WHEN THE ORIGINAL shorter version of this book was first published in 2005, in both English and Japanese, it met a surprisingly enthusiastic reception. Reviewers in many newspapers and magazines in both languages gave it high marks, as did readers in person and online.

Saishō Hazuki, a well-known non-fiction writer, in a review in the Asahi Shimbun, judged the author's “thoughts on Japan.. .more convincing than those of any other commentator.” In another review, in the literary magazine Misuzu, she called it “a great book.” The socio-ecologist Morinosato Yōichi, in a laudatory review, wrote that “this book is like a work of glass. If you try to analyse it, it breaks into pieces. Just like Yoshida Kenkō's Tsureguregusa... it is filled with a deep sense of reflection and the passage of time. It is …a most readable memoir.” Mark Austin, in The Daily Yomiuri (now The Japan News), called the book “an engrossing, enchanting and illuminating account of the postwar years in Japan.”

These and many other equally positive opinions about the book led to a number of opportunities to promote it through lectures and book signings which in turn helped promote sales. Unfortunately, in due course, the book went out of print. A similar fate befell the Japanese edition, which also became unavailable when its publisher closed down. That there was continuing demand for the book is evident from the prices asked (as of December 2019) on Amazon.com for second-hand copies of the English-language onginal: between US$609 and US$1,085! I can't believe anyone would be willing to pay that kind of money for a copy.

All of which convinced me and the translator of the Japanese edition Mizoguchi Hiromi, that the book should be republished, updated where appropriate, and with additional material covering the years from 1974 to the present. Fortunately, we found the successor to the original publisher interested in publishing this updated, expanded version of the book.

The bo ok before you comp rises five p arts. The first three cover my con - tinuous twenty-fouryears of residenceinjapan,from 1950 to 1974,essentially the original text of She Magatama Doodle: One Man's Affair with Japan, with some corrections.