No woman in the three-hundred-year history of the karyukai has ever come forward in public to tell her story. We have been constrained by unwritten rules not to do so, by the robes of tradition and by the sanctity of our exclusive calling...But I feel it is time to speak out.

Celebrated as the most successful geisha of her generation, Mineko Iwasaki was only five years old when she left her parents' home for the world of the geisha. For the next twenty-five years, she would live a life filled with extraordinary professional demands and rich rewards. She would learn the formal customs and language of the geisha, and study the ancient arts of Japanese dance and music. She would enchant kings and princes, captains of industry, and titans of the entertainment world, some of whom would become her dearest friends. Through great pride and determination, she would be hailed as one of the most prized geishas in Japan's history, and one of the last great practitioners of this now fading art form.

In Geisha, a Life, Mineko Iwasaki tells her story, from her warm early childhood, to her intense yet privileged upbringing in the Iwasaki okiya (household), to her years as a renowned geisha, and finally, to her decision at the age of twenty-nine to retire and marry, a move that would mirror the demise of geisha culture. Mineko brings to life the beauty and wonder of Gion Kobu, a place that "existed in a world apart, a special realm whose mission and identity depended on preserving the time-honored traditions of the past."

She illustrates how it coexisted within post-World War II Japan at a time when the country was undergoing its radical transformation from a post-feudal society to a modern one.

There is much mystery and misunderstanding about what it means to be a geisha. I hope this story will help explain what it is really like and also serve as a record of this unique component of Japan's cultural history, writes Mineko Iwasaki. Geisha, a Life is the first of its kind, as it delicately unfolds the fabric of a geisha's development. Told with great wisdom and sensitivity, it is a true story of beauty and heroism, and of a time and culture rarely revealed to the Western world.

Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche is a powerful work of journalistic literature by the acclaimed author Haruki Murakami. On a clear spring day, Monday, March 20, 1995, five members of the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo conducted a chemical warfare attack on the Tokyo subway system using sarin, a poison gas twenty-six times as deadly as cyanide.

The unthinkable had happened: a major urban transit system had become the target of a terrorist attack. In this compelling investigation, Murakami delves into the minds of those who lived through the catastrophe—from a Subway Authority employee dealing with survivor guilt, to a fashion salesman harboring more resentment towards the media than the perpetrators, to a young cult member who condemns the attack yet remains with Aum.

Through these diverse voices, Murakami exposes intriguing facets of the Japanese psyche. As he uncovers the fundamental issues leading to the attack, readers achieve a clear vision of an event that could occur anytime, anywhere. Hauntingly compelling and inescapably important, this book provides a profound insight into a tragic event on Japanese soil that reverberated around the world.

Hiroshima-born Sadako is lively and athletic—the star of her school's running team. And then the dizzy spells start. Soon, gravely ill with leukemia, the "atom bomb disease," Sadako faces her future with spirit and bravery.

Recalling a Japanese legend, Sadako sets to work folding paper cranes. For the legend holds that if a sick person folds one thousand cranes, the gods will grant her wish and make her healthy again.

Based on a true story, Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes celebrates the extraordinary courage that made one young woman a heroine in Japan.