Paul Mccarthy - The Japan Times

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Paul Mccarthy

For Paul Mccarthy's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

Japan Times

CULTURE / Books

Apr 11, 2015

Invoking Manchuria's cross-dressing spy

She was born the daughter of a Manchu prince in Beijing in 1907. Later, as she grew up in Japan, she earned notoriety for her flamboyant challenges to gender roles and her military exploits as a princess-spy. Even today Yoshiko Kawashima still stokes controversy, and Phyllis Birnbaum's new biography — "Manchu Princess, Japanese Spy: The Story of Kawashima Yoshiko, the Cross-Dressing Spy Who Commanded Her Own Army" — explains why.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Books

May 31, 2014

Modern cat tale echoes former feline fiction

That the Japanese are great cat-lovers should come as no surprise: a taste for the elegant, the mysterious and the quirky leads in a feline direction, after all. There are paintings of cats from the classical period of the imperial court and prints from the more popular ukiyo-e of the Edo Period (1603-1867). The cat makes brief appearances in classical literature and becomes the virtual protagonist in a number of important modern Japanese novels and essays. One thinks immediately of "Wagahai wa neko de aru," written in 1905-06 by Natsume Soseki, Japan's most beloved 20th-century novelist. This long satiric work, narrated by a cat belonging to an academic intellectual, provides comic views of persons very much like Soseki himself, and his coterie. The humor is a bit ponderous in places, but an able translation by Graeme Wilson and Aiko Ito made this uniquely comic work by Soseki available to the English reader in 1972 under the title "I Am a Cat," and it is still in print.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Books

Oct 26, 2013

Manga: Gekiga capture the underbelly of ’70s Japan

'I don't know much about manga but I know what I like' could well be the title of this review. Despite the urgings of enthusiastic friends ever since the 1970s, I sedulously avoided reading works in this genre.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Books

Sep 14, 2013

Making Kobayashi's works sound as if written today

For most readers, Japanese literature may suggest romantic/erotic works by Nagai Kafu, elegantly classical and humorously or sinisterly "kinky" fiction by Tanizaki, or coolly stylish contemporary works by Haruki Murakami. For such readers, this volume will come as a shock — both refreshing and depressing.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Books

Aug 10, 2013

Evocative novel bridges Japan and China, past and present

That the Western world has lost interest in Japan, and particularly in Japanese literature, and is turning its attention more and more to the colossus across the sea (China, not America) is a constant plaint on the part of Japan specialists and translators.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Books

Jun 30, 2013

Complete translation of 'Kafu's first masterpiece'

The English reader has in this volume a complete translation of works of fiction, interspersed with thinly disguised autobiography and essay-like passages, composed by a young Japanese man who was to go on to become one of the finest Japanese writers of the 20th century, Nagai Kafu (1879-1959).

Japan Times

CULTURE / Books

May 5, 2013

Revealing the many masks of Mishima

This is a whale of a book — both unusually massive and extremely informative and stimulating. The title means "mask" in Latin and is probably an allusion to Yukio Mishima's first full-length novel, "Confessions of a Mask," published in Japan in 1949 and translated into English by Meredith Weatherby in the 1950s. It may also serve as a metaphor for the way Mishima lived his life, donning a variety of masks: novelist, playwright, essayist-critic, martial artist (karate, kendo and iaido), actor, singer, political commentator and sometimes activist, devoted family man, and skilled describer of same-sex fantasies, relationships and subcultures.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Books

Feb 17, 2013

Kanai's provocative, textured 'girls' fiction' wistfully surprises

INDIAN SUMMER, by Mieko Kanai, translated by Tomoko Aoyama and Barbara Hartley. Cornell East Asia Series, 2012, 149 pp., $24 (paperback)

Japan Times

CULTURE / Books

Jan 19, 2013

Epiphanies for characters, readers

WE, THE CHILDREN OF CATS, by Tomoyuki Hoshino, edited and translated by Brian Bergstrom with an additional translation by Lucy Fraser. PM Press, 2012, 266 pages, $20 (paperback)

CULTURE / Books / THE YEAR IN BOOKS

Dec 23, 2012

U.S. essays, Japan's Christians

It may seem like cheating, but my first best book of 2012 is "The Best American Essays of 2012" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), part of the Best American Series. I read it each year and am never disappointed. This year's selection was made by David Brooks, a moderately conservative author, columnist and PBS commentator. The 24 essays are wide-ranging in topic and tone, and every reader is bound to find a number that delight and instruct.

