Economy | ANALYSIS
Households to take hit from tax hike
by Tomoko Otake
The consumption tax increase will hit every household in Japan hard, with many people’s financial future hanging on whether their wages rise enough to offset the hike's impact.
Book Topics
Review Sep 7, 2013
Searching to define difficult, elusive concept
by David Burleigh
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. SNOW IN A ...
Review Sep 7, 2013
Amusing graphic novel about bipolar disorder
by Rachel Cooke
Until she was 30, Ellen Forney, an award-winning Seattle-based artist, took her slightly unusual personality for granted. Her obsession with exercise, her impulsive sexuality, her bouts of ecstasy: she considered these things, however uncomfortable, a major part of who she was. After all, aren’t ...
Review Aug 31, 2013
Fascinating glimpse into world of hacking
by Carole Cadwalladr
It is perhaps a little hard to remember now, but in 2010, there seemed to be a new global superpower. A superpower that acted in unorthodox ways, which was unaccountable and yet of the people, and that was above all nameless, faceless and, as ...
Review Aug 31, 2013
Masterful ode to Liverpool's Shankly
by Frank Cottrell Boyce
‘Red Or Dead” is a masterpiece. David Peace already has a considerable reputation but this massive, painstaking account of the career of Bill Shankly towers above his previous work. It’s usual when praising a sports novel for critics to claim that “it’s not really ...
Review Aug 31, 2013
Remarkable story of the independence, dedication of Isamu Noguchi's mother
by David Burleigh
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 ...
Review Aug 24, 2013
Shocking exposé of Britain's police spies
by Carole Cadwalladr
Overexcitable publishers like to bandy around words such as “explosive” and “shocking” when trying to flog their books, even though generally you could substitute them for ones such as “mildly interesting.” UNDERCOVER: The True Story of Britain’s Secret Police, by Paul Lewis and Rob ...
Review Aug 24, 2013
China's contribution to Japan's defeat
by Jeff Kingston
An estimated 14 million to 20 million Chinese died during this epic struggle of resistance against Japanese aggression in a war that produced a staggering 80 million to 100 million refugees. Despite the prolonged onslaught of Japan’s modern military machine for eight long years, ...
Review Aug 24, 2013
Collection of American Zen koans for quiet contemplation
by Kris Kosaka
American Zen Koan No. 96: A student once asked Zen teacher Steve Allen, “If you were given a wish-fulfilling jewel, what would you wish for?” ONE BIRD, ONE STONE: 108 Contemporary Zen Stories, by Sean Murphy. Hampton Roads Publishing, 2013, 288 pp., $17.95 (paperback) ...
Review Aug 24, 2013
Deft campus romance between aloof professor and one-time mentor
by Hephzibah Anderson
Professor Elizabeth Stone, the heroine of Grace McCleen’s incandescent second novel, is a classic campus contradiction: both quite brilliant and utterly clueless. Despite having a lauded book on Milton and a stack of learned articles to her name, her fellow human beings — indeed, ...
Review Aug 17, 2013
American fiction's drunken masters
by Peter Conrad
Rivers run through Olivia Laing’s writing — sometimes the real thing, either narrow and innocuous like a backwoods creek or mile-wide like the Mississippi; occasionally streams of memory that flow backwards, and sometimes gushers of tears; always a steady current of liquidly eloquent words. ...
Review Aug 17, 2013
Revisiting the works of director Takashi Miike
by Mark Schilling
Takashi Miike is one of the few Japanese filmmakers now working, Takeshi Kitano and Hayao Miyazaki being two others, who enjoy a measure of recognition outside Japan’s insular film world. Though hardly a household name in Kansas, Miike has long been a favorite with ...
Review Aug 17, 2013
Burying the truth to survive in postwar, modern Japan
by David Cozy
It is hardly necessary to note that comics and manga are capable of conveying just about anything. Philosophy? See Ryan Dunlavey and Fred Van Lente’s Action Philosophers series. Travel? Try Guy Delisle’s accounts of his sojourns in tourist hot spots such as Pyongyang and ...