics, through organizations such as reservist groups, national youth leagues, neighborhood organizations, as well as growing suffrage and workplace organizations.
I am a comparative urban specialist who came to Japanese urban history through my aspiration to place Russian urban studies within a comparative context. Several Japanese and Western Japan specialists encouraged me to advance this exploration by examining capitalist industrial urbanization in Japan. Historians and political scientists -- particularly at Kyoto National University -- provided a platform for me to expand my engagement with Japanese urbanization; relations which have continued for some three decades. More recently, I included Kabuki in The Muse of Urban Delirium, a collection of essays that seeks answers to the challenges of urban diversity, conflict, and creativity using various performing arts – opera, dance, theater, music – as windows onto urban life.
Osaka became an industrial giant during the Meiji period, remaining one of the world’s fastest-growing cities throughout the later decades of the nineteenth century and early decades of the twentieth. The city outgrew Tokyo in both population and industrial production for a brief period during the 1930s. This was a time when social displacement, horrendous public health and housing failings, and labor unrest threatened communal wellbeing. The city responded with some of the most innovative social policies of the era, especially under the leadership of Mayor Seki Hajime. As Hanes uncovers, Seki used his training as a social economist to promote increased industrial production that simultaneously became people-centered. The result was a modernized Osaka that retained a vibrant social inventiveness in the years leading up to World War II.
In exploring the career of Seki Hajime (1873-1935), who served as mayor of Japan's second-largest city, Osaka, Jeffrey E. Hanes traces the roots of social progressivism in prewar Japan. Seki, trained as a political economist in the late 1890s, when Japan was focused single-mindedly on "increasing industrial production," distinguished himself early on as a people-centered, rather than a state-centered, national economist. After three years of advanced study in Europe at the turn of the century, during which he engaged Marxism and later steeped himself in the exciting new field of social economics, Seki was transformed into a progressive. The social…
I am a comparative urban specialist who came to Japanese urban history through my aspiration to place Russian urban studies within a comparative context. Several Japanese and Western Japan specialists encouraged me to advance this exploration by examining capitalist industrial urbanization in Japan. Historians and political scientists -- particularly at Kyoto National University -- provided a platform for me to expand my engagement with Japanese urbanization; relations which have continued for some three decades. More recently, I included Kabuki in The Muse of Urban Delirium, a collection of essays that seeks answers to the challenges of urban diversity, conflict, and creativity using various performing arts – opera, dance, theater, music – as windows onto urban life.
Only an organization with the deep pockets of UNESCO could have supported and produced this magnificent historical atlas of Kyoto, covering more than 15 centuries of urban development through comprehensive data connected to stunning and informative maps analyzed by two dozen leading historians, urbanists, architects, and cartographers. As site to more UNESCO World Heritage Sites than almost any other city, Kyoto has drawn UNESCO engagement across several decades. This volume captured that work at the beginning of the twenty-first century through essays arranged chronologically drawing on the built environment to trace Kyoto’s physical, economic, cultural, and political evolution. The spectacular maps tell the story even for those readers who struggle with the French text.
Dès sa fondation au ville siècle, la ville de Kyôto a été l'une des plus vastes capitales mondiales, surpassant en taille et en magnificence les villes de l'Europe médiévale. Exception superbe dans un pays essentiellement rural, la ville est restée le foyer de la civilisation japonaise pendant près de mille ans. Unique grande agglomération japonaise à avoir été épargnée par les bombardements de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, Kyôto est aujourd'hui une métropole d'un million quatre cent mille habitants qui a conservé d'innombrables vestiges de son prestigieux passé. On y recense près de deux mille lieux de culte, temples bouddhiques et…
I’m a parent who along with my co-parent is raising a Black and Puerto Rican child in a world that is consumed with misunderstanding our communities of people. We seek books that speak volumes to our core, and that can expand our son’s horizons so that he understands himself as well as others.
This is an empowering narrative that reveals what gentrification is, and how a community can approach how to deal with it positively.
The illustrations by Robert Liu-Trujillo give depth and lightness to another heavy topic, particularly for Latinos in certain areas. I also love that both Spanish and English words appear in the text, just as they would in real day-to-day life.
For nine-year-old Alejandria, home isn't just the apartment she shares with Mami and her abuela, Tita, but rather the whole neighborhood. Home is the bakery where Ms. Beatrice makes yummy picos; the sidewalk where Ms. Alicia sells flowers with her little dog, Duende; and the corner store with friendly Mr. Amir.
But lately the city has been changing, and rent prices are going up. Many people in el barrio are leaving because they can no longer afford their homes, and "For Sale" signs are popping up everywhere. Then the worst thing happens: Mami receives a letter saying they'll have to…
My love of New York City began at a young age–my parents were from Queens and the Bronx, and they always spoke about it with such adoration. As a young person in high school, I ached to get out of South Florida and find my way to the city they described in such loving detail. I began reading about it within the topics that interested me–music, art, fashion, performance, and more–and this beautiful world opened up, full of creative possibilities. I moved to New York in 2010 and have been writing about it and photographing it ever since for a host of publications.
St. Marks is Dead taught me how to write about history in a way that was vibrant and page-turning.
I’m not typically a person who will pick up a book about the Revolutionary War, which appears toward the beginning of the book as we learn about how St. Marks Place came to be, but I couldn’t put this book down. By the time Calhoun gets to the vivacious 1960s-1990s, the book becomes an unstoppable force about an iconic street in New York City, as much of a force as the city itself.
