In his Olympic year, Oscar Pistorius steadily became an avid firearms collector, joining a gun-collecting club and purchasing a collection of firearms that included a .500 Magnum pistol and a civilian version of a military assault rifle.
When it comes to gender equality, Japan has never failed to disappoint.
Here's an open secret: Japanese men have a bad international reputation on the romance front.
SELLING WOMEN: Prostitution, Markets and the Household in Early Modern Japan, by Amy Stanley. University of California Press, 2012, 282 pp., $49.95 (hardcover) In the vast cultural landscape, Japan fascinates the mainstream with manga and anime, the martial arts, Zen and kimono. Of course, ...
Manchester United's Shinji Kagawa is back with a bang, becoming the first Asian player to score a hat trick in the English Premier League.
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) Shuntaro Tanikawa, born in 1931, is one of the most acclaimed poets in Japan — well known not only from the many volumes of poetry he ...
SELLING WOMEN: Prostitution, Markets and the Household in Early Modern Japan, by Amy Stanley. University of California Press, 2012, 282 ...
PLAY IT AGAIN, by Alan Rusbridger. Jonathan Cape, 2013, 416 pp., £18.99 (hardcover) In middle age, some men take up ...
DETROIT: An American Autopsy, by Charlie LeDuff. Penguin Press, 2013, 286 pp., $27.95 (hardcover) Charlie LeDuff’s “Detroit: An American Autopsy” is a hard-eyed look at some of the recent villains and victims of a city battered for half a century by political corruption, racial strife ...
101 MODERN JAPANESE POEMS, compiled by Makoto Ooka, translated by Paul McCarthy, edited by Janine Beichman. Thames River Press, 2012, 144 pp., $45.00 (hardcover) When a new anthology of American poetry appears — The Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry edited by Rita Dove ...
ORIGINS OF LOVE, by Kishwar Desai. Simon & Schuster, 2013, 496 pp., £7.99 (paperback) Kishwar Desai calls her novels social thrillers; books set in the beating heart of modern-day India that lay bare its caldron of inequalities, injustices and cultural traditions. The first, 2010′s ...
SALVATION OF A SAINT, by Keigo Higashino. Little Brown, 2013, 376 pp., £12.99 (hardcover) When the pregnant lover of a murder victim receives the sympathetic ministrations from the deceased’s wife at the funeral service, you know you are in no ordinary emotional terrain. This ...
THE REAL JANE AUSTEN: A Life in Small Things, by Paula Byrne. Harper, 2013, 400 pp., $29.99 (hardcover) Jane Austen may be too likable or lovable for her own good. “Pride and Prejudice,” which celebrates its 200th anniversary this year, was recently elected the U.K.’s ...
Every time David Karashima took a Japanese author to New York or London to do a reading, the local audiences would ask two questions: “Who’s the next Haruki Murakami?” and “Why isn’t there an international literary festival in Tokyo?” “Finally I thought, OK, let’s ...
This superbly told tale about the waxing and waning fortunes of Kaminoseki town over the past four centuries presents some interesting local counterpoints to the more familiar national narrative.
THE NECESSARY DEATH OF LEWIS WINTER, by Malcolm Mackay. Mantle, 2013, 256 pp., ￡14.99 (hardcover) ‘It’s easy to kill a man,” you’re told by your omniscient narrator (more on the second person later). “It’s hard to kill a man well. People who do it ...
UNEXPECTED LESSONS IN LOVE, by Bernardine Bishop. John Murray, 2013, 378 pp., ￡16.99 (hardcover) This is a vibrant and even welcoming novel, though it’s substantially concerned with last things. Only the title lets it down, being a sort of kaftan, something designed to fit ...
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 ...
"The evolution of political thought in this relatively isolated island nation during the period in question is unique to the point of being somewhat freakish,” writes political thought scholar Hiroshi Watanabe of the University of Tokyo.
BONES OF CONTENTION: Animals and Religion in Contemporary Japan, by Barbara R. Ambros. University of Hawaii Press, 2012, 255 pp., $29 (paperback) Bumping into a Japanese acquaintance on the street recently, I inquired where he was going on his day off dressed in a ...
