The Sounds of Japanese with Audio CD [Paperback]

This is the only entry in the Cambridge Sounds of series that I have read, so I can't say that I entirely understand the general purpose of this series. But I will say that I bought this book, expecting an introduction to articulatory phonetics (of Japanese) leading into a preview of the phonological theory (of Japanese), since that is the conceptual skeleton indicated by the table of contents. However, I'm pretty disappointed by this book. The focus is obviously articulatory, so I'm guessing the audience is not mathematically literate. Much more could have been done with a more acoustic based approach to the Japanese phone repertoire. But I point that out as more of a heads-up then a pedagogical deficit, since, again, the target readership doesn't seem to include those with a background in phonetics, and that's fine. A lot linguistics textbooks don't go anywhere near signal analysis. My main disappointment is actually Vance's focus on orthography. In fact, I am pretty much sorely frustrated that I bought a book on the "sounds" of Japanese only to have to read such a laborious unhelpful description of kana and its supposed relevancy to phonological analysis. Orthography should be largely ignored in phonological analysis, but Vance devotes so much net space to it that I think a more appropriate title might be "The sounds of Japanese, with a lengthy discussion on totally irrelevant orthographic considerations"

I guess that this book is intended for people with no prior knowledge of Japanese and are reading it only for the purpose of surveying a foreign language. Or rather I would guess that except he says outright that he presupposes an intermediate/advanced level of Japanese. So I am just completely confused about who the target readership is.

Overall, I have to give it 3/5 because it is very difficult to find a modern singular text on Japanese phonetics/phonology, and I would like to encourage more linguists to publish on this subject by communicating my demand through my purchasing. However, those 3 stars may be a little generous because I am quite disappointed by Vance's totally unnecessary and lengthy discussions of kana peppered throughout the book. If you need to learn Japanese orthography then maybe his discussion could be helpful, but if you had to learn orthography, why would you buy a book titled "Sounds of Japanese"?