Japan has spawned a modernity that affects us all, whether in relation to cars, computers, robotics, video or Manga. Unlike in the West, modernity and tradition are not mutually exclusive, they coexist. Indeed, tradition is often the matrix of modernity. This is precisely the subject of this book. It contains over four hundred reproductions of artworks from the world’s leading museums, together with forty essays by specialists on topics such as Buddhism and Manga, not to mention film, video games, samurais, Japanese history, the 1964 Olympic Games and contemporary art.