CULTURE / Books

Dec 2, 2012

Translated version of famous Hayashi work has its vicissitudes

FLOATING CLOUDS, by Fumiko Hayashi, translated by Lane Dunlop. Columbia University Press, 2012, 303 pp., $25 (paperback) This novel is one of the most famous of female author Fumiko Hayashi's works. The present translation was done by Lane Dunlop, well-known for his earlier translations of works by writers such as Yasunari Kawabata and Kafu Nagai. It is part of the Japanese Literature Publishing Project, sponsored by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, and carries the enthusiastic endorsement of American academics specializing in Japanese women's literature (see the back cover). It will be of special interest to the reader drawn to women's writings of the immediate postwar period.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Books

Nov 18, 2012

Minor Soseki work gets first English translation

NOWAKI, by Natsume Soseki, translated and with an afterword by William N. Ridgeway. Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 2011, 120 pp., $15 (paperback) As the translator notes in his afterword, and Donald Keene and Angela Yiu suggest in quotations used as blurbs on the back cover, Natsume Soseki is one of the giants of 20th century Japanese literature; and probably Ridgeway does not go too far in calling Soseki "the most admired" of all, by the Japanese themselves.

CULTURE / Books

Jun 22, 2008

An impressionable connoisseur of cultures

TRAVELS IN THE EAST by Donald Richie, with a foreword by Stephen Mansfield. Berkeley, California: Stone Bridge Press, 2007, 180 pp., $14.95 (paper) Donald Richie continues to write learnedly, wittily and insightfully about Japan, of whose culture he is one of the world's greatest interpreters. Readers of The Japan Times will know that he is also a devoted traveler (not a tourist), especially in other parts of Asia.

CULTURE / Books

Feb 25, 2007

Upstairs, downstairs and inside old Japan

Companions of the Holiday by Donald Richie, with an introduction by Timothy Harris and an afterword by the author. Tokyo/New York: Printed Matter Press, 181 pp., $15 (paper) Donald Richie is known to readers of The Japan Times for his regular reviews of books dealing with Asia, and more particularly Japanese culture. We are in indebted to him for his wide-ranging, penetrating, yet usually sympathetic, reviews of a wide range of works. He is known especially for his writings on the Japanese cinema, of which he was one of the earliest and most distinguished scholars/critics. Anyone with a serious interest in Yasujiro Ozu or Akira Kurosawa, for example, will have profited from his writings on those directors.

CULTURE / Books

Oct 8, 2006

Army specialist's take on Japanese studies

AMERICA'S JAPAN: The First Year 1945-1946, by Grant K. Goodman, translated by Barry D. Steben. New York: Fordham University Press, 2005, 155 pp., $24.95 (cloth). Grant K. Goodman is a professional historian of Japan, specializing in the relations between the Dutch and the Japanese in the Edo Period, and the development of Dutch Studies (Rangaku) in Japan. But here he writes on the basis of his personal experiences as a translator/ interpreter/interrogator in the U.S. Army in the last stages of the war and the first year of the Occupation.

CULTURE / Books

Sep 19, 2000

A fascinating figure of 13th-century Japan

CHARISMA AND COMMUNITY FORMATION IN MEDIEVAL JAPAN, by S.A. Thornton. Ithaca: Cornell University East Asia Series, 1999, 290 pp., unpriced. The "charisma" of the title of this carefully researched and impressively thorough work of scholarship refers, in the first instance, to the medieval Buddhist ascetic and itinerant preacher Ippen, while the "community" refers to the order that grew up around him and was maintained and expanded after his death.

CULTURE / Books

Jul 18, 2000

The art and artistry of translation

WORDS, IDEAS, AND AMBIGUITIES: Four Perspectives on Translating from the Japanese, edited by Donald Richie. A Pacific Basin Institute Book, Imprint Publications, 2000, 88 pp., $19.95. This volume is a faithful account of an important and stimulating series of colloquia held at the International House of Japan in May of 1998. The speakers were four very distinguished translators of Japanese literature, all academics from U.S. institutions: Professors Edwin McClellan of Yale; Edward Seidensticker, emeritus at Columbia; Howard Hibbett, emeritus at Harvard; and John Nathan, of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

From easily navigable train stations to the helpfulness of its municipal staff, Tokyo has earned high praise for its commitment to accessibility for disabled travelers.

[Rebroadcast] Japan is doing better on accessibility than you may think

Historically, kabuki was considered the entertainment of the merchant and peasant classes, a far cry from how it is regarded today.

For Japan's oldest kabuki theater, the show must go on

By Lance Henderstein

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Prize winner Maki Imoto catches light with glass

Prize winner Maki Imoto catches light with glass

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