Introduction to Japanese Culture Paperback – Illustrated, August 5, 2014

I have never been to Japan. The book is a good collection of blurbs on various aspects. There are eight parts. 1. Holidays and Festivals, 2. Arts and Skill, 3. Recreation and Leisure, 4. Cuisine and Diet, 5. Religion and Spirituality, 6. The Home and Daily Life, 7. Communication and the Printed Word, and 8. Places and Sights. There is also a list of 21 line illustrations. It should make for pleasant reading. Other books have more intense study available.

Sosnoski did a good job collecting a lot of different cultural information about Japan and fitting it into the volume. This is one of the few books I found that discusses ōmisoka (Japanese New Year's Eve), and it has a lot of coverage of less common topics. Very good book. I highly recommend it!

Easy to read and good info

Great book. I had the spine removed and put a spiral on it. Using it for teaching this helped a lot.

loved it.

Despite the high-falutin talk about "best" interpretation and translation, the various essays fail to 1) Significantly touch upon the women in Japan through history, and (2) many of the characteristics of Japanese culture the authors imply are unique to Japan are simply universal cultural characteristics dressed up in authoritative language.

Nice

A passable book with little depth, nothing that you can't already find on Wikipedia. I cannot understand the need for the endless comparisons with Western cultures, which for some chapters, take up half the content? But what really irked me are the number of spelling errors that weren't picked up by the editors! Some chapters are particularly bad, I've read far better produced blogs. Sheer laziness! Buy only if you have little to no understanding of Japanese culture. If you're looking for deeper explanations and history behind the customs, you'll be disappointed, like I am.