Japan’s most expensive book, an edited collection of manuscripts by Claudius Ptolemaeus (100-168), was published in two-volumes by the Japanese publisher Iwanami Shoten in 1984, just before Japan’s infamous economic bubble (1986-1991), with a retail price of 1,930,000 yen. Ptolemaeus’ astronomical treatise, an astronomy textbook… Read more »

After Japan signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty with Japan in 1951, full sovereignty returned to Japan bringing the Allied Occupation of Japan (1945-1952) to an end. Japan had a new constitution, originally drafted in English that it was putting into place in translation. Legal responsibility… Read more »

As Japan rapidly modernised in its Meiji era (1868-1912), after more than 250 years of isolation, there was a huge demand for paper to meet many types of new and emerging needs including: the printing of public bonds and paper money; newly launched magazines and… Read more »

Miyuki Miyabe’s short story Warera no rinjin wa hannin (Our Neighbour is a Criminal) won the 1987 Japan Mystery Writers Association Prize, announcing her arrival as a writer in Japan. Her success, especially her 1992 novel Kasha (All She Was Worth) about loan sharks, debt and… Read more »