Iain Maloney - The Japan Times

CULTURE / Books

Apr 8, 2017

'By More Than Providence: Grand Strategy and American Power in the Asia Pacific since 1783': Timely lessons from history

"By More Than Providence" is an overview of U.S. strategy in the Asia-Pacific region since 1783. Michael J. Green first examines the rise of the U.S. in this arena from independence to Theodore Roosevelt. He then turns his attention to Japan in the first half of the 20th century, the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and China from 1989 to the present day. The final chapter is an examination of President Barack Obama's pivot to Asia.

CULTURE / Books

Mar 25, 2017

'Teika: The Life and Works of a Medieval Japanese Poet': Unpacking ancient poetry wars

Teika lived from 1162 to 1241, and was a highly influential Japanese poet. Paul S. Atkins' new study of his work aims to reintroduce him to a non-native audience and to analyze why his verse had such a large impact on the trajectory of Japanese poetics.

CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES

Mar 18, 2017

'Kappa': Akutagawa's masterpiece blunted by time but still fascinating

Ryunosuke Akutagawa is probably best known outside Japan for "Rashomon" but "Kappa" is considered to be his masterpiece by fans and scholars. Narrated by a "mental patient" and introduced as a tale overheard directly by the author, "Kappa" is a fantastical satire in the "Gulliver's Travels" mold.

CULTURE / Books

Mar 18, 2017

'Blue Light Yokohama': Crime fiction that sinks under the weight of its cliches

"Blue Light Yokohama" is optimistically billed as the first in a new crime series. While the plot twists are of the caliber required for successful crime fiction, this debut is riddled with cliches, errors and inconsistencies. Anyone familiar with Japanese culture or crime fiction will struggle to reach the end in the face of mounting frustration.

CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES

Mar 4, 2017

Sawako Ariyoshi's 'The River Ki' explores characters who swim against life's current

When we read Japanese history it's easy to forget that the revolutionary changes that washed through the country from the 19th century into the 20th all took place within a single human life span.

CULTURE / Books

Mar 4, 2017

'Pachinko': Min Jin Lee writes the struggle of an ethnic Korean family in Japan

Min Jin Lee's second novel, "Pachinko," charts the fortunes and misfortunes of four generations of a Korean family.

CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES

Feb 25, 2017

'A Dark Night's Passing': Naoya Shiga sounds the depths of rootlessness

It takes a brave writer to make their main character as unlikeable as Kensaku Tokito. It is even more startling because Naoya Shiga was consciously writing within the 'I' novel tradition, where the author deliberately draws on their life story for source material.

CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES

Feb 11, 2017

'Into a Black Sun: Vietnam 1964-65': Takeshi Kaiko turns his reporting experience into fiction

Journalist Takeshi Kaiko covered the Vietnam War for the Asahi Shimbun, later fictionalizing his experiences in this novel about a Japanese journalist in Saigon and the Vietnamese jungle.

CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES

Feb 4, 2017

'The Sound of Waves' stands alone in the sea of Yukio Mishima's works

"The Sound of Waves" is a typical boy-meets-girl story. Shinji is a poor fisherman on Uta-jima, a small island in Ise Bay. Hatsue left the island as a young girl to train to be a pearl diver. When she returns, now a young woman, Shinji falls for her but finds he has a rival in the rich and powerful Yasuo.

CULTURE / Books

Feb 4, 2017

'International Relations and the Origins of the Pacific War' draws troubling analogies across history

Ko Unoki's overview of Japanese-U.S. relations from 1853 to 1941 is written for a general reader and as such is easy to read. However, the bulk of the book is disappointing.

CULTURE / Books

Jan 28, 2017

'Turning Pages': How magazines reflected the 'new woman' of the 1920s

The Taisho Era (1912-26) was a period of change and opportunity. It saw the birth of the so-called atarashii onna ("new woman") — the socially liberated, modern young woman, previously unseen in Japan. As this inquisitive individual moved into the job market, a number of magazines appeared that were published for and by her.

CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES

Jan 14, 2017

'The Hunting Gun': the story of a tragic love triangle set in postwar Japan

Yasushi Inoue's debut novel, "The Hunting Gun," was published in 1949, a year before he won the Akutagawa Prize for his second novel, "The Bullfight." The story — which adopts a similar structure to Ryunosuke Akutagawa's "Rashomon" — consists of three letters sent to Josuke, a married man at the center of a tragic love triangle. These letters are framed by an introduction and epilogue in which Inoue explains how the texts fell into his possession. The first letter is from Shoko, the daughter of the woman Josuke has been having an affair with, Saiko. The second is from Midori, Josuke's wife. The third is from Saiko herself.

CULTURE / Books

Dec 31, 2016

'Tokyo Poetry Journal': an experimental space for Japan's English-language poets

The third issue of the "Tokyo Poetry Journal" takes music as its central theme and, rather in the manner of the Nobel Committee for Literature, has chosen to blur the lines between poetry and songwriting. The first half of the new volume features song lyrics accompanied by QR codes that, once scanned, take the reader to songs on SoundCloud. Ranging from Bob Dylan-esque acoustic numbers to bilingual hip hop tracks, the editors are to be commended for this multiplatform approach to publishing. However, reading the lyrics on paper without the musical framework renders them somewhat denuded.

CULTURE / Books

Oct 29, 2016

'Countdown to Pearl Harbor': A different view of Japan's entry into World War II

In "Countdown to Pearl Harbor," Pulitzer Prize-winning author Steve Twomey vividly retells and reappraises the events leading to the Pearl Harbor attack on Dec. 7, 1941.

CULTURE / Books

Oct 15, 2016

'Japan Rising': The round-the-world trip that changed Nippon forever

The Iwakura Embassy, led by Foreign Minister Iwakura Tomomi, departed Japan in 1871 on a two-year fact-finding mission around the globe to collect information and expertise. Its aim: turn feudal Japan into a modern industrial nation. The embassy's 108 members sailed east, crossed America, traveled across Britain, Europe, Russia and then returned home again via the Suez Canal. Historian Kume Kunitake, Iwakura's secretary, kept a record of events and also his impressions of the people and ideas they encountered.

CULTURE / Books

Sep 24, 2016

The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches: Basho's enduring collection of poetry and travel writing

With only a few words, a Haiku master can paint a picture so vivid it's as if the reader is standing beside them — great travel writers have similar abilities. Matsuo Basho was both.

CULTURE / Books

Sep 24, 2016

The epic Japanese fantasy 'Tale of Shikanoko' comes to a bloody close

The final installment of Lian Hearn's "The Tale of Shikanoko" series delivers on the promise of the previous three books, tying up loose ends and dispensing justice on the deserving. Tom Stoppard famously defined tragedy as "the bad end unhappily, the good unluckily," and it would perhaps be more fitting to call this series "The Tragedy of Shikanoko." After numerous battles, suicides and executions, Hearn's mythical version Japan is littered with corpses.

CULTURE / Books

Sep 3, 2016

'The Pure Land': The story of Thomas Blake Glover, the 'Scottish Samurai'

Thomas Blake Glover, the "Scottish Samurai," arrived in Japan in 1859 and over the next 52 years made and lost more than one fortune. He helped set up Mitsubishi and Kirin, developed shipbuilding and coal-mining in Japan and arranged for the first steam train to be shipped to the country. He also supplied weapons to the Satsuma and Choshu clans and smuggled the famous Choshu 5 out of Japan so they could study in Britain in preparation for the uprising that would lead to the 1868 Meiji Restoration.

CULTURE / Books

Sep 3, 2016

'Lord of the Darkwood': The third book in Lian Hearn's epic fantasy series

In tetralogies, the third book is perhaps the most difficult. A master storyteller, like a chess player, must move their ensemble cast toward an endgame, but the strategy for getting them there should remain obscure to the reader.

CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES

Aug 13, 2016

Forbidden Colours

Written in 1951 and translated into English in 1968, the title of "Forbidden Colours" represents taboo desires and beliefs, most notably homosexuality and misogyny. Shunsuke is an aging writer whose vile views on women are given the opportunity for physical manifestation in Yuichi, a gorgeous young gay man who is engaged to Yasuko. Shunsuke immediately sees that this will be a marriage of convenience and financial security for Yuichi, who casually admits to a total disinterest in his fiancee as a person or sexual being. Shunsuke takes up Yuichi the way a puppet-master takes up a marionette and uses him to torment Yasuko and, symbolically, all women. Over time he creates a monster that he can no longer control.

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