Collection: Shop Asian

Huff...huff.........huh?! This is not running practice!! The villagers have nominated handsome young calligrapher Seishuu Handa to compete in the relay race--the main event of their annual sports festival! But while Handa undertakes some super-secret running practice, Hiroshi goes on a job interview, Tama awaits the results of her manga submission, the adults concentrate on defeating Rokunosaki (the neighboring village) and the kids do their best to keep up with the adults! Everyone's hard at work in Volume 9 of this super-popular, hot 'n' hearty island comedy!!

A National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 honoree delivers her first work of nonfiction: a compulsively readable, genre-bending story of finding her missing birth mother and, along the way, learning the priceless power of self-knowledge.

In 2020, Tracy O'Neill began to rethink her ideas of comfort and safety. Just out of a ten-year relationship and thirtysomething, she was driven by an acute awareness that the mysterious mother she'd never met might be dying somewhere in South Korea.

After contacting a grizzled private investigator, O'Neill took his suggested homework to heart when he disappeared before the job was done, picking up the trail of clues and becoming her own hell-bent detective. Despite COVID-19, the promise of what she might discover--the possibility that her biological mother was her kind of outlaw, whose life could inspire her own--was too tempting.

Written like a mystery novel, Woman of Interest is a tale of self-discovery and fugitivity from convention that features a femme fatale of unique proportions, a former CIA operative with a criminal record, and a dogged investigator of radical connections outside the nuclear family. O'Neill gorgeously bends the detective genre to her own will as a writer, stepping out of the shadows of her own self-conception to illuminate the hopes of the woman of interest she is both chasing and becoming.

In this charming and emotionally resonant follow up to the internationally bestselling Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, Satoshi Yagisawa paints a poignant and thoughtful portrait of life, love, and how much books and bookstores mean to the people who love them.

Set again in the beloved Japanese bookshop and nearby coffee shop in the Jimbochi neighborhood of Toyko, More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop deepens the relationship between Takako, her uncle Satoru, and the people in their lives. A new cast of heartwarming regulars have appeared in the shop, including an old man who wears the same ragged mouse-colored sweater and another who collects books solely for the official stamps with the author's personal seal.

Satoshi Yagisawa illuminates the everyday relationships between people that are forged and grown through a shared love of books. Characters leave and return, fall in and out of love, and some eventually die. As time passes, Satoru, with Takako's help, must choose whether to keep the bookshop open or shutter its doors forever. Making the decision will take uncle and niece on an emotional journey back to their family's roots and remind them again what a bookstore can mean to an individual, a neighborhood, and a whole culture.

PRIVATE CITIZENS was named a best book of the year by New York Magazine/Vulture, The New Yorker, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, Nylon, Kirkus, Electric Literature and The Millions.

An Amazon Best Book of the Month in the Literature & Fiction Category
A Buzzfeed "Most Exciting" Book of 2016
A Flavorwire "Most Anticipated" Book of 2016

New York Magazine calls Private Citizens "the first great millennial novel."

Emma Cline calls it "brilliant."

From a brilliant new literary talent comes a sweeping comic portrait of privilege, ambition, and friendship in millennial San Francisco. With the social acuity of Adelle Waldman and the murderous wit of Martin Amis, Tony Tulathimutte's Private Citizens is a brainy, irreverent debut--This Side of Paradise for a new era.

Capturing the anxious, self-aware mood of young college grads in the aughts, Private Citizens embraces the contradictions of our new century: call it a loving satire. A gleefully rude comedy of manners. Middlemarch for Millennials. The novel's four whip-smart narrators--idealistic Cory, Internet-lurking Will, awkward Henrik, and vicious Linda--are torn between fixing the world and cannibalizing it. In boisterous prose that ricochets between humor and pain, the four estranged friends stagger through the Bay Area's maze of tech startups, protestors, gentrifiers, karaoke bars, house parties, and cultish self-help seminars, washing up in each other's lives once again.

A wise and searching depiction of a generation grappling with privilege and finding grace in failure, Private Citizens is as expansively intelligent as it is full of heart.

(Volume 9) No matter if you win or lose, today only comes once! The villagers have chosen handsome young calligrapher Seishuu Handa to compete in their famously competitive sports-festival relay race! While Handa strives to keep his morning practices out of the public eye, Hiroshi goes job hunting, Tama writes a manga, and the kids do their best to keep up with the adults! Everyone's hard at work in the ninth volume of this super-popular, hot 'n' hearty island comedy!

A full-color manga/comic about humans living with adorably monstrous cats, from the author of Yokai Cats and The Evil Secret Society of Cats.

Is it a banshee, a yeti, a gorgon, or...a cat? Monster Cats are a purrfect new breed of familiar furry friends crossed with freaky fun! If you think life with regular cats can get complicated, wait till you see what it's like for people who live with these charming supernatural pets.

A smoldering tale of romance and revenge set in the world of the New York Times best seller Dawn of the Arcana!

Ajin boys who show signs of special abilities are conscripted to serve in the imperial palace as beast-servants--status symbols and shields for their royal masters, to be kept or discarded on a whim. When they were children, Rangetsu's twin brother Sogetsu was ripped from her arms and sent to the palace to attend Prince Tenyou as a beast-servant, where he quickly fell victim to bloody dynastic intrigues. Now in a world that promises only bitterness, Rangetsu's one hope at avenging her brother is to disguise herself as a man and find a way into the palace!

Rangetsu left the palace because she saw no future for herself and Prince Tenyou. But now that the imperial princes are working together to improve the lives of Ajin in the kingdom, Rangetsu once again has hope. She even passes the difficult imperial military exam to become the first Ajin to be granted an officer's rank, earning her the right to return to the palace and Prince Tenyou's side. But not everyone is in favor of the changes. Will increasing tension with the neighboring countries make war inevitable?

