How to buy Japanese craft books

If you’ve been reading a while, you know that I love Japanese craft, fashion, and style books. Japanese publishers put out a huge range of well-designed, beautifully photographed books and “mooks” (a cross between a magazine and a book), spurred by the Zakka design movement. “Zakka has also been described as “the art of seeing the savvy in the ordinary and mundane”. The zakka boom could be recognized as merely another in a series of consumer fads, but it also touches issues of self-expression and spirituality. Cute, corny and kitschy is not enough. To qualify as a zakka, a product must be attractive, sensitive, and laden with subtext.” Now I’ve gotten many questions about how to go about purchasing Japanese craft books, which can be pretty hard to come by, especially if you don’t live in a big city with a Japanese community. So I thought I’d put together a few resources that could be helpful. One...