Everyday Kamakura

Everyday Kamakura. An ancient capital of Japan and stronghold for the Shogunate, Kamakura was a center of political, economic and cultural power that rivaled Kyoto. MatsuRi’s photography collection about the region and its population…

The Second Corps of Discovery

1811 Journal of the Jackson and Clark Expeditionary Force

Celebrate the Bicentennial Anniversary of the Second Continental Geographic Survey. Follow the adventures of Colonel Andrew Jackson and Brigadier General George Rogers Clark, older brother of Lieutenant William…

The Girl From Ipanema

THE GIRL FROM IPANEMA: A SHORT STORY is about a man who has lost the love of his life. Sorrow engulfs his agonized mind. And delusions threaten to shatter his fragile hold on reality.

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The Courageous Tin Doll

A completely original and imaginative story by Xuemei Han, “The Courageous Tin Doll” is a modern-day fable about rivalry, friendships, and forgiveness. A tin doll is forged from the ruins of magical metal and makes…

Mindfall

MINDFALL: A SHORT STORY is about a female astronaut who has become stranded on an alien world. She must battle with the failing life support of her gunstar and her own sanity in the face of mysterious…

Japan and Christianity

The Christian history of Japan began long before the famous Christian century of the 16th century. Nestorian Christians from Persia are said to have built churches as early as the 7th century in Nara, and even converted…

The Enchanted Chinese Brush Pen

Another classic folklore re-imagined into an original fairy-tale by Xuemei Han, “The Enchanted Chinese Brush Pen” is a universal story of personal imagination and social responsibility. A poor boy in ancient Asia discovers an enchanted…

Oku no Hosomichi

The Narrow Road to the Deep North (奥の細道) is a major work by the Japanese poet, Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694). The text is written in the form of a travel diary, and it was penned as he made…

Ancient Japanese Ghost Stories

The stories in this volume were first recorded in 1918 by Richard Gordon Smith, who spent twenty years traveling in Japan and collecting vintage folklore related to supernatural events. This edited and updated version of the century-old…

Kamijikan: The Divinity of Time

Ancient guardians battle to preserve history and protect Creation from being rewritten by the forces of darkness.

It began before the concept of time had any meaning.  An evil lord and his dominions sought to rule all Creation.  Exiled…

Princess Pea and the Hunt for the Golden Tickle Belly

Xuemei Han is known for bringing her stories for children to life with unique and inspirational hand drawn illustrations. Her internationally award winning style is an innovative blend of traditional Chinese cultural…

A Walk Across Dalian

In the tradition of his “Everyday Dalian” photobook, the Municipal Government of Dalian originally commissioned SongLi to produce his second photography book about the city. The intended purpose was as…

Under The Dragon Flag

James Allan recounts his misadventures in Northeast Asia during the 1894-95. After gambling away his fortune in Monte Carlo Allan signs up as a sailor and sets out for the seas. He eventually finds himself aboard the…

Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun

The Russo-Japanese War grew out of the rival imperial ambitions of the Russian Empire and Japanese Empire over Manchuria and Korea. Harry Collingwood provides a personal narrative of this conflict, that served as a prelude for the…

1904: An Officer’s Journal During the Russo-Japanese War

In 1904-1905, Ian Standish Monteith Hamilton was the military representative of the Indian Army serving with the Japanese Army in Manchuria. Among the several military advisors from Western countries, he was the first to arrive in Japan…

Celebrated Geysha of Tokyo

A photographic book that commemorates the Geisha (spelled Geysha in the 1890s) community of Tokyo. These iconic images capture an insight into an ancient Japanese cultural tradition.

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Dalian Ghost Stories

The city of Dalian has always held secrets. Its foreign colonization and occupation brought external cultures and languages to Northeast China. Great Britain, Russia, and Japan took turns dominating the region for nearly a century, influencing local…

Of Goblins and Samurai: The Kojiki

OF GOBLINS AND SAMURAI: THE KOJIKI is the oldest chronicle in Japan, dating from the 8th century. Composed by Ōno Yasumaro at the request of Empress Gemmei, the collection contains myths about the origin of the four…

Droplings

When Allied forces parachute wooden decoy soldiers over wartime Germany, a pagan terror is stirred after centuries of sleep.