That fateful encounter at the planetarium changed Subaru Miyazawa's life forever. After all, that's where he met his true love, Tougo Amase, photographer extraordinaire! And now that they're officially together, every day is a kind of happily-ever-after! That is, until the day Tougo admits that he's planning to move away...so where does that leave Subaru?

Tanjiro and the rest of the Demon Slayer Corps are back and facing their greatest challenge yet: school life!

Welcome to Kimetsu Academy, a school attended by the most exceptional students you've ever seen! This comedic spin-off of international smash hit Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba pits Tanjiro, Nezuko, and all the rest of the Demon Slayer Corps against the trials and tribulations of student life.

Fall's here, but things are only heating up at Kimetsu Academy! Halloween turns scarier than ever when one of the Twelve Kizuki wanders into a spooky water balloon battle, though that's got nothing on how frightening it is when the principal sees the state of the teachers' lounge. Then there's trouble with a demon selling snake oil, all while Mitsuri explores mascot art, a terrible drawing is misunderstood, and Uzui's wives check the cafeteria's suggestion box.

Mitsuko "Mitzi" Asai was not yet ten years old in the spring of 1942 when President Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 sent 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry--about two-thirds of them US citizens--from their homes on the West Coast to inland prison camps. They included Mitzi and most of her family, who owned a fruit orchard in Hood River, Oregon. The Asais spent much of World War II in the camps while two of the older sons served in the Pacific in the US Army. Three years later, when the camps began to close, the family returned to Hood River to find an altered community. Shop owners refused to serve neighbors they had known for decades; racism and hostility were open and largely unchecked. Humiliation and shame drove teenaged Mitzi to reject her Japanese heritage, including her birth name. More than a decade later, her life took another turn when a Fulbright grant sent her to teach in Japan, where she reconnected with her roots.

In From Thorns to Blossoms, Mitzi recounts her rich and varied life, from a childhood surrounded by barbed wire and hatred to a successful career as a high school English teacher and college instructor in English as a Second Language. Today, Asai descendants continue to tend the Hood River farm while the town confronts its shameful history. Originally published in 1990 as Made in Japan and Settled in Oregon, this revised and expanded edition describes the positive influence Mitzi's immigrant parents had on their children, provides additional context for her story, and illuminates the personal side of a dark chapter in US history. It's the remarkable story of a transformation from thorns into blossoms, pain into healing.

The Human Empire fell to ruin, leaving behind a dystopia controlled by the current Machinery Empire. In this wasteland where human life is deemed worthless, a wandering boy meets a princess in hiding. When tragedy occurs, the fallen rise, and a journey begins. Thus begins the story of two children and their fight to restore hope for humanity.

An alt-manga legend strikes out on his own, creating some of his most revealing and personal works

Oba Electroplating Factory is a startlingly bleak but nonetheless captivating portrait of mid-century Japan in its most unglamorous iteration. Glimpses of the artist reflecting upon his life, his work, and his contemporaries pepper the narrative landscape: a wife teases her husband about a former fling on a trip to the hot springs, a young cartoonist is aghast at the cavalier conduct of his supposed betters, and imperfect men must grapple with the discomfort of their own honesty. Tsuge's stories are studies in staging nature, working to evoke stillness and movement in such a way that renders his chosen setting a character all on its own.

Following the breakthrough success of Nejishiki, Yoshiharu Tsuge forges a path for autofiction in manga and changes the cultural landscape of comics forever. Some of his most revealing and personal works were published between 1973 to 1974. As much as it is a testament to the author's predilection for addressing sensitive and mature themes in response to his culture, this volume also collects works from the only period in which Tsuge tries his hand at writing for a mainstream audience in earnest.

This fourth volume in the complete works of a legendary manga-ka is an indispensable addition to the literary comics canon and shining example of world literature at its most human.

A revelatory, beautifully produced compendium of the influential Japanese commercial design journal, with posters, billboards, shop window displays and more

From 1928 to 1930, Tokyo publisher Ars issued The Complete Commercial Artist: a fully illustrated journal of commercial design for both commercial retail spaces and print design. Featuring countless original designs, its 24 volumes were dedicated to topics ranging from posters, packaging, flyers, page layout and typography to neon signage, billboards and shop window displays. Under the guidance of lead editor and writer Hamada Masuji, a passionate advocate for commercial design, the publication became the most important--and visually dazzling--document of Japanese design in its time.
This generous volume from Letterform Archive Books shares hundreds of exuberant and whimsical pages from all 24 volumes of the now-rare publication. An extensive historical essay and volume-by-volume walk-throughs by art historian Gennifer Weisenfeld introduce readers to the magazine's creators and offer analyses of their use of illustration, photography, typography and lettering, highlighting both Japanese and European influences as new forms of media sparked a global dialogue.
Presented for the first time to an English audience, The Complete Commercial Artist: Making Modern Design in Japan 1928-1930 takes readers on an eye-opening tour of interwar Japan's vibrant visual culture.

Get ready to dive into the giant, mysterious hole in Volume 10 of this laidback farming fantasy!
A party from Tall Tree Village travels to the giant, mysterious hole in the hopes of building a temple. However, when the village chief and the benevolent founder start patrolling the area, they encounter giant monsters and a spirit knight to boot. They just can't catch a break! Not only that, but the benevolent founder's helpers aren't as happy as one might think!

Kanoko and Soma spend what little cash they have on a train ticket. From Tsukumoya Town, they travel to where Soma's older brother Atsushi lives. With Kanoko's power to hear lies, they aim to uncover clues as to why Atsushi set that trap for his younger brother Soma. But along the way, they end up hearing a lie about a possible affair happening between Atsushi and his wife?!