Tokyo--City of Contradictions? The largest city in the world teems with chaotic energy and serene, human-scale beauty. Writing about Tokyo for over 15 years, essayist and professor Michael Pronko opens up Tokyo life and reveals what’s beneath the gleaming, puzzling exterior of the biggest city in the world.

Whether contemplating Tokyo’s odd-shaped bonsai houses, endless walls of bottles, pachinko parlors, chopstick ballet or the perilous habit of running for trains, the 45 essays in Beauty and Chaos explore Tokyo from inside to reveal the city’s deeper meanings and daily pleasures. In turns comic, philosophic, descriptive and exasperated, Pronko’s essays have been popular with Japanese readers for more than a decade.

Essay Topics Include:
Cherry Tree Maps
Bonsai Buildings
The Shout of English T-Shirts
Hanging Menus
Inside the Smallest Places
Standing Libraries

If you’re traveling to Tokyo, these essays enlarge the significance and illuminate the contradictions of this fast-paced megalopolis. Part travelogue, part comparative culture, and all creative essay, Beauty and Chaos taps the mysteries of Tokyo and lets the meanings flow.

Also available in ebook format, $3.99, 978-1-942410-01-0.