Bruno Taut was in Japan for barely four weeks in 1933 when he received a commission from the Meiji Shobo publishing house to write a book about his impressions. "Nippon Seen Through European Eyes" quickly became a bestseller. The prominent architect, whose reputation preceded him, had given numerous lectures since his arrival in Japan, visited art and cultural monuments, and met all the important modern architects. He discussed the issues of Japanese modernization and industrialization with them. His external perspective as a specialist has always been in demand: even the Japanese paperback edition of "Nippon Seen Through European Eyes," published in 1991, has seen 17 editions to date. The nearly unknown original manuscript has survived in the Japanese publishing archive and is now being published for the first time in German. The critical edition adopts the image selection from the Japanese edition.