EPUB Version
A powerful literary novel about race, identity, belonging, and life in Japan.
A novel of two systems, one man, and the gap between what is shown and what is true.
Inspired by the author's own decades of living and working in Japan, Ura Shakai: Foundations introduces Sean Tate.
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Why You'll Love It
A powerful literary novel inspired by decades of life in Japan
Explores race, identity, belonging, and cross-cultural life
Richly grounded in Japanese history, business, and everyday society
Perfect for readers of Pachinko, Between the World and Me, and The Underground Railroad
The first novel in the five-book Ura Shakai series
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Book I of the Ura Shakai Series
Detroit built him. The United States Marine Corps sharpened him. Tokyo revealed what both had made.
Sean Tate has spent decades in Japan, learning its language, navigating its systems, building a business, and raising a family. He moves through Tokyo fluently, attentively, never entirely at ease. Japan has a word for the gap between the surface and hidden layer. Omote — the face that a thing presents. Ura — what operates beneath. Every institution, every silence, every small courtesy extended or withheld follows this logic. Most foreigners spend their entire lives on the surface and call it immersion. Sean learned to read that gap long before he had a word for it. He learned it at four years old on Hazelwood Street, Detroit — the summer the city burned. At seven, when the city demolished his block with paperwork instead of fire. The U.S. Marine Corps refined the skill. Japan gave it a name.
Ura Shakai: Foundations opens a five-book series: Detroit, departure, arrival, and the slow construction of a life within a system never designed to include you. It is the story of what it costs to see clearly — and what it means to stay anyway.
Readers of Between the World and Me, Pachinko, Lost Japan, and The Underground Railroad have found this series essential reading.
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Book Details:
Author: Eric L. Robinson
Series: The Ura Shakai Series
Book: One of Five
Format: EPUB eBook
Compatible with: iPhone, iPad, Android, Kindle, Kobo, and all major e-readers
Language: English
Publisher: Black Tokyo Publishing
Publication Date: May 27, 2026
ISBN: 978-4-911873-02-1
Inside Ura Shakai: Foundations, you'll discover:
How hidden social rules shape life in Japan.
The intersections of race, identity, and belonging.
A journey from Detroit to Japan that spans decades.
The foundation of a five-book literary series.
Genre:
Literary Fiction
Cross-Cultural Fiction
Autofiction
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About the Author
Ura Shakai: Foundations is the debut novel from Eric L. Robinson, drawing on his own experience as a Black American living in Japan for over four decades.
Robinson is an American author, entrepreneur, and former Japanese television personality. A Detroit native and a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, he served as an Interrogator-Translator (Korean and Japanese) and as an Intelligence Analyst. He holds a Master of Arts in Security Studies (Far East, Southeast Asia, the Pacific) from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School.
Robinson became one of the most recognized foreign faces on Japanese national television during his years on Sanma's Super Karakuri TV. He has appeared on numerous prime-time television programs in Japan. Reuters, The Washington Post, CNN, ABC News, Newsweek, The Guardian, The Japan Times, and Sankei Shimbun have cited his work on race, identity, and Black life in Japan. His works have been referenced in academic research at the University of California, Berkeley, and the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School.
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