The stories selected for this collection include the author's novella A View by the Sea, which was awarded both the Mombusho and Noma literary prizes. Five other short stories represent the best of Yasuoka's writing from the 1950s and 1960s.

Contending that Japan's industrial and imperial revolutions were also geographical revolutions, Karen Wigen's interdisciplinary study analyzes the changing spatial order of the countryside in early modern Japan. Her focus, the Ina Valley, served as a gateway to the mountainous interior of central Japan. Using methods drawn from historical geography and economic development, Wigen maps the valley's changes--from a region of small settlements linked in an autonomous economic zone, to its transformation into a peripheral part of the global silk trade, dependent on the state. Yet the processes...

Miles of shelf space in contemporary Japanese bookstores and libraries are devoted to travel guides, walking maps, and topical atlases. Young Japanese children are taught how to properly map their classrooms and schoolgrounds. Elderly retirees pore over old castle plans and village cadasters. Pioneering surveyors are featured in popular television shows, and avid collectors covet exquisite scrolls depicting sea and land routes. Today, Japanese people are zealous producers and consumers of cartography, and maps are an integral part of daily life.
But this was not always the case: a...