Japanese

A way to learn and memorize Kanjii.
"The illustration reveals more of its contents and method than any description ever could."--Japan Times

Chapter 1 traces the phonetic system of the language back to its prehistoric beginnings. Chapter 2 comprises an extensive study of the development of voicing and nasality as distinctive features of the consonants. Chapter 3 explains the development of several interrelated processes of compression and assimilation in verb and adjective forms. Chapter 4 is a comprehensive study of Japanese accent. And the last three chapters constitute a succinct etymological dictionary, supported by a thorough reconstruction of the morphological structures found in the principal parts of speech.

A popular self-study guide for students of Japanese. Each chapter covers a grammar point: i.e., a part of speech (noun, verb, preposition), a word's function in a sentence (subject, direct object, indirect object), a grammatical term (tense, polite vs. plain form, topic).

Japanese Busy People #2 Kana is a Kodansha International publication.

Beginning Students use a step-by-step approach to develop skills with the writing system of traditional Japanese characters borrowed and adapted from the Chinese. Models of 500 kanji characters, written by award-winning Japanese calligraphers, are arranged according to their radical groups. Samples of kanji writing help students perfect their writing style, expand their vocabulary and reading skills, and increase their knowledge of Japanese language structures. Includes a section on hiragana and katakana.

A kanji guidebook for beginning and intermediate learners. Covering the 1945 joyo kanji, it's both a kanji reference guide and an expert introduction to Japanese writing. It includes indexes by pronunciation, radical, and stroke order.

This study analyzes American, Vietnamese, and Japanese personal values, attempting to understand how it can be ethnographers find large differences in values between cultures, yet empirical surveys find relatively small differences in personal values between cultures.

From its origins as a distinct set of ritualised practices in the sixteenth century to its international expansion in the twentieth, tea culture has had a major impact on artistic production, connoisseurship, etiquette, food, design and more recently, on notions of Japaneseness. The authors dispel the myths around the development of tea practice, dispute the fiction of the dominance of aesthetics over politics in tea, and demonstrate that writing history has always been an integral part of tea culture.

In Japan, serving tea is an art and a spiritual discipline. As an art, the tea ceremony is an occasion to appreciate the clean lines of the tea room's design, the feel of the bowl in the hand, the company of friends, and a simple moment of purity. As a discipline, it has roots in the twelfth century and intimate connections to architecture, landscape gardening, ceramics, painting, flower arrangement, and, of course, Zen Buddhism. Written by contemporary tea masters, The Tea Ceremony takes a clear and comprehensive look at the sources and inspiration of this ancient discipline. The authors trace the practice from its earliest origins to the present day, considering in detail the individuals who helped it evolve. They discuss all the elements of the ceremony-including art, architecture, incense, flowers, and the influence of Zen.

Originally published in Japanesek this work was acclaimed for its insights into Japanese life, bringing together aspects of history, culture and everyday life to paint an original and revealing portrait of the Japanese people and the pressing issues facing them today.

Basho (1644-94) is perhaps the best known Japanese poet in both Japan and the West, and yet there has been remarkably little serious scholarship in English on his achievement. This book is intended to address that virtual void by establishing the ground for critical discussion and reading of a central figure in Japanese culture, placing the works of Basho and his disciples in the context of broader social change.

Beginners will find that this complete Japanese language and culture program offers insights into subtle nuances of Japanese as it is used in casual conversations or successful business discussions.