Even the Romans ignored the legends and put little faith in the oral superstitions. It was a mistake…

Gleanings in Buddha-Fields

This collection of stories takes the reader on a journey into the soul of Japan and enters into the spirit of Buddhism. The accumulation of experience over numerous lifetimes and rebirths is a central theme, as the…

Rashomon Effect

The Rashomon Effect is the effect of the subjectivity of perception on recollection, by which observers of an event are able to produce substantially different but equally plausible accounts of it. – Karl G. Heider

After crash…

Faith From Fujisawa

A deep and spiritually revealing series of articles about Christian wisdoms and beliefs, with a focus on understanding scriptural meanings. The first in series by Pastor John Stemmons, from the Amazing Grace Church…

The Radish and the Girl with Long Hair

Another classic folklore re-imagined into an original fairy-tale by Xuemei Han, “The Radish and the Girl with Long Hair” takes the reader on a fantastic journey to a distant Asian land. Farmers had moved near…

Everyday Dalian

A former colony briefly founded by Russia but later developed over two generations by Japan, Dalian has always been a strategic hub for control of Northeast China. SongLi’s photography collection about the city and its population has…

Brave Little Mongolian Sisters

An original fairy-tale inspired by true events from the 1960s, “Brave Little Mongolian Sisters” is the heroic tale of two young nomadic girls in Northern Asia. Blossom and Jade provided for their sick parents by raising their…

ANIMA: a novel about Second Life

Ben Tao is the avatar of a fired programmer who hacks Second Life. His goal is to profit from a false intellectual property claim. However, instead of changing the creation date for the items he has stolen,…

Haunted Tales of the Tokugawa

In 1590 AD the Hōjō clan was overthrown at the Battle of Odawara by the forces of Taikō Hidéyoshi. His second in command, and future Shogun of all Japan, Tokugawa Iyeyasu, was given authority over the captured…

The Book Of Tea

Okakura Kakuzo devoted his life to teaching, art, Zen, and the preservation of Japanese art and culture. He was an ambassador, professor and popular writer during his long and influential career. At the time of his death,…

Some Chinese Ghosts

This is a collection of ghost stories based on Chinese old tales and legends. They are rich in atmosphere, authentic in tone, and almost without exception very good stories. They are an interesting contrast to Western lore,…

The Awakening of China

China’s period of isolation is over. To understand its future, look to its recent past. A century ago, China was considered a theatre of the greatest movement taking place on the face of the globe. Efforts of…

On the Great Highway

James Creelman became the first American journalist to interview the Pope, accompanied the Japanese in their war with China in Manchuria, visited Tolstoy at his home in Russia, got wounded in the Philippines as a correspondent in…

New Forces In Old China

This book from 1909 describes the development of change within old, conservative, exclusive China by the three great transforming forces of the modern world – Western trade, Western politics and Western religion. These forces are producing stupendous…

The Blockade Runners

Steampunk Chronicles: The Blockade Runners

During the American Civil War a young patriot must break through the Federalist blockade in the harbor of Charleston to rescue a young girl held prisoner by the Confederates.

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The Underground City

Steampunk Chronicles: The Underground City

A deep sub-terrain mine that had been abandoned for decades becomes the location for an underground adventure of mysterious and unexplainable happenings.

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Off On A Comet

Steampunk Chronicles: Off On A Comet

A comet touches the Earth in its flight and collects a few small chunks of it. Some forty people of various nations and ages are condemned to a two-year-long journey on…

The Master of the World

Steampunk Chronicles: The Master of the World

A series of unexplained events occur across the Eastern United States. These happenings manifest when objects move with such great speed that they become nearly invisible. The phenomena holds a…

20,000 Leagues Under the Seas

Steampunk Chronicles: 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas

The story of Captain Nemo and his submarine Nautilus as seen from the perspective of Professor Pierre Aronnax.

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The Mysterious Island

Steampunk Chronicles: The Mysterious Island

Another Victorian era adventure upon the vintage seas, where man must fight against both technology and the forces of nature.

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The World Set Free

Steampunk Chronicles: The World Set Free

The story foretells the effects of nuclear weapons decades prior to their usage in warfare. Scientists of the Victorian era were well aware that the slow natural radioactive decay of elements…

When the Sleeper Wakes

Steampunk Chronicles: When the Sleeper Wakes

A dystopian story about a man who sleeps for two hundred and three years, waking up in a completely transformed London. Because of compound interest on his bank accounts, he has…

The War of the Worlds

Steampunk Chronicles: The War of the Worlds

The fictional 1901 invasion of Earth by aliens from Mars. These being have advanced technology like Heat-Rays, chemical weapons, and three-legged mechanical fighting machines.

