A Gaijin's Guide to Japan: An alternative look at Japanese life, history and culture. Ben Stevens

Чтение книги онлайн.

Читать онлайн книгу A Gaijin's Guide to Japan: An alternative look at Japanese life, history and culture - Ben Stevens страница

Автор:
Серия:
Издательство:
A Gaijin's Guide to Japan: An alternative look at Japanese life, history and culture - Ben  Stevens

Скачать книгу

      A GAIJIN’S GUIDE TO JAPAN

      An alternative look at Japanese life, history and culture

      Ben Stevens

       Copyright

      The Friday Project

      An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published by The Friday Project in 2009

      Ben Stevens asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constrains in operation at the time of publication

      Source ISBN: 9781906321215

      Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2009 ISBN: 9780007347421

      Version: 2016-09-22

      for Kazuyo

      Table of Contents

       Cover Page

       Title Page

       Dedication

       H

       I

       J

       K

       M

       N

       O

       P

       R

       S

       T

       U

       V

       W

       X

       Y

       Z

       Keep Reading

       Other Books By

       About the Publisher

       INTRODUCTION

      In 1853, a Reverend Samuel Wells Williams—in Japan to act as translator to Commodore Matthew Perry (See Black Ships, The)—declared the Land of the Rising Sun to be ‘…the most lewd of all the heathen nations I have seen’.

      As it transpired, however, the good Reverend was a bit of a dork who couldn’t even speak Japanese all that well, so we shouldn’t take his opinion too seriously. He was merely distressed that women laboured bare-breasted in the paddy fields—a fact which, if he’d lightened up a little, may well have actually put a smile on the miserable old coot’s face.

      Since then, a host of academics and other experts on Japanese history, language, culture and customs have pondered such important questions as: Why did nearly every Japanese woman under the age of thirty go nuts over David Beckham during and after the 2002 World Cup? Why will saying ‘Chin-chin!’ at a Japanese drinking party result only in stony stares and an awkward silence? And is it really true that many samurai warriors liked—in their spare time—to get ‘down and dirty’ with one another?

      Here, finally, are explanations concerning these and many other weighty

Скачать книгу