The narrator, Henry Savage Landor, was a Victorian-era traveller along the lines of Indiana Jones, or a Jules Verne protagonist- but, without the winning graces of those characters (to his credit, he never attempts to hide this.) Landor shamelessly steals/begs rations and housing from the Ainu during his travels, all the while sneering at them, referring to them as “animals” and using them as unwitting test subjects (one attempt to measure the Ainu tongue sensitivity involved stabbing his sleeping host’s tongue with a pencil.) In the course of his travels, he sleeps overnight at a small shrine (stealing the offerings for food,) raids a chief’s tomb (ripping off one of the carved knives,) has a one-night(two-nights?) stand with an Ainu maiden, whom he summarily abandons, and ends up with a compound fracture in his ankle after disregarding the locals’ advice not to ford a swollen river on foot. (After all, those primitives don’t know anything, right? SNAP! …oh.) His persistent comparison of the Ainu to unevolved apes “incapable of higher thought” and habitual sneering at Christian missionaries’ claims of advanced Ainu beliefs renders his statements about the Ainu religion somewhat dubious: Landor dismisses the entirety of the Ainu religion as mere “totemism,” insisting that the Ainu intellect is inadequate for higher religious thoughts. While he disparages the notion that the Ainu could believe in an afterlife, he does not seemed to have seriously consulted them on the topic.

Alone with the Hairy Ainu, to me, served more as an (none-too-flattering!) portrait of the author, interspersed with some tidbits interesting information about Ainu traditional music and arts, and some diagrams of the latter. I would counsel readers to balance this work with more recent research on the Ainu, as his writings- while interesting as a period piece- are rather dated. And I simply can’t overstate how insufferably annoying the author is.

Source: Obtained in ebook format, from its page at Project Gutenberg.

Yes, this list will be updated with many more books as I find them. Please note that all of these books are LEGAL and are mostly hosted for free at academic sites; if no legal free version is available, I’ll link to the Amazon page or somewhere else you can buy them.

Totally free public-domain/author-hosted works:

• FREE EBOOK. Public domain volume, “Japanese Costume” by Helen Cowen Gunsaulus. It features some rare info about court costumes- including what various miniutae are called, but is also an easily-cited (FREE!) reference for those “common knowlege” kimono things teachers still demand citation for, like what a netsuke is, how tasuki are worn, etc. Some spellings (“han-yeri” for “han-eri”) are weird but readable. Archive.org
• FREE EBOOK. The Evolution of Yuzen-dyeing Techniques and Designs after the Meiji Restoration by Yuko Fukatsu-Fukuoka. About Yuuzen textile dyeing. University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
• FREE EBOOK. From Kitsch to Art Moderne: Popular Textiles for Women in the First Half of Twentieth-Century Japan by Masanao Arai. About the development of the “Meiji Schoolgirl Uniform” with its hakama, meisen kimono and Western riding boots. This is a LEGAL free download from an academic website. (It also includes pictures- mostly vintage photographs.) University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
• FREE EBOOK. Met Museum article featuring KOSODE from 1959. Unfortunately incomplete, but graciously provided by the museum for free. Met Museum.
• FREE EBOOK. The Jinbaori: Oneupmanship on the Battlefield by Valerie Foley Free Ebook about medieval samurai JINBOARI jackets, with lots of design details about jackets owned by Uesagi Kenshin, Nobunaga, etc. Free download hosted by academic site. University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
• ISSUU – Woven Treasures Gallery Guide by The Textile Museum. Woven Treasures Gallery Guide – It’s a free ebook about Heian costume, in English, by The Textile Museum. It was for an exhibit they had a while back, featuring costumes by the Imperial textile weavers. Downloadable for free from here: issuu.com/… (Yes, it’s legal: the Museum itself made the guide and links to it from the exhibit’s page.) The ebook has some trivia about uchigi, etc. that I didn’t know. The Textile Museum.
• FREE Ebook. Japanese Textiles Of Daily Life by Iwao Nagasaki, Tokyo National Museum Features some rare info on Heian court costume. Legal download, hosted at academic site. University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
• FREE EBOOK. The Heike Monogatari, Translated by A.L. Sadler. Japanese classic; An epic account of the struggle between the Taira and Minamoto clans for control of Japan at the end of the 12th century in the Genpei War (1180-1185). Archive.org
• FREE EBOOK. Tale of Genji / Genji Monogatari in KINDLE EBOOK format. Legal and created from the Edward Seidensticker translation, hosted by The University of Adelaide Library.
• FREE EBOOK. Ancient tales and folklore of Japan (1908) by Gordon Smith, Richard, 1858-1918 and Mo-No-Yuki. Self-explanatory. Archive.org
• FREE EBOOK. Momoyama: Japanese Art in the Age of Grandeur by The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1975). "…The Momoyama period saw the birth of a brilliant, heroic culture, typified by magnificent castles with exuberant wall and screen paintings and interior finishings, represented among the pieces here…" Metmuseum.org.
• FREE EBOOK. Textiles And Trade In Tokugawa Japan by William B. Hauser (University of Rochester). Discussion of the textile trade in Tokugawa/samurai-era Japan.
• FREE HTML EBOOK. Ise Monogatari [Japanese Version]. Made by Sachiko Iwabuchi, University of Virginia. (Unfortunately, there’s no free English version of this that I can find…)
• FREE EBOOK. The Disaster of the Third Princess Essays on The Tale of Genji by Royall Tyler A brilliant analysis of Genji Monogatari‘s various themes, including some interesting (and well-supported!) speculation on the identity of the "spirit" who abducted and rescued the suicidal Ukifune… Australian National University.
• FREE EBOOK. Women’s In-jokes in Heian Japan: Makura no soshi by Gergana Ivanova. An analysis of laughter and its uses/prevalence in Makura no Soshi. From the 2006 Japan Studies Conference (JSAC) and hosted at Thompson Rivers University’s website.

