About Us
Stone Bridge Press was established in Berkeley, California, in 1989. We now have some 150 titles in print, covering such Japan-related areas as language, business, literature, manga, design, and culture.
Authors published by Stone Bridge Press include Donald Richie and Frederik L. Schodt. Stone Bridge is admired for its reference works on Japanese popular culture, including comics and film, and for its illustrated approaches to the study of Japanese characters. Its publication of a book on wabi-sabi by Leonard Koren in 1992 helped spur an international design revolution. Many Stone Bridge Press books have been adopted by high school and university classrooms.
Why this interest in Japan? We're not tea-cult dilettantes or management gurus. We simply believe that Japan offers tremendous opportunities for re-examining Western values and for connecting with an emerging global culture increasingly centered on the Pacific Rim.
What has fascinated so many people about Japan is its extraordinarily rich coherency, how tenets of art and spirituality are reflected in work and daily life. For 1,500 years Japanese culture has been evolving in a more or less straight line, absorbing foreign influences but remaining identifiably "Japanese." It's a culture that breeds both beauty and arrogance. It demands patience and erudition. And it gives the publisher delicious editorial challenges and an alluring design vocabulary: asymmetry, surface decoration, white space, boldness, delicacy, a quick splash of color.
In 2008 we officially acquired the children’s and crafts titles of Heian International in Los Angeles. For the past few years we have been expanding beyond Japan into China, Korea, and other Asian subject areas.
Peter Goodman, founder and publisher, sold the company to a Japanese book distributor, Yohan Inc., in 2005. He reacquired it from IBC Publishing in 2009.
Stone Bridge Press is distributed in the United States and Canada by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution, Inc. Other international accounts are handled by Publishers Group Worldwide.
