my books

I have written a work of Shinto-based fiction: Tamao. It’s an urban fantasy, and the blurb is as follows: Akiko Tanahata liked her normal life in Japan, with a clerical job and a serious boyfriend. Shinto shrines were just places to visit at New Year. But that all changed when she sought shelter from a sudden downpour, and found herself in an impossible space, confronted by a great serpent. Now the serpent will not leave her alone, and she can see the pollution that is slowly corrupting Kawasaki. As her… Read More »Tamao Pre-Orders

I have just released two more of the past essays from my Patreon on Amazon. Myths from the Hitachi Fudoki retells and comments on the myths found in the Hitachi-no-Kuni Fudoki. This text was compiled by order of the Tennō in the early eighth century, and describes the ancient province of Hitachi, which roughly corresponds to modern Ibaraki Prefecture, to the northeast of Tokyo. Over fifty of these Fudoki seem to have been prepared (there should have been over sixty, but there are no surviving references at all to some… Read More »New Book: Myths from the Hitachi Fudoki

The latest short book in the Mimusubi Essays on Shinto series is Myths from the Izumo Fudoki. The Fudoki are descriptions of the ancient provinces of Japan, commissioned by the Tennō in the eighth century, and thus valuable records of what Japan was like in the distant past. The ones that survive are, at least. There should have been somewhere between sixty and seventy of them (the number of provinces was changing around the period when they were being written, so it is hard to say how many were expected),… Read More »New Book on Izumo Myths