.

• FREE EBOOK. Writing the irogonomi: Sexual politics, Heian-style by April Sprague. A scholarly refutation of some commonly-held conceptions of Heian marriage politics. An interesting and new view of the matter. PDF format. The Japan Foundation Sydney.
• FREE EBOOK. "Le costume de Heian Entre la ligne douce et la silhouette rigide" ("The Heian Dress: between soft line and stiff silhouette") by Charlotte von Verschuer. HTML format, but easily saved to a computer or copied into OpenOffice for ebooking (go to edit>links to break the links and save the images in an OpenOffice backup; then you can import the ODT into Calibre and make a .mobi Amazon ebook from it for your Kindle- if you need French-language Heian reference on the go. …As, um, we all do.) French-language.

Not free, but still affordable works:

• The Pillow Book by Sei Shonagon, Penguin Classics Kindle Ebook. NOT free, but only $11.13 and a true Japanese classic from the Heian period. If you sign up with Swagbucks, a few of those 450 point Amazon gift cards you can earn by searching will easily cover this… I prefer the Kindle format because you can highlight, copy-paste and annotate sections of the book- which is useful for researchers. I have looked EVERYWHERE for a free version of this in English, and I honestly couldn’t find one- which is why I bought the Amazon version and linked it here. Even though it’s old, there wasn’t (I suppose) enough demand to translate it back in The Public Domain days as there was for, say, Tale of Genji. Amazon.com.

An old and somewhat rare mook dealing with traditional Japanese costume through the ages. First published in 1986- but with at least one reprint, in 1999- 日本の美術　 1968年6月 No.26 編集｜日野西資孝 原始時代と古墳時代／平安時代／鎌倉・室町時代／他 ​is a useful reference- as far as pictures go- with many photographs (although most are in black and white) and some items so rare that I had never seen them before. I believe that a Japanese page making reference to the volume implied that it was published by the Kyoto Museum, although I don’t read enough Japanese to verify this.

Unfortunately, I cannot (yet!) review the text, but I really bought it as an image reference/book museum, so it doesn’t really affect my purposes at all…  I’ll review the text when I can read it.

I recommend this book for anyone who wants a pictoral view of changing Japanese fashions from their earliest recorded history all the way to the Meiji (Victorian/19th-century) era; however, people who just want a reference for Heian fashions ought to pick up 素晴らしい装束の世界―いまに生きる千年のファッション ​instead. (As with this volume, it’s cheaper to buy from Japan; UNLIKE this volume, it’s easy to find on Amazon.co.jp.)
Here’s a sample page from the volume, featuring the longest junihitoe layer I’ve ever seen (on the left):

I can’t tell if it’s an uwagi or a hitoe…  But it’s at least long. EDIT: I think it’s a hosonaga.
(“What’s the purpose of reviewing a book you can’t read?!” you might ask…  Most of the people buying this would be using it as a costume reference, and it’s pretty heavy on pictures, averaging about 2 or so per page.  The people who can read the language would probably be reading Japanese reviews, anyway…)

The book/magazine also has a (somewhat complex) tutorial about how to style a doll’s hair into several Edo-esque traditional Japanese hairstyles; I recognized what appears to be the “split-peach” hairstyle worn by maiko (including how to put the tell-tale shibori cloth into it), but I don’t know enough about traditional hairstyles to elaborate further…

There are no patterns for hakama, as far as I can see.

