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.

Into the world of the familial memoir steps this slim, but fascinating volume titled, "Remembering Tanizaki Junichiro and Matsuko: Diary Entries, Interview Notes, and Letters, 1954-1989."

"Rethinking Japanese Feminisms" is a collection of short essays by 15 academics on diverse aspects of gender issues in Japan. Topics range from the androgynous eroticism in the art works of Taisho Era (1912-1926) illustrator Kasho Takabatake to reactions to the enactment of the ...

The news that "Monkey" has been remade by Australia's ABC in a co-production with TV New Zealand and Netflix is likely to cause those in the know to fan two fingers in front of their mouth, Monkey-style, to summon a flying cloud.

In March 1937, an official in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Azusa Hiraoka, traveled to Europe on government business and acquired some guides to Italian museums. Prudishly fearing, however, that his 12-year-old son might be exposed to the depictions of female nudes contained within, ...

"Secret Rendezvous" opens with an ambulance in the dead of night: The narrator's wife is taken to an underground hospital from which she vanishes. The connections to Franz Kafka's "The Trial" in the absurdist, comical and sinister world of Kobo Abe are unmissable, but ...