Is this bizarrely oneiric journey, daikon sprouts and all, really just Kobo Abe's exteriorized exploration of a tortured psyche?

"This Great Stage of Fools" offers a collection of Alan Booth's uncollected journalism and writings between 1979 and his untimely death in 1993. Booth is be considered one of the greatest writers on Japan of his generation.

Can the success of Alex Ferguson's 'kids' and Arsene Wenger's 'Invincibles' be linked to Buddhist philosophy? It's worth a try.

Initially published by Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972) in 22 installments between June 1964 and October 1968, and subsequently revised from his notes after his death, "Dandelions" examines the nature of memory.

On the cusp of the 1960s sexual revolution and the anti-Vietnam War movement, "Seventeen" and "J" are intriguing primers on the seething social turbulence of the age.

Losing face and the public humiliation associated with it is something that we all dread but, in Kobo Abe's 1964 fantasy "The Face of Another," the metaphorical term is made real.

You know you've made it as an author when there are week-long conferences dedicated to your work that attract scholars, critics and translators from all over the world and which you, the author, do not feel the need to attend. In the case of author ...

A young lady from Osaka begins to attend an art class and, while painting a picture of the Kannon (the goddess of mercy), substitutes the head for that of a beguiling student. Soon, she is drawn into a complex web of lesbian passion, pitted ...

St. Patrick's Day is the time of year when many raise a glass in their local "authentic Irish" pub to Ireland's literary greats, from master satirist Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) to poet Seamus Heaney (1939-2013). In Japan too, the dynamic interaction of Ireland and Japan's ...

A Briton of Irish stock finds the "Irishness" he seeks not on the Emerald Isle itself but in the expat pubs of his adopted land.