The patterns are full-scale, so using them is as easy as simply tracing them onto wax paper and cutting them out. (This useful trick- which I learned from an Amazon.co.jp pattern book review- saves the book and enables edits of the patterns.) Unlike some of the pattern books I have, this one is easy and clear, even though I don’t read much Japanese.

The volume’s downsides are age and rarity- it literally doesn’t seem to have an ISBN number (I looked for one) and the only copy I’ve seen available online is the one I purchased. The more readily-available Heart Warming Life #3 (Japanese: ジェニー (No.3) ゆかたと着物 Heart warming life series―わたしのドールブック [ムック] / ISBN-10: 4529028917, ISBN-13: 978-4529028912) has similar content and is cheaper, but Jenny Winter ’92 is a better deal (unless dramatically over-priced) due to the wide range of styles and content. The book is also bigger (although not thicker) than the volume I own from the Heart-warming life series.

Chesterton shows a greater feel for the arcane (and morbid) than Arthur Conan Doyle. I wasn’t able to foresee any of the endings, and the complex plot twists- even in such short stories- show a brilliant mind behind the writing. While I could seldom solve the Holmes mysteries, I could at least understand how they were constructed once I had read the ending: that is, I could understand how to write a similar story, if not how to solve it while reading. The Father Brown stories are harder to read, but I’m left puzzling how Chesterton even got the ideas for them. I can’t imagine writing one, even starting from the conclusion and working backwards. While Sherlock Holmes- a larger than life character- eclipses his author, the simple Father Brown leaves me more impressed with the intellect behind him. The Lupin-esque Flambeau- a reformed thief who assists the protagonist- takes the place of Doctor Watson, but is a far more interesting character than the rather flat (although likable) doctor.

The books do have a religious bias (which didn’t bother me at all), but atheistic characters- such as Doctor Oman- are handled fairly and respectably, as are pagans. (A Sicilian of the latter is even described as being particularly valiant due to his upbringing.) I don’t think that non-Christian readers will find a problem with Father Brown.

As a product of the early 20th century, Chesterton does use some racial terms- such as "gypsy" and "negro"- which are no longer used, but in his time those terms were not considered offensive (hence "The United Negro College Fund") and were simply the common terms used. If writing in modern times, he would have used different terms, and a common theme in many of these stories that of Eureopeans rushing to blame their crimes on later-exonerated ethnic minorities. Chesterton- a critic of eugenics and racism when one simply did not do that– probably intended this undercurrent.

The atmosphere in these stories leans into the surreal. Despite the absence of the overtly grotesque and the morality of the protagonist, the Father Brown series left me with more of an uneasy feeling than overtly dark works. The series feels both innocently enchanted and dangerous at the same time: much as Father Brown describes fairyland to be in "The Sins of Prince Saradine".

I don’t regret buying it, and I was fascinated by the fashion trends and details recorded in it, but many of the items featured are photographed in macro, and are showcased for their possession of various design traits, without relevance to the whole- indeed, the whole is often not even depicted, leaving me wondering exactly what I’m looking at… Still, it’s a lovely book and the intricately-detailed textiles and costumes (several of which ARE depicted in whole) will thrill costume lovers- and it’s by far the most well-researched fashion book I’ve read. Who knew that old dresses could demand such scholarship?

I give it 4/5 stars; if I was enough of a costumery scholar to fully appreciate the diagrams and terminology, it would probably merit a 5/5- but I think that it was intended for an audience with more commitment than my casual interest in old clothes and steampunk.

“Prison Letters” offers a stunning glimpse into humanity’s ability to cope with its own inhumanity. The faith and hope- hope which was powered by faith- of the Ten Boom family shines through, even though the letters in the book were written in the terrestrial equivalent of Hell. Joy under such circumstances is amazing, but the letters contain a sort of irrational inner joy and peace, despite their bleak situation; I suppose that’s what people call “faith”. Perhaps equally interesting impressive is the family’s utter lack of ill-will towards their enemies- even the so-called “friend” who betrayed them to what he must have known was almost certain death.

