This is an excellent book for understanding Japanese and Chinese cultures, exploring a wide range of areas from daily life ("clothing, food, housing, and transportation") to political systems, values, and ways of thinking. It examines the unique evolution of Japanese culture, which has absorbed elements of East Asian and Western European civilizations like a whale, and the chimeric (composite) nature of Chinese culture, formed through the mixing of peoples from all directions. Price: 2500 yen.