On May 3, 1946, the indictments were read at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. Among the defendants was a gangly, bespectacled, 59-year-old civilian named Shumei Okawa, who happened to be seated directly behind the former prime minister, army Gen. Hideki Tojo.
When an aging professor attempts to arouse the repressed passions of his wife, he finds that his own declining sexual ...
With subjects ranging from consumerism to female farmers, "Capturing Contemporary Japan: Differentiation and Uncertainty" is a book that's geared toward ...
"Seiobo There Below," a not-quite novel by Hungary's star postmodern author László Krasznahorkai, is a delight, a puzzle, a frustration and a joy.
When reading Kenji Nakagami, it is best to forget the stylistic niceties and aesthetic fussiness of writers such as Yasunari Kawabata. Instead, this collection of structurally complex stories by Nakagami contains accounts that, eschewing inference for the explicit, are nonetheless highly sophisticated, meticulously composed ...
What would you do if you hated your father — really hated him? Could you bring yourself to kill him? But what if that was exactly what he expected of the kind of person he was hoping you would become — a creature filled ...
The Art of The Wind Rises, by Hayao Miyazaki.Viz MEdia, Nonfiction. Brand new to the Viz collection of art books, “The Art of The Wind Rises” will once again bring to life the award-winning film it is named for. Creating a new experience for ...
When I was a boy, my father told me and my kid brother stories from the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) and taught us how to sing some of the threnodies that Gen. Maresuke Nogi composed in classical Chinese on the battlefield. My father was born ...
Haruki Murakami can be difficult to pigeonhole at the best of times but nothing can quite prepare the uninitiated for the ethereal themes that bubble beneath the surface of “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.” Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the ...
It’s a moment that many expats secretly dread: the unexpected phone call from home, announcing the death of a family member. For Yumiko, the protagonist of Fumio Obata’s debut graphic novel, it’s the demise of her father in a hiking accident that propels her ...
This extensive travel book by lecturer and Okinawa expert Robert Walker is billed as “the first comprehensive guide to the entire Ryukyu Island chain.” With 25 years experience traveling throughout the region’s 150-islands Walker has amassed a huge amount of information — condensed here ...
Although born in Japan, Mariko Nagai, author of the just-published novel-in-verse “Dust of Eden,” was raised mostly in Belgium and the United States. “I grew up all over the world because of my father’s job,” she says. “First in Belgium, where I spoke Flemish ...
Before there was “The Tale of Genji,” the “The Ise Stories” (“Ise Monogatari”) presented ancient Japanese audiences with a titillating series of loosely connected episodes of love that are believed to be based on the romantic encounters of the poet and aristocrat Ariwara no ...
As the ’90s settled in and the new millennium was fast approaching, Japanese society saw an increase in the governmental status of “not yet married” women. The women classified under this category saw themselves as the up-and-coming future for postwar Japan. With an almost ...
The Art Lover’s Guide to Japanese Museums, by Sophie Richard.The Japan Society, Nonfiction. There is an abundance of art museums in Japan, with the Ministry of Culture counting more than 1,200. Bearing this in mind, it was always going to be ambitious for author ...
