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The consumption tax increase next April will hit every household in Japan hard, with many people's financial future hanging on whether their wages rise enough to offset the impact of the hike, experts say.
Every parent is all too familiar with The Tantrum. The screaming, the flailing arms, the angry head butting — and the timing (normally in the most inconvenient public place possible).
International events undermine Japan's democracy. Shame on the International Olympic Committee for being a party to it.
Tucked away behind the main museums in Ueno, the Tokyo University Art Museum may not be on most people’s radar, but it is definitely one of the city’s top museums in terms of curatorial quality. Whenever I go there, I am always delighted by ...
Francisco Liriano showed up at PNC Park on Tuesday afternoon in a suit with his suitcase packed for a trip St. Louis. The message reverberated through the Pittsburgh Pirates clubhouse. After 21 years away from the playoffs, it was time for the best story ...
For Paul Mccarthy's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
For most readers, Japanese literature may suggest romantic/erotic works by Nagai Kafu, elegantly classical and humorously or sinisterly “kinky” fiction by Tanizaki, or coolly stylish contemporary works by Haruki Murakami. For such readers, this volume will come as a shock — both refreshing and ...
That the Western world has lost interest in Japan, and particularly in Japanese literature, and is turning its attention more and more to the colossus across the sea (China, not America) is a constant plaint on the part of Japan specialists and translators. JASMINE, ...
The English reader has in this volume a complete translation of works of fiction, interspersed with thinly disguised autobiography and essay-like passages, composed by a young Japanese man who was to go on to become one of the finest Japanese writers of the 20th ...
This is a whale of a book — both unusually massive and extremely informative and stimulating. The title means “mask” in Latin and is probably an allusion to Yukio Mishima’s first full-length novel, “Confessions of a Mask,” published in Japan in 1949 and translated ...
INDIAN SUMMER, by Mieko Kanai, translated by Tomoko Aoyama and Barbara Hartley. Cornell East Asia Series, 2012, 149 pp., $24 (paperback) Mieko Kanai is a prolific and provocative contemporary author whose poetry and short stories have been appearing in English since the 1970s and ...
WE, THE CHILDREN OF CATS, by Tomoyuki Hoshino, edited and translated by Brian Bergstrom with an additional translation by Lucy Fraser. PM Press, 2012, 266 pages, $20 (paperback) In a moving preface to the English translation, author Tomoyuki Hoshino speaks of his love for ...
It may seem like cheating, but my first best book of 2012 is “The Best American Essays of 2012″ (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), part of the Best American Series. I read it each year and am never disappointed. This year’s selection was made by David ...
FLOATING CLOUDS, by Fumiko Hayashi, translated by Lane Dunlop. Columbia University Press, 2012, 303 pp., $25 (paperback) This novel is one of the most famous of female author Fumiko Hayashi’s works. The present translation was done by Lane Dunlop, well-known for his earlier translations ...
NOWAKI, by Natsume Soseki, translated and with an afterword by William N. Ridgeway. Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 2011, 120 pp., $15 (paperback) As the translator notes in his afterword, and Donald Keene and Angela Yiu suggest in quotations used as ...
TRAVELS IN THE EAST by Donald Richie, with a foreword by Stephen Mansfield. Berkeley, California: Stone Bridge Press, 2007, 180 pp., $14.95 (paper) Donald Richie continues to write learnedly, wittily and insightfully about Japan, of whose culture he is one of the world’s greatest ...
Companions of the Holiday by Donald Richie, with an introduction by Timothy Harris and an afterword by the author. Tokyo/New York: Printed Matter Press, 181 pp., $15 (paper) Donald Richie is known to readers of The Japan Times for his regular reviews of books ...
AMERICA’S JAPAN: The First Year 1945-1946, by Grant K. Goodman, translated by Barry D. Steben. New York: Fordham University Press, 2005, 155 pp., $24.95 (cloth). Grant K. Goodman is a professional historian of Japan, specializing in the relations between the Dutch and the Japanese ...