“One of the reasons we live in quite a well-organized society is the threat of chaos.”
Emily Itami
Tokyo
Tokyo: quaint and vast, majestic and baffling. Unspoiled parks and roiling tourist traps, artisanal delicacies and millions of vending machines, highly efficient commuter trains packed with snoozing salarymen. Can an outsider —or even a native who left—ever hope to keep up?
When Anna reconnects with her childhood friend Tsubasa after years apart, they strike up a wide-ranging correspondence. They have much to tell about their lives and memories and dreams, but also about the city they once shared. As their connection deepens, Tokyo’s codes and customs and unspoken rules unfold in revealing lessons: how politeness conceals a world of meaning; how falling asleep during a business meeting can signal exemplary commitment; how alienating vastness can give way, without warning, to intimacy.
Brought to charismatic life by novelist Emily Itami, Tokyo is funny, tender, and gently disorienting: an epistolary love story and a brisk primer in the complex etiquette of a city that reveals and withholds in equal measure.
Emily Itami, born to a Japanese mother and a British father, spent her formative years in Tokyo. She is the author of the novels Kakigori Summer and Fault Lines, which was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award in the UK. Her work explores cross-cultural identity, relationships, and contemporary urban life.
Travel with a Writer
The Walking Tree’s global literary travel series presents places with a combination of dynamic storytelling, insightful observation, cultural references, and curated itineraries.
Written by acclaimed authors who know their subject intimately, these books give even armchair tourists a local’s understanding of the place: its rhythms, its customs, its contradictions, and the thousands of everyday details that make it tick.
Place by place, a global literary atlas takes shape.
- PUB DATE October 13, 2026
- Original paperback with flaps
- Page count: 160
- Print: $18.95 – 9782919841035
- Ebook: $9.95 – 9782919841288
