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David Burleigh
For David Burleigh's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Sep 28, 2013
Biography of Masaoka Shiki excels in the expanded details
Haiku, the short Japanese poem now proliferating overseas, scarcely needs an introduction anymore. Its three great pillars, widely read even in translation, are the poets Matsuo Basho (1641-1694), its first creator, then Yosa Buson (1716-1784) and Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828), who renewed it.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Sep 7, 2013
Searching to define difficult, elusive concept
The title of this book is exquisite, while the cover illustration is of something else, different yet just as exquisite. This is appropriate because the aesthetic concept that the book considers is not just beautiful, but elusive and difficult to define.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Aug 31, 2013
Remarkable story of the independence, dedication of Isamu Noguchi's mother
Like many people, I like soft light and use lampshades of Japanese paper from the successful Akari series designed by the American sculptor Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988), certainly the artist's greatest influence on individual lives, especially at home. Some of his own upbringing is described in this book, which tells the story of his mother.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jul 13, 2013
Illuminating the interplay between Japanese poetry and pictures
This cleverly titled book combines two subjects, for the "art" that it describes is not just the art of haiku composition but that of the pictures that frequently accompany the poems, often by the same person. "If haiku is a worldwide phenomenon, haiga (haiku painting) is almost unknown," says the author.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Apr 7, 2013
A portrait of the poet as a child
This remarkable book is an autobiography of childhood, written by the poet Mutsuo Takahashi (born 1937) when he was 32, and issued in 1970, although its separate chapters had appeared as a series of essays in a magazine the year before.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 3, 2013
Sensual poetry on love, marriage
ONNA NI, by Shuntaro Tanikawa, with etchings by Yoko Sano, translated by William I. Elliott and Kazuo Kawamura. Shueisha, 2012, 80 pp., ¥1,470 (paperback)
CULTURE / Books
Jan 13, 2013
Exploring the past to makes sense of Meiji modernity
PILGRIMAGES TO THE ANCIENT TEMPLES IN NARA, by Tetsuro Watsuji, translated by Hiroshi Nara. Merwin Asia, 2012, 252 pp., $35.00 (paperback) In the Japanese original, "Koji Junrei" (1919), this book is a classic, much imitated and still quite widely read, although it has also been sometimes controversial. Tetsuro Watsuji (1889-1960), renowned as a thinker, was 29 when he made the journey it records, and had already published books on Western philosophy, notably on Friedrich Nietzsche. With this volume he turned in a different direction.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / THE YEAR IN BOOKS
Dec 23, 2012
Seasonality, internal awareness
"Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons: Nature, Literature and the Arts" (Columbia University Press) by Haruo Shirane. The whole seasonal consciousness of Japan, so meticulously considered and observed, is an intangible cultural tradition, though it has a certain physical embodiment in saijiki, the almanacs used by haiku poets, which explain all the subtleties of seasonal reference, with examples of their use in poems. Like Kubla Khan's palace, it is a miracle of rare device, a fabrication of sublime refinement whose origins and meaning professor Shirane admirably expounds in this illuminating scholarly account.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Oct 28, 2012
Is poetry lost or found in translation?
BRIGHT MOON, WHITE CLOUDS: Selected Poems of Li Po, edited and translated by J.P. Seaton. Shambhala, 2012, 224 pp., $14.95 (paperback) KANEKO TOHTA: Selected Haiku 1937-1960, translated by The Kon Nichi Translation Group. Red Moon Press, 2012, 256 pp., $12.00 (paperback) Two books of poetry, both pocket-size, and put out by small publishers in the United States, one in Boston, the other in Virginia (the former specializing in spiritually uplifting works, the latter in haiku); both are volumes of translation, from Chinese and Japanese respectively, and come with detailed notes about the poets and their work.
