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The head of an official inquiry into the deadly collapse of a Bangladesh factory complex said the building’s owner was the “main culprit” for the disaster because he violated construction codes. The cave-in of the eight-story Rana Plaza outside the capital last month killed ...
Throughout most of Japan, June is the rainy season. While all that rainfall is great for rice paddies so that we can have delicious new harvest rice in the fall, it makes it a rather dull month for seasonal produce: The summer’s bounty of ...
“I was stopped by two men in a government-registered vehicle, blindfolded and dragged off the street. They took me away to a house in a place I did not know. I was forced into a room with blood all over the walls and floor, ...
Claude Regy says the team at the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC) threw him the “best birthday party ever” when he arrived in Japan just days after the actual May 1 occasion. The 90-year-old French director is hoping for an even better birthday gift, ...
As far as debuts go, Shohei Otani's delivered. The celebrated rookie pitched fairly well on Thursday night, and though he finished outside the decision, he left the mound with the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters well within striking distance of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows.
EXILEE AND TEMPS MORTS: Selected Works, by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Edited by Constance M. Lewallen. University of California Press, 2009, 277 pp., $24.95 (paperback) Pablo Picasso was a poet and a good one, but it would be a tragedy if his literary work ...
A DRIFTING LIFE by Yoshihiro Tatsumi; edited, designed, and lettered by Adrian Tomine; translated by Taro Nettleton. Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly, 2009, 855 pp., $29.95 (paper) When an American journalist, remarking on Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s growing popularity in the United States, suggested that the manga ...
LOVE HOTEL CITY, edited by Andrew Stevens. London: Future Fiction, 2008, 127 pp., $14.95 (paper) Of the 12 “visions of Japan” gathered in Future Fiction’s “Love Hotel City,” Steve Finbow’s “Shadowings” is among the most interesting. In it he explores the relationship between a ...
THE EDOGAWA RAMPO READER by Edogawa Rampo, edited and translated by Seth Jacobowitz, preface by Tatsumi Takayuki. Fukuoka: Kurodahan Press, 2008, 241 pp., $16 (paper) As a boy, Edogawa Rampo was, as he relates in one of the essays included in this collection, a ...
MODANIZUMU: Modernist Fiction From Japan, 1913-1938, compiled and edited by William J. Tyler. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008, 605 pp., $47 (cloth). When reading William J. Tyler’s anthology, “Modanizumu: Modernist Fiction from Japan, 1913-1938,” one realizes that “modanizumu” (modernism) is a very broad ...
MODANIZUMU: Modernist Fiction From Japan, 1913-1938, compiled and edited by William J. Tyler. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008, 605 pp., $47 (cloth). When reading William J. Tyler’s anthology, “Modanizumu: Modernist Fiction from Japan, 1913-1938,” one realizes that “modanizumu” (modernism) is a very broad ...
BOTANDORO: Stories, Fables, Parables, and Allegories — a Miscellany, by Donald Richie, edited and with an introduction by Leza Lowitz. Printed Matter Press, 2008, 272 pp., $20 (paper) The last page of Donald Richie’s most recent offering, “Botandoro,” reveals that he has, in his ...
BOTANDORO: Stories, Fables, Parables, and Allegories — a Miscellany, by Donald Richie, edited and with an introduction by Leza Lowitz. Printed Matter Press, 2008, 272 pp., $20 (paper) The last page of Donald Richie’s most recent offering, “Botandoro,” reveals that he has, in his ...
FOR THE FIGHTING SPIRIT OF THE WALNUT by Takashi Hiraide, translated by Sawako Nakayasu (New Directions) In “For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut,” Takashi Hiraide shows us that poetry need not be chopped-prose maunderings on the changing of the seasons, the sun setting ...
RED COLORED ELEGY by Seiichi Hayashi, translated by Taro Nettleton. Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly, 235 pp., $24.95 (cloth) Here’s a rough synopsis of the plot of Seiichi Hayashi’s “Red Colored Elegy”: A young couple, committed to their art, struggle to keep themselves, their art, ...
FOR THE FIGHTING SPIRIT OF THE WALNUT by Takashi Hiraide, translated by Sawako Nakayasu. New York: New Directions, 2008, unpaginated, $17.95 (paper) When a fan of the neglected American genius Guy Davenport wrote to tell him that she admired his ability to express himself, ...
BLACK GLASSES LIKE CLARK KENT: A GI’s Secret From Postwar Japan, by Terese Svoboda. Saint Paul, Minnesota: Graywolf Press, 2008, 225 pp., $14 (paper) In most of the developed world, for most of the post-World War II era, the notion that torture might be ...