About

Arigatai Books specializes in books by Japanese authors or those strongly influenced by Japanese culture, both classic and modern works. We believe there are countless great books out there in the Japanese language, and it is our mission to bring these to an English-speaking audience. As a secondary goal, we offer books to help Japanese learners, for example stories in bilingual Japanese/English.

J.D. Wisgo is the head of Arigatai Books and has been studying Japanese language and culture for over twenty years. He has been running Self Taught Japanese since 2013, a blog with over 900 articles about Japanese language and culture. J.D. began doing literary translation in 2016, and published his first book in 2018. He lives with his family in Portland, Oregon.

R. Wisgo is a native Japanese speaker who loves books so much she would like to time travel back in time and see The Libary of Alexandria.