Books / Reviews | ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES Aug 12, 2017

'Wabi Sabi: The Art of Impermanence': A surprisingly accessible guide to traditional Japanese aesthetics

by Stephen Mansfield

Japan's passion for the modern coexists with aesthetic proclivities that favor antiquity and refinement. Wabi Sabi: The Art of Impermanence, by Andrew Juniper.176 pages TUTTLE, Nonfiction. One expression of the appreciation for age and beauty is the much-cherished effect known as wabi-sabi, the subject of Andrew Juniper's ...

Books / Reviews | ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES Aug 5, 2017

'The Lake': Yasunari Kawabata at his darkest

by T.C. Jones

Yasunari Kawabata is often seen in the West as one of the quintessential modern Japanese writers. His most famous novels are filled with tea ceremonies and geisha and his prose is a consummate example of mono no aware, the Japanese aesthetic that finds beauty ...

Books / Reviews | ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES Jul 29, 2017

'Dream Messenger': A woman searches for her son in Tokyo and New York

by Stephen Mansfield

The Japanese novel has taken some interesting twists and turns in the post-bubble era, but quality has often been the price of experimentation. Dream Messenger, by Masahiko Shimada, Translated by Philip Gabriel.293 pages TIME WARNER, Fiction. Masahiko Shimada's novel "Dream Messenger," which focuses on a mother's search ...

Books / Reviews | ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES Jul 22, 2017

'Building Japan, 1868-1876': Reflections from the father of Japan's modern public works

by Iain Maloney

Richard Henry Brunton was a Scottish engineer who came to Japan in 1868, one of a number of o-yatoi-gaikokujin — foreigners hired to help Japan modernize at the beginning of the Meiji Era (1868-1912). This book is his memoir, the story of the eight ...

Books / Reviews | ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES Jul 15, 2017

'Tokyo Station': Taut thriller has slow start, strong finish

by J.J. O'Donoghue

The bulk of Martin Cruz Smith's "Tokyo Station" is set in 1941, when the impending war with the Allied Forces was the talk of Tokyo. Tokyo Station, by Martin Cruz Smith.464 pages SIMON & SCHUSTER, Fiction. Yet a third of the way into the book, which was ...

Books / Reviews | ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES Jul 8, 2017

'The Sea and Poison': Shusaku Endo dissects the human capacity for evil

by Damian Flanagan

This 1957 novel has at its heart Shusaku Endo's fascination with a seemingly tranquil and civilized postwar Japan still traumatized by the horrors of the Pacific War. Even a harmless-looking gas station attendant might be a grizzled war veteran involved in brutal killings on ...

Books / Reviews | ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES Jul 1, 2017

'A Diplomat in Japan': Eyewitness accounts of the birth of a modern nation

by Iain Maloney

The "Great Man" theory of history has largely been discredited. Propounded by Thomas Carlyle in the 1840s, it suggests that history is moved and swayed by the personalities of "great men" such as Alexander the Great and Napoleon. While there are clearly examples throughout ...

Books / Reviews | ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES Jun 24, 2017

'The Informer': Portrait of a pivotal period in Japan

by Stephen Mansfield

Based on the true story of a stock trader, the 1965 novel "The Informer" is remarkably prescient in describing the greed and venality that was, two decades later, to become a hallmark of the delirious days of Japan's bubble-era economy. The Informer, by Akimitsu Takagi, ...

Books / Reviews | ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES Jun 17, 2017

'Flowering of the Bamboo': Revisiting the mass poisoning of 1948

by J.J. O'Donoghue

The acronym GUBU (grotesque, unusual, bizarre and unprecedented) fits the mass murder at the Teihoku Bank in Tokyo on Jan. 26, 1948. Sixteen people were deliberately poisoned, including an 8-year-old boy. More money was left behind than stolen. Flowering of the Bamboo, by William Triplett.263 ...

Books / Reviews | ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES Jun 10, 2017

'Milky Way Railroad': A beautiful if unfinished inquiry into meaning and happiness

by Kris Kosaka

This beloved classic of Japanese children's literature is testimony to the difficulties of translation. The title, variously called "Night on the Galactic Railway" or "Fantasy Railroad in the Stars," is a good example. Milky Way Railroad, by Kenji Miyazawa, Translated by Joseph Sigrist and D.M. ...

Books / Reviews | ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES Jun 3, 2017

'Nagasaki: The British Experience, 1854-1945': Loving portrait of a storied city

by Iain Maloney

Nagasaki is something of an outlier in Japanese history. While the country closed itself off from external influence between the 1630s and 1853, this western port remained partially exempt, a crack through which people, ideas and products could pass. Today, the city retains its ...

Books / Reviews | ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES May 27, 2017

'The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan': Is it fair to compare wartime experiences?

by Iain Maloney

Despite regular, if sometimes half-hearted apologies, China and South Korea have repeatedly accused Japan of being unrepentant and insincere in its attitude to World War II. The nation's acceptance of defeat and acknowledgment or denial of guilt is most often compared with that of ...