CULTURE / Books
Oct 14, 2012
Developing a natural aesthetic
JAPAN AND THE CULTURE OF THE FOUR SEASONS: Nature, Literature and the Arts, by Haruo Shirane. Columbia University Press, 2012. 311 pp., $29.50 (hardcover) The starting point for this illuminating study lay in the author's curiosity about the formation of the saijiki, or seasonal almanacs, that have been in use in Japan since the early 19th century, and are still employed by haiku and other poets for reference. What is unique about them is that the seasonal references are all meticulously codified, with explanations. Any haiku poet writing today will possess a copy, if not several different ones.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jun 24, 2012
A woman's world
PASSIONATE FRIENDSHIP: The Aesthetics of Girls' Culture in Japan, by Deborah Shamoon. Univ. of Hawai'i Press, 2012, 181 pp., $27.00 (paperback) The subject of this book is one that is baffling to outsiders, but visible on the streets of Tokyo, especially the more fashionable parts, and in fiction, dress and culture for young women. It began in the 19th century, as Deborah Shamoon very carefully explains.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
May 6, 2012
Japan's modern haiku master
IKIMONOFUEI: Poetic Composition on Living Things, by Kaneko Tohta. Red Moon Press, 2011, 91 pp., $12.00 (paperback) THE FUTURE OF HAIKU: An Interview with Kaneko Tohta. Red Moon Press 2011, 137 pp., $12.00 (paperback) These two handy pocket-size volumes are the first of four to be issued by the Red Moon Press, all dealing with the haiku poet Kaneko Tohta (b. 1919), and intended to introduce his work to a wider readership abroad. The other two, scheduled for later this year, will be translations of his haiku. This is not the first time Kaneko's work has been translated, but it is by far the most substantial introduction to it.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Apr 1, 2012
Japan's 'spiritual recrudescence'
SOLDIER OF GOD: MacArthur's Attempt to Christianize Japan, by Ray A. Moore. Merwin Asia, 2011, 167 pp., $35.00 (paperback) India, the jewel in the crown of the British Empire, the largest the world has ever known, was won mainly by attrition, though some of the later additions to it, like Burma, were taken by force. Almost no attempt was made to interfere with native religion. The enduring image of the 19th-century "scramble for Africa", however, was of rapacious Europeans with a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other.
CULTURE / Books
Feb 5, 2012
Bold move into Tamura's cold verse
TAMURA RYUICHI: On the Life and Work of a 20th Century Master, edited by Takako Lento & Wayne Miller. Pleiades Press, 2011, 175 pages, $12.99 (paper) The expression of the poet Ryuichi Tamura, as he looks out at the reader from the cover of this book, reminded me just a little of photographs of the Irish poet W.B. Yeats, though without the pince-nez and the cravat. There is a similar haughtiness and distance to Tamura, as he casts a cold eye upon the world. It is reflected in his poetry and undoubtedly derives from his experience.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Dec 25, 2011
Close-up on a people's disaster
"Everything Is Broken: Life Inside Burma" is the second book by Emma Larkin, a Burmese-speaking American journalist who gathers her touching stories traveling incognito in Burma (aka Myanmar).
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 13, 2011
Erotica to celebrate and educate
The word shunga ("spring picture"), used to identify woodblock prints that portray erotic subjects, is not simply a euphemism for the awakening of natural urges. Rather, as both these books inform us, it is an abbreviation of a longer Chinese name, shunkyu higa ("secret pictures from the Spring Palace"), which refers to ancient Chinese beliefs about the balancing of yin and yang in imperial erotic practice.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Oct 30, 2011
Sheer delight of graceful Kurahara
There is a persistent hum of activity among small-press publications in Japan, much of it concerned with poetry and a good deal of it translation.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Sep 11, 2011
Implacable merger of aesthetic and political
"Trespasses" may be a puzzling term (if you grew up with the Lord's Prayer), but in a foreword to this selection of writings by Masao Miyoshi (1928-2009), Frederic Jameson speaks of the "Victorianist who turns into a Japanologist" and of the "implacable unification of the aesthetic and the political" in his work, which gives some idea of the range of these remarkable essays. Miyoshi grew up in Tokyo during Japan's imperial ambition and defeat, then became a professor of English Literature in California, where he experienced the Vietnam War protests, later turning to re-examine the literature of his own country.
CULTURE / Books
Apr 3, 2011
Burma, the broken country
EVERYTHING IS BROKEN: The Untold Story of Disaster Under Burma's Military Regime, by Emma Larkin. Granta, 2010, 265 pp., £12.99 (paper) Tropical storms are given names by meteorological offices around the world. In English we generally prefer to be anthropomorphic, using male and female names alternately, but elsewhere it may be different: Nargis, the cyclone that swept through Burma (Myanmar) in 2008 was named in India and means narcissus.
CULTURE / Books
Feb 13, 2011
Case of the mysterious mister
WHO IS MR SATOSHI?, by Jonathan Lee. William Heinemann, 2010, 295 pp., £12.99 (hardcover) Rob Fossick, a 41-year-old photographer, is drinking a glass of butterscotch schnapps when he witnesses the death of his mother in a retirement home, and is then left to sort out her effects.

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A statue of "Dragon Ball" character Goku stands outside the offices of Bandai Namco in Tokyo. The figure is now as recognizable as such characters as Mickey Mouse and Spider-Man.
Akira Toriyama's gift to the world