In the beginning, the story goes, two gods conjured the islands out of primordial cha- os with the tip of a sacred spear. The ‘Great Eight-Island Country’, Japan has always followed its own unique path, often alone through centuries of deliberate isolation. Contact and conflict with other nations has often taken the form of flashpoints of social and technological shock: firearms, trade ships electric light and atom bombs. Yet despite the challenges that have beset it from outside and from within, Japan has maintained and expanded its singular and compelling culture for thousands...