Book Recommendations

Got interested in reading up on any of the subjects I deal with in my photography?

Below is a short collection of books I can heartedly recommend anyone to take a look at!

Kyoto Photography

John Einarsen (photographs) / Edith Shiffert (poetry): Kyoto: the forest within the gate (White Pine Press, 2014).

Japanese Gardens

Marc P. Keane: Japanese Garden Notes: A Visual Guide to Elements and Design (Stone Bridge Press, 2017).

Japanese religions

(in German) Bernhard Scheid: Religion in Japan - ein digitales Handbuch [Religion in Japan - a digital handbook]. = an academically authored handbook on the history, iconography and myths of Japanese religions by one of the West's foremost experts on the subject.

Mark Schumacher: Japanese Buddhist Statuary: Gods, Goddesses, Shinto, Kami, Creatures & Demons. A to Z Dictionary.

Japanese history

Joan R. Piggott: The Emergence of Japanese Kingship (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Pressm, 1997). = a recommended read into early (pre-Heian) Japanese history beyond the myths of national history, Piggott traces the historical emergence of Japanese kingship. For those who attempt to understand how intertwined the mainland (= China), the peninsula (= Korea) and the island (= Japan) really were in those centuries.

John D. Dower: Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999). = an English-language standard work on the turbulent years between Japan's capitulation in 1945 and the end of US military occupation in 1951. Crucial for those who want to understand how, among other things, the contemporary institutional framework of religion in Japan came into being.

"Read!!! I shall!,"

said the little Jizō at Enkō-ji