Review—Inaka: Portraits of Life in Rural Japan

book cover

In eighteen chapters, this anthology takes an epic journey the length of Japan, from subtropical Okinawa, through the Japanese heartland, all the way to the wilds of Hokkaido.

Review by Renae Lucas-Hall “It’s easy to fall under the spell of rural Japan” is the first sentence in the introduction to this anthology that sets the reader upon a path to enchantment. Each essay acts as a beguiling incantation that will amplify one’s desire to explore the Japanese countryside. If you’re an avid reader More…

Review—The Era of Great Disasters

book

Recent Release! A fascinating look at three of Japan’s most devastating earthquakes.

The Era of Great Disasters: Japan and Its Three Major Earth Quakes, by Iokibe Makoto (Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies, July 2020) Review by Amy Chavez Included in the University of Michigan Press ‘Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies,’ The Era of Great Disasters is a scholarly but highly readable text that investigates Japan’s More…

Review—In Praise of Shadows (Vintage, 2019)

A Mind-Changing Interpretation of Japanese Aesthetics In Praise of Shadows, by Junichirō Tanizaki (translated by T. J. Harper & E. Seidensticker) Vintage Classics, Nov. 2019. Reviewed by Renae Lucas-Hall A new fully-illustrated release of In Praise of Shadows by Junichirō Tanizaki, translated by Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker, has just been published by More…

Review—Makoto Ōoka’s Beneath the Sleepless Tossing of the Planets

Twentieth Century Surrealism Tempered by Literary Discipline Beneath the Sleepless Tossing of the Planets: Selected Poems by Makoto Ōoka translated by Janine Beichman (Kurodahan Press, 2019) Review by Christopher Blasdel The title of this magnificently translated volume of poetry by the recently deceased Japanese poet Makoto Ōoka immediately conjures a sense of the surreal. Even More…

Review—The Memory Police: One Book You’ll Never Forget

The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa (translated by Stephen Snyder) (Pantheon, Random House August 13, 2019) Reviewed by Renae Lucas-Hall This internationally-acclaimed writer transports you to a disturbing dystopian island where everyone and everything gradually disappears, leaving its vulnerable inhabitants at the mercy of a terrifying totalitarian regime. Imagine, if you will, waking up knowing More…

Killing Commendatore — A Self-Portrait of Murakami’s Literary Landscape

Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami (Translated by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen) (Harvill Secker, Penguin U.K., 2018) Reviewed by Renae Lucas-Hall A trend has developed over the past few years whenever there’s a discussion on Haruki Murakami or a review of his latest book. Murakami is a prolific writer, novelist, and translator who has written More…

Review—From the Fatherland, With Love

If you love Ryu Murakami, you won’t be disappointed with this novel, a fictional account of North Korea invading Japan.

From the Fatherland, With Love by Ryū Murakami (Transl. Ralph McCarthy, Charles De Wolf, Ginny Tapley Takemori) (Pushkin Press, 2013) Reviewed by Andrew Douglas Sokulski From the Fatherland, With Love is an exhilarating, poetic, tearful, shocking, thrilling, and intensely realistic novel that focuses on what could occur if a force from North Korea were to More…

Review—Cake Tree in the Ruins

NEW RELEASE! Moving stories that tell of the absurd violence of war, and tenderly depict the animals and children caught in its vortex.

The Cake Tree in the Ruins, by Akiyuki Nosaka (Transl. Ginny Tapley Takemori) Pushkin Press (Nov. 13, 2018) Reviewed by Suzanne Kamata As an American reader, conditioned to expect happily-ever-after endings, or at least those in which justice is served, I found this to be an odd and disturbing book. From the titles of stories More…