Having lived in Japan, taught about Japan, and written several books on Japanese culture, I feel fairly well-soaked in the subject. Time and time again, in my reading (and haiku-writing), strong images from books I have loved come into focus and I am once again savoring the titles that have caught my imagination.

For small children, my all time favorite is Crow Boy, written and illustrated by Yashima Taro (Penguin Puffin). This Caldecott Award winner is about a mountain boy who walks to his school from his mountain village everyday for six years. Though the children despise him, he finally earns their respect in an unexpected way. Guaranteed to bring tears to some students' eyes and teachers have been known to turn aside and sniffle. I did a teacher's guide for it to explain a lot of the Japanese imagery and take students deeper into the book and the culture.
Grandpa's Town (Kane-Miller) is another endearing book about a little boy who worries that his grandpa is lonely. The illustrations were done by the author, Takaaki Nomura. This has a bi-lingual (Japanese/English) text. A heart-warming, very Japanese book.
While we are with the younger set, the series of Japanese folk tales, in the three volume, Once Upon A Time, cover all the classic stories and are wonderfully illustrated. They were compiled by Kawauchi Sayumi, and published by Kodansha.

For good-level readers the classic Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes is, of course, a must read. This heartbreaking story of a child who didn't survive after the atomic bomb attacks is so well-known. Who hasn't made 1000 cranes in her memory? And while we are remembering the war, the camps and the bomb attacks, two more wonderful titles - Naomi's Road by Joy Kogawa, which covers the Japanese-Canadian wartime experience, and the set of 3 books, Barefoot Gen. These are both challenging. The latter set are drawn in comic book form by Nakazawa Keiji, himself a survivor. These are for young adults who want to see things as they really were.

Nearly forgot the historical samurai novel and can recommend anything by Katherine Patterson or Erik Haugaard. And I should mention that my introduction to haiku, Haiku: One Breath Poetry, has become something of a standard in schools. To finish I would like to mention the annotated children's and young people's bibliography that I tediously (and sometimes joyfully) put together which covers all these titles and more (200 in all), Reading About Japan.