In Kansai Cool anthropologist, writer and filmmaker Christal Whelan offers profound insights in the only collection of essays to focus on Kansai, Japan's ancient heartland.

Christal Whelan is an anthropologist and interpreter who has lived and worked in Japan and Mongolia. She studied at Harvard University, Boston University, and Brown University. Many of the chapters in Kansai Cool originated from her former columns in Kansai Culturescapes, which ran in The Daily Yomiuri.