Introduction
Issue 4: Sense of Place—Tokyo
In this issue we introduce books we feel are essential reading to understand the great capital city of Tokyo. From historical reads and memoirs by English language authors Edward Seidensticker, John Nathan and Ian Buruma, to contemporary Japanese authors Banana Yoshimoto, Hiromi Kawakami, Ryu Murakami and Haruki Murakami, this selection of books brings together old More…
Introduction
Issue 3: Japanese Literature in Translation
In Issue 3 of Books on Asia, we introduce three prominent women translators of Japanese literature: Juliet Winters Carpenter, Ginny Tapley Takemori and Cathy Hirano. All three have translated prize-winning literature from best-selling Japanese authors such as Marie Kondo, Abe Kobo, and Ryu Murakami. These women have been instrumental in bringing Japanese literature to English More…
Introduction
Issue 2: Wuthering Heights in Japan
In this issue of Books on Asia, we delve into Emily Bronte’s classic “Wuthering Heights” and the popularity of the novel in Japan, which is also the subject of Judith Pascoe’s book “On the Bullet Train with Emily Bronte.” A fun, engaging read, Dr. Pascoe deliberates on some of the 20 or so Japanese interpretations More…
Introduction
Issue 1: Writers in Kyoto
Welcome to the first issue of Books on Asia, your guide to finding quality books on Japan and Asia. We launch the site with a look at Writers in Kyoto, a passel of scribes who write about Japan, with an emphasis on the old capital city of Kyoto. The organization was founded in 2015 by John Dougill, who pens the Green Shinto blog and has authored numerous books on Japan and Kyoto. The group includes authors, journalists, editors, poets, historians and experts in the Japanese arts.
Issue 6, Issues, New Writing
The Un-Well, by Richard Donovan
A story in the style of Murakami Haruki and his English translators One late-autumn Sunday morning when I set out into the back garden wielding the hedge trimmers, I found the well was gone. It wasn’t that I’d particularly liked the well when it had been there—it hadn’t provided us with delicious ice-cold water in More…
Articles, Issue 3, Issues
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…
Issues, Reviews, Short Stories
Review—Cake Tree in the Ruins
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…
Articles, Issue 3, Issues
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…
Blog, Issues
Exploring the ‘My Year in Japan’ novel
By Amy Chavez So many books are published each year about someone’s year abroad in Japan that it has fostered its own genre called the “My Year in Japan” novel. Basically, a Westerner spends a year here (Japan), returns to their home country, and writes a book about this “weird country” that proceeds to get More…
Articles, Issue 2, Issues
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…
Articles, Issue 2, Issues
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…
Articles, Eastern religions, Issue 1, Issues
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…
Articles, Issue 1, Issues, Media
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…