By Amy Chavez Alex Kerr once told me, in a previous interview, about his mentor David Kidd: “David was a genius of Asian aesthetics. He would put a group of snuff bottles or something on the table and say, ‘Now Alex, tell me what you see.’ Then we’d talk about it for hours and he’d More…
Category: Articles
Interview with author Jane Lawson
An exclusive Books on Asia interview with Jane Lawson Before we start our interview with Jane, I want to give a little background on my first encounter with her Tokyo Style Guide: Eat, Sleep, Shop. I was traveling in Australia with my husband and we stopped in one of those typical little Aussie country towns More…
Cathy Hirano on Fantasy in Japanese Literature
By Cathy Hirano Nahoko Uehashi is a prolific and well-loved Japanese author of fantasy as well as non-fiction. The list of awards she has won is impressive and includes the 2014 Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award, considered the Nobel Prize of children’s literature. During her writing career, which extends over three decades, she produced the More…
Ginny Tapley Takemori on translating Convenience Store Woman
Convenience Store Woman was originally published as Conbini ningen (Bungeishunju Ltd., Tokyo, 2016) Ginny Tapley Takemori talks with Books on Asia about translating “Convenience Store Woman,” for the English audience Books on Asia: Convenience Store Woman challenges us to reconsider how we should define a “normal person” in modern society and prods us to accept More…
Sean Michael Wilson on Comics & Graphic Novels
The History of Comics and the Graphic Novel What are comic books (manga) and graphic novels? They are the combination of images and text. Essentially that’s it. What, on theoretical grounds, would place an age or sophistication limit on something that combines image and text? Are, for example, road signs – which are normally a More…
Seeking Judith Pascoe
Emily Bronte’s only novel “Wuthering Heights,” set in the moors of northern England in the late 18th century, has long been staple reading in Japan. The story of Catherine Earnshaw and her adopted brother Heathcliff, has spawned over 20 Japanese interpretations since the novel was first translated into Japanese by Yasuo Yamamoto in 1932. Japanese More…
Interview with Alex Kerr: The Importance of Mentors
Known to most as the author of Lost Japan, Dogs and Demons and, more recently, Another Kyoto, Alex Kerr came of age in 1970s Japan, a golden era when he hung around with other notable foreign residents such as antique dealer David Kidd, curator Alexandra Munroe and Zen abbot John Toler. Alex took time More…
Zen or Shinto? John Dougill takes on D.T. Suzuki
By John Dougill Sincerity, loyalty, self-sacrifice. Zen or Shinto values? Mindfulness is a key concept in both Zen and Shinto. Purification and egolessness too. Harae (purification) and kegare (impurity) in Shinto resemble Delusion and Attachment in Buddhism. The goal in both religions is similar, though the means are different. In Shinto people look to restore More…
The Long Read — Eric Johnston on why the world still needs full-time foreign correspondents
By Eric Johnston Along with polar bears and black rhinos, the plight of the full-time foreign news correspondent is a subject of growing concern among arm-chair zoologists who fear the magnificent beast, which once roamed the world at will and congregated at exotic watering holes, is now on the verge of extinction. As the years More…