Non-Japanese have written great books about Japan. Almost all of these masterpieces are nonfiction: essays, memoirs, monographs, histories, travel books. One might place, for example, Alan Booth’s “The Roads to Sata,” Donald Richie’s “Ozu,” Edward Seidensticker’s “Genji Days,” and Nicolas Bouvier’s “The Japanese Chronicles” among those exalted works. However, trying ...
With only a few words, a Haiku master can paint a picture so vivid it’s as if the reader is ...
The final installment of Lian Hearn’s “The Tale of Shikanoko” series delivers on the promise of the previous three books, ...
The Haras were a quiet, rather ordinary Japanese couple — until they resolved to burn down their house and drive themselves and their 20-year-old daughter off a cliff. True Crime Japan, by Paul Murphy256 pagesTuttle, Nonfiction. With their beloved home repossessed, they couldn’t endure ...
Precious little was written about Okinawa in English before World War II. Early accounts by ship captains and officers offer only passing impressions of the islands. It was not until the middle of the 19th century that more considered observations appeared. “There were no ...
First published in 1992, “Underground in Japan” is Rey Ventura’s account of his life as a illegal day laborer in the construction areas and docks of Yokohama’s Kotobukicho district. Underground in Japan, by Rey Ventura208 pagesSt. Edmundsbury Press, Nonfiction. After studying political science at ...
In “One Hundred Million Philosophers,” Historian Adam Bronson profiles “one of the longest lasting and most influential intellectual groups” of the postwar era: Science of Thought (Shiso no Kagaku). He focuses on the tumultuous period between its founding in 1946 and the 1960 Anpo ...
Book alterations have taken on a new meaning for a certain paperback gaining popularity around Japan. The mysterious book — featuring handwritten messages on a supplied cover obscuring the names of the author and publisher and only known as “Paperback X” — is reportedly ...
“Postmodernism and Japan” opens with editors H.D. Harootunian and Masao Miyoshi declaring that postmodernism is a Western phenomenon that cannot be exported globally. The essays that follow draw connections and expose dissonances between postmodernism and Japan. Topics range from close readings of works of ...
Revisit the end of World War II with Japan’s all-time best-selling paperback, “The Eternal Zero” by Naoki Hyakuta, originally published in Japanese in 2006. Although the movie adaptation sparked controversy with its nationalistic ending, the book does not glorify war. Hyakuta’s storytelling structure, however, ...
The final unpublished short stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose book “The Great Gatsby” provided an iconic depiction of the excesses of America’s Jazz Age, will see the light in April, 80 years after they were written. Scribner, a Simon & Schuster imprint, said ...
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 ...
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. Lord of the Darkwood: The Tale ...
The printed page is not dead. Sure, many of its mainstream forms need a lie-down, and probably should be thinking about taking early retirement, but as text and images are being increasingly viewed in the same way — pristinely flat with glassy surfaces and ...
August honors the dead in Japan, so it’s fitting that Kazufumi Shiraishi’s raw discourse on mortality makes its English debut this month. Originally published in 2008, “Me Against the World” breaks from Shiraishi’s fictional works, offering the author’s undiluted musings on life. As told ...
