Historical Dictionary of Osaka and Kyoto

Although I have visited over 100 countries of the world, Japan is regrettably not one of them, so this review must necessarily be a descriptive one only. It is no. 9 in the series Historical Dictionaries of Cities of the World, edited by Jon Woronoff, and it is the first to be prepared by Ian Ropke. He is supremely well‐qualified to have written such a dictionary, for he has lived in the metropolitan area of Kyoto‐Osaka for the last 12 years. He has both Canadian and German citizenship and is fluent in English, German and Japanese.

This dictionary is in...