If nothing else, “Prison Letters” is a very interesting character study into different types of people under very strange (and awful) circumstances- and a lesson that even amongst the most horrible groups of people, there can be at least a few sympathetic people. If I were writing a WWII fiction, I would immediately scratch any ideas of a sympathetic concentration camp guard as being too unrealistic- but the Boom family found at least one (possibly the ONLY one) and it’s thanks to his service of smuggling letters that the bulk of this book is possible.

I have a few complaints about the book, but neither is avoidable: first, the book was rather short- but considering that most of it was written on toilet paper and smuggled out under the noses of psychopathic killers, I feel a tad guilty even observing the length- much less complaining about it. Secondly, some of the book’s contents build heavily upon the previous book, “The Hiding Place”. However, since the basic story is pretty well-known and the main audience for “Prison Letters” resides in those who have read the prequel, it’s a non-issue. Even those who have not read the sequel (or seen the movie version) might well find “Prison Letters” worth reading.

Recommended for: People interested in a “slice of life” story about people in a concentration camp, those interested in Christian martyrs (only one member of the family survived), those interested in people coping with impossible trials and overcoming them, those interested in Germans who resisted Nazism

Not Recommended for: People with an interest in WWII Germany’s political situation (the book scarce mentions politics, if at all), people who want to read a long and scientific tome on WWII Germany instead of a series of diary-like letters, people unfamiliar with the rough basics of Corrie Ten Boom’s story, people who are interested in WWII military circumstances (like politics, they’re scarely, if at all, mentioned)

Related Works: If you enjoy Corrie Ten Boom’s works, I would recommend another author from the same time period, who has a similar background: Bonhoffer was a Christian living in Nazi Germany who likewise defied Nazism, was also motivated to do so by his faith, and also wrote prodigiously. Unlike Corrie, he did not survive- but his work did. The classic theological tome “The Cost of Discipleship” was written by him, as well as other works- and since their lives were so similar, I think that any reader who enjoys either Ten Boom or Bonhoffer will also enjoy the other.

The characters are universally bland and unlikeable, amongst both the protagonists and antagonists, and some of the stereotyping is incredibly offensive; in fact, it’s SO outrageous that its presentation (and absence in Verne’s later books) almost makes me wonder whether the stereotyping was a tongue-in-cheek satire on Verne’s part to show how ridiculous such writing was. (Admittedly, perhaps I’m just a disheartened fan who doesn’t want to accept that Verne could have seriously written such tripe.)

The thinly-veiled Verne-self-insert (I believe anime writers call them “Gary Stu”) is present here, as well; a mysterious man of science, under a mysterious assumed name, with a giant ship, who shows up out of nowhere and shows the “experts” how it’s really done, leaving them in awe. However, while this worked very well with Captain Nemo (who, despite the cliched tragic past and vendetta, still remains one of the most iconic antiheroes in all of literature) the more avian character of “Robar” is somewhat of a trainwreck: a less-polished, more annoying, dryer (pun intended) version of Nemo. A simple summary of “Clipper” would be that it’s an inferior and annoying knockoff of 20,000 Leagues, but with an airship instead of a submarine. Even though some of the plot elements are the same, I’m honestly having trouble believing that Verne wrote it… It’s more like a terrible Verne fanfic a 12-year-old might have churned out over 100 years ago.

If nothing else, “Clipper” proves even the great authors make a few failures. When I first found the book, I wondered why I had never heard of it, despite its authorship by such a literary icon; having read it, I no longer wonder. Even Verne’s fans would do well to sweep this one under a rug. Skip “Clipper” and read (or reread) 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

The Professor’s Daughter

Joann Sfar, Emmanuel Guibert

“The Professor’s Daughter” is a quirky, unorthodox love story between an Egyptian mummy and the daughter of a professor. It’s set in Victorian London (hence its presence in this blog,) but it’s not really a “serious” work: the hijinks therein include Queen Victoria falling into a river and random chase scenes which would make a slightly drunken, Victorian-era James Bond proud. It also has unique artwork- it seems that the artist painted the entire book in earthy watercolors- or at least managed to replicate that look very well. It was a fun read- and at about $10.00 USD, it would be a good random gift for someone.

You can view this book’s Amazon detail page here.