You’ve probably seen the cover. It’s a bit of a relic from 1965—bright colors, a slightly cheeky title, and a premise that sounds like the setup to a very specific joke. The Jewish-Japanese Sex and Cook Book and How to Raise Wolves is real. It’s not a fever dream or a modern "shitpost" designed to go viral on Reddit. It’s a genuine artifact of 1960s counter-culture humor, written by Jack Douglas, an Emmy-winning comedy writer who worked with legends like Jack Paar and Red Skelton.
People find it in thrift stores and lose their minds. They expect a fusion of sushi and brisket followed by some ancient bedroom secrets. Instead, they get something much weirder.
The book is actually a satirical memoir. It’s not a manual. If you bought this hoping to learn how to prepare gefillte fish tempura while improving your love life, you were probably disappointed fifty years ago, and you’ll be disappointed today. But as a piece of comedic history? It’s fascinating. It captures a specific moment in American publishing when titles were getting louder, weirder, and more experimental just to grab attention on a crowded shelf.
What is Jack Douglas actually doing here?
Jack Douglas was a master of the "shaggy dog" story. He wasn't interested in providing a service. He wanted to make you laugh by subverting the very idea of a self-help book. During the mid-60s, the "How To" genre was exploding. You had books on everything from how to win friends to how to cook for your husband. Douglas looked at that trend and decided to mock it by mashing together the most unrelated topics he could think of.
The "Jewish-Japanese" part refers to his wife, Reiko, who was Japanese. The "Sex and Cook Book" part was a blatant bait-and-switch. In the 60s, "Sex" on a book cover sold copies. It was the era of The Sensuous Woman and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex. Douglas used the title as a Trojan horse. Once you open the pages, you realize you're reading about his chaotic life in Connecticut, dealing with suburban boredom, and, yes, actually raising wolves.
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It’s a memoir about a guy who hates the city but finds the country even more insane.
The Actual Content vs. The Title
Don't go looking for recipes. There are some mentioned, but they are mostly part of the narrative. You won’t find a chapter on the Kamasutra either. The book follows Jack and Reiko as they move to a primitive farmhouse. They deal with eccentric neighbors. They deal with the cold. And they eventually end up with a wolf named Tundra.
- The Humor: It’s dry. Very dry. Douglas writes in a rapid-fire, cynical style that feels surprisingly modern.
- The Narrative: It’s episodic. One minute he’s complaining about the plumbing, the next he’s describing Reiko’s attempt to navigate American social norms.
- The Wolves: This is the most "real" part of the book. Douglas actually had a thing for wild animals. He lived with them. He studied them. The "How to Raise Wolves" part of the title is arguably the most honest part of the whole thing.
Honestly, the book is a bit of a time capsule. It shows how comedy used to rely on a specific type of "husband vs. world" trope. It’s quirky. It’s weird. It’s definitely not what the SEO-optimized titles of today would call "informative."
Why the Jewish-Japanese Sex and Cook Book keeps resurfacing
Why do we care about a 1965 comedy book in 2026? Because the internet loves a glitch in the matrix. When someone posts a photo of this book on social media, it gets thousands of shares because the title feels like it was generated by a malfunctioning AI, even though it predates AI by decades.
It represents a bridge between Old Hollywood comedy and the absurdism we see today. Jack Douglas was an expert at the "non-sequitur." He knew that placing "Jewish," "Japanese," "Sex," "Cook Book," and "Wolves" in the same sentence would create a cognitive itch that people just had to scratch.
The Reiko Factor
Reiko Douglas was a minor celebrity in her own right. She appeared on The Tonight Show dozens of times. She was the perfect foil for Jack’s neurotic, grumpy persona. In the book, she is often the voice of relative sanity, even when they are trying to housebreak a predatory forest animal in their living room.
Their relationship was a big part of the draw. At a time when interracial marriages were still being navigated in the public eye, they presented a united, albeit hilarious, front. They weren't trying to be "activists." They were just a couple living a very strange life and writing about it.
The legacy of the 1960s "Gimmick" book
We often think of the 1960s as the decade of revolution and rock and roll. But it was also the decade of the gimmick. Publishers were realizing that they could sell almost anything if the hook was sharp enough.
Jack Douglas wasn't the only one doing this, but he was one of the best. He wrote other books with titles like My Brother Was an Only Child and Never Trust a Naked Bus Driver. He understood that the book itself was almost secondary to the "vibe" of the cover.
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Is it worth reading now?
If you like Mad Men era humor—think Woody Allen’s early prose or James Thurber—then yes. It’s funny. But you have to read it through the lens of its time. Some of the jokes about gender and ethnicity are dated. They aren't necessarily mean-spirited, but they reflect a 1965 worldview.
If you’re looking for a literal cookbook, stay away. You’ll end up hungry and confused.
The real value is in the writing style. Douglas used short, punchy sentences. He didn't waste words. He knew how to set up a joke and move on before the reader got bored. It’s a masterclass in comedic pacing, even if the subject matter is all over the place.
Finding a copy today
You won't find this at your local Barnes & Noble in the new releases section. It’s been out of print for a long time. However, because it was a bestseller in its day, there are thousands of copies floating around in used bookstores and on eBay.
Collectors love it. It’s a "conversation piece" for your bookshelf. People see the spine and immediately ask, "Wait, what is that?"
- Average Price: You can usually snag a paperback for $10 to $20.
- Hardcovers: A first edition with a clean dust jacket can go for $50 or more, especially if it's signed.
- Condition Matters: Since many of these were "beach reads," finding one that isn't falling apart is the real challenge.
Actionable Takeaways for Rare Book Hunters
If you're interested in finding a copy of The Jewish-Japanese Sex and Cook Book and How to Raise Wolves, don't just search the title. Search for Jack Douglas as an author. He wrote several books in this vein, and often sellers will bundle them together.
- Check AbeBooks or Alibris instead of just Amazon; you’ll get better descriptions of the book's physical state.
- Look for the Pocket Books paperback version if you just want to read the text. It’s small, cheap, and has the iconic kitschy cover art.
- If you find one with a dust jacket, keep it out of direct sunlight. The 60s ink fades notoriously fast.
This book is a reminder that humans have always loved "clickbait," even before we had anything to click on. It’s a weird, wild, and totally unnecessary piece of literature that somehow manages to be more memorable than the serious books that sat next to it on the shelf in 1965. It doesn't need to be a good cookbook to be a great story. It just needs to be itself: a strange relic of a time when you could put "Wolves" and "Sex" on a cover and call it a day.