After defeating the human resistance the…

The Invisible Man

Steampunk Chronicles: The Invisible Man

An obscure scientist invents a way to render skin, bones, and blood invisible, and tries the formula on himself. Now he can go anywhere and menace anyone sight unseen. The only problem…

The War in the Air

Steampunk Chronicles: The War in the Air

A world of aerial combat envisioned a decade prior to World War I. Bert Smallways, a forward-thinking young man, steps from his simple life into a life and death adventure…

Chinese Manga Artwork

China has a long history of artistic works. They have survived many ages of prosperity and censorship. Today’s China is absorbing the popular Japanese Manga style of drawing, and applying it to traditional folk stories. The artwork…

The Time Machine

Steampunk Chronicles: The Time Machine

A dreamer obsessed with traveling through time builds himself a machine and travels over 800,000 years into the future. The known world has been transformed and human society has finally learned to…

The Time Machine – Japanese Edition

Steampunk Chronicles: The Time Machine – Japanese Edition

A dreamer obsessed with traveling through time builds himself a machine and travels over 800,000 years into the future. The known world has been transformed and human society has…

Notable Women of Modern China

During a stay of some months in China during 1909, Margaret E. Burton had an opportunity to see the educational system of the country for women. She was greatly impressed, and compiled profiles of some of the…

The Tale Of Genji

Murasaki Shikibu’s epic-length novel, The Tale of Genji, probes the psychological, romantic and political workings of mid-Heian Japan. The novel earned Murasaki Shikibu notoriety even in the early 11th century, some six hundred years before the printing…

The Civilization of China

Herbert Allen Giles (1845-1935) was a British linguist who modified a Mandarin Chinese Romanization system established by Thomas Wade earlier, resulting in the Wade-Giles Chinese transliteration system. Giles was a diplomat to China (1867-1892) who later became…

More Glimpses of Unfamilar Japan

Hearn offers another look into a side of Japan that no longer exists, lost in modern history. Yet his observations gave the Western world its first look at this mysterious and misunderstood culture. This second series also…

Memoir of a Chinese Princess

In 1903, Princess Der Ling became First Lady-in-Waiting to Tzu-Hsi, the Empress Dowager, who was fascinated by the young woman’s travels and experiences in places the Empress would never see. Der Ling served her Empress for two…

Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things

This collection of 17 old stories from Japan was collected and translated by the well-known ethnographer, Lafcadio Hearn, and first published in English in 1904. The tales are old folk stories that deal with ghosts and the…

Kokoro: Japanese Inner Life Hints

These stories follow Hearn’s particular interests of Japanese folklore and the vanishing culture of which he found himself a part in post-Meji Japan. Each story is a slice of life focusing on Japanese character, morals and feelings.…

Japanese Fairy Tales

Yei Theodora Ozaki’s classic Japanese fairy tales are showcased in this new compilation. Featured are twenty-two favorite tales that introduce the vivid world of Japanese fantasy. It is a landscape of ghouls, goblins, and ogres. Of sea…

JAPAN: An Attempt at Interpretation

Hearn’s book is incredibly insightful and thorough, offering a history of the various forms of Shinto, Buddhism, Confucianism and other folk-practices that shaped the national character of Japan. It also details Japanese interactions and culture, and most…

In Ghostly Japan

Much of the collection focuses on how incense relates to ghosts in terms of the Shinto and Buddhist religion. In addition, there is a mix of true stories and Japanese lore as they relate to the world…

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan

Hearn offers a look into a side of Japan that no longer exists, lost in modern history. Yet his observations gave the Western world its first look at this mysterious and misunderstood culture. This first series contains…

Folklore of Old Japan

Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford (1837-1916), Lord Redesdale, was in the British Foreign Service as a young man. He was assigned to the legation in Japan for several years and acquired a life-long fascination with Japanese culture. This book…

Diaries of Court Ladies From Old Japan

Written nearly one thousand years ago, these diaries continue to intrigue modern readers. Authored by three Ladies of the Royal Court in Japan, they show not only Imperial life, but also life in Japan before its traditional…

Court Life in China

One woman ruled China for nearly half a century, The Empress Dowager. An unequaled historical figure, the Empress has often been misunderstood and misrepresented. From her participation in the Boxer movement to failing to modernize China in…