A Tale of Three Memoirs: A Tokyo Romance, by Ian Buruma, Living Carelessly in Tokyo and Elsewhere by John Nathan and Sarasvati’s Gift: The Autobiography of Mayumi Oda–Artist, Activist, and Modern Buddhist Revolutionary, by Mayumi Oda By Leanne Ogasawara It was Japan before the Bubble. And yet, despite the lack of economic miracles, 1960s Tokyo More…
Tag: reviews
Review—Buddhism and Modernity: Sources from Nineteenth-Century Japan
Review—First Person Singular, by Haruki Murakami
Review—Lonely Planet Best Day Hikes Japan
Review by Wes Lang My time in Japan coincides directly with the history of Lonely Planet’s Hiking in Japan guidebook. I arrived on these shores in March of 2001, just one month after the release of the first edition of the guide. I soon picked up a copy of the teal and black cover and More…
Review—Earthlings: A Novel
Grove Press (October 8, 2020) Review by Tina deBellegarde Earthlings by Sayaka Murata (transl. Ginny Tapley Takemori) is a unique literary experience, one that is impossible to pigeonhole into any specific genre. It opens as a coming-of-age story, evolves into psychological suspense, and settles into dark fantasy and horror. As she did in Convenience Store More…
Review—Pearl City: Stories from Japan and Elsewhere
Our Reviewers Pick their Top Books for 2020
We read lots of books here at Books on Asia, so we asked our reviewers to give you their picks for the best books they’ve read this year! For more information on a particular book, click on the book cover. Chad Kohalyk‘s Top Picks Biography The Great Successor: The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade More…
Review—Japan in Asia: Post-Cold-War Diplomacy
Review—Inaka: Portraits of Life in Rural Japan
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
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…