I never read much urban history until I wrote one. For me, the problem was that most urban histories felt repetitive – they presented the same story over and over, just set in different locations. This was because most narrated the results of deeper, structural shifts (in spheres such as federal strategies of home finance, technological developments, demographic shifts, the rise or decline of manufacturing, political realignments, etc.) without sufficiently illuminating the causes. Regardless of whether they focus on Las Vegas or Philadelphia or Chicago or Dallas, each of these books – which I am presenting in order of publication date, not quality, as they are all excellent – will leave you smarter about the forces that shape our cities.
Sandoval-Strausz examines Latino neighborhoods in Chicago and Dallas to explain “How Latino Immigrants Saved the American City.” Along the way, he illuminates federal policies and private industries that together damaged cities. These include U.S. immigration policies that combined with economic conditions in Mexico and Central America to spur Latino immigration while creating obstacles to legal settlement within the U.S. Explaining everything from international labor flows to urban architectural styles to the politics of gentrification, Barrio America is also an implicit account of how Latinos became “white.” Also recommended is anything by Arlene Davila, whose specialty is understanding the implications of neoliberalism on Latino communities.
Starting around 70 years ago, white flight out of America's major cities caused rapid urban decline. Now we are witnessing a resurgence of American urbanism said to be the result of white people's return. But this account entirely passes over the stable immigrant communities who arrived and never left: as whites fled for the suburbs and exurbs in increasing numbers, Latin Americans immigrated to urban centres in even greater numbers. Barrio America charts the vibrant revival of American cities in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, arguing that we should attribute this revival to the influx of Latin American immigrants --…
As a picture book author and mom, I am constantly inspired by the world around me. I love watching my children, and I love how they adore their dad and he adores them in return. So many of my stories have been inspired by their interactions. While I am no expert on fatherhood, I have been fortunate to have had a loving dad who played “Monster in the Middle,” who took us for rides on his motorcycle, and reminded us that we could accomplish anything we put our mind to. I love books that remind us of the power of a loving father-child relationship and hope you, too, will be lifted by these joyful stories.
My Papi Has a Motorcycle is a unique look at not just a father-daughter relationship, but at how they connect with their whole community. My own dad had a motorcycle, and from waiting for him to get home from work, to slipping that big helmet on, to holding onto him tightly as we flew down the streets, I connected with this story and the bond between father and daughter. A special outing with Dad, or Papi, is always a treat, and this book brings that to life.
A celebration of the love between a father and daughter, and of a vibrant immigrant neighborhood, by an award-winning author and illustrator duo.
When Daisy Ramona zooms around her neighborhood with her papi on his motorcycle, she sees the people and places she's always known. She also sees a community that is rapidly changing around her.
But as the sun sets purple-blue-gold behind Daisy Ramona and her papi, she knows that the love she feels will always be there.
With vivid illustrations and text bursting with heart, My Papi Has a Motorcycle is a young girl's love letter to her…
I was raised in a loving but strict Catholic family in the 1970s, when girls like me were still expected to grow up to become traditional wives and mothers, rather than go to college and pursue a career. In a Pre-Cana class intended to prepare me and my fiancé for marriage (it didn’t work so well, as evidenced by our rancorous divorce twelve years later), I learned the concept of “family of origin,” and the profound impact a person’s upbringing has on them as an adult. I became fascinated by the psychic baggage each of us carries around, and how it affects our personal relationships and life choices.
I once lived in a close-knit neighborhood similar to the one in which this novel is set, and I was entranced by the interplay between the variety of characters in this tale of domestic suspense. The story isn’t so much about the woman who disappears one night as it is about the perplexed bunch of girlfriends who are left behind. I relished the voyeuristic peek into the hidden dramas of the various neighbors’ personal and family lives—it made me feel like I was riding a silent drone through the ’burbs, swooping unseen through kitchens, bedrooms, and backyards, uncovering people’s secrets!
"Full of slow-burning intrigue, Strawser's second novel will appeal to fans of Liane Moriarty's Big Little Lies and Jennifer Kitses' Small Hours." —Booklist
*Book of the Month Club Selection
An innocent night of fun takes a shocking turn in Not That I Could Tell, the next page-turner from Jessica Strawser, author of Almost Missed You.
When a group of neighborhood women gathers, wine in hand, around a fire pit where their backyards meet one Saturday night, most of them are just ecstatic to have discovered that their baby monitors reach that far. It’s a rare kid-free night, and they’re giddy…
I write and illustrate picture books. Before I was a father I just thought of the picture book as my chosen art form. When I became a dad, I saw first-hand how important picture books are in the lives of young children and the people who read to them. They become family friends. For the youngest kids, bedtime and nap-time are rituals performed many times a day, which means those books get read over and over. In doing so, I found some favorites that I still enjoy reading today, even if I am reading to myself!
A good goodnight book slows things down, quiets down the room and the people in it. This book does just that. When nap-time and bedtime were frequent and important in our home we really loved this book. You go for a walk and when you are back home you are ready for bed. Decrescendo.
Acclaimed author-illustrator Elisha Cooper paints the quiet magic of a good-night walk as the neighborhood settles into itself at the end of the day.
As a child and parent walk down the block to the bay and turn to walk back home, evening falls upon the neighborhood. As the walk begins, the squirrels are in the yards, the boys are mowing lawns, a neighbor is baking a pie, and someone is mailing a letter. When the child and parent turn to walk back home, the apple pie is down from the windowsill, the leaves are raked up, and the postman…
