Delve into a teenager's consciousness with Osamu Dazai's 'Schoolgirl'
Concise enough to be read in one sitting, "Schoolgirl" combines Osamu Dazai's familiar themes of melancholy, alienation and despair with levity and humor.
Kobo Abe's 'The Ark Sakura': A surreal narrative worth reading twice
"The Ark Sakura," Kobo Abe's puzzling, dream-like narrative about an obese recluse living in a vast underground bunker, is a dense interlacing of punning wordplay, psychological excavation and surreal imagery.
Escape from the everyday with Miyuki Miyabe's 'Brave Story'
Miyuki Miyabe's "Brave Story" tackles pertinent adolescent issues that are juxtaposed against a supernatural realm of fantasy.
"Clouds Above the Hill" portrays, in rich detail, the first generation to grow up in the Meiji Era and culminates in Japan's surprising victory in the Russo-Japanese War.
Rational analysis and mystic poetry combine in Kenzaburo Oe's 'Rouse Up O Young Men'
Through the poetry of William Blake, Kenzaburo Oe takes a new approach to probing the emotional consequences of his father's death, and parenting a severely disabled son.
'The Old Bamboo-Hewer's Story': Deeply ingrained in the Japanese cultural imagination
"Taketori Monogatari," or "The Old Bamboo-Hewer's Story," is a fascinating piece of early Japanese literature, well worth the short read. Written in the 10th century, it is one of the earliest known Japanese prose narratives, and the story recounts the beloved folktale of the ...
Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's "Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window" became a runaway bestseller when it debuted in Japanese in 1981, and has since been translated into over 30 languages. With increasing awareness of the importance of catering to children with diverse needs in Japan's ...
Kenzaburo Oe's 'Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness': Reflections on father-son relationships
In Oe's "Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness," the lifelong sense of obsession and profound sense of guilt engendered within his own familial history finds acute literary expression.
In "Studies in Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan," leading postwar political scientist Masao Maruyama chronicles the ideas and debates of scholars throughout the Edo Period (1603-1868). Studies in Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan, by Masao Maruyama, Translated by Mikiso Hane.383 pages PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, Nonfiction. The central ...
John Okada's 'No-No Boy': Once overlooked, now a classic tale of identity
"No-No Boy," a 1957 novel by Japanese-American writer John Okada, unravels the complicated, varied perspectives of Japanese-Americans in the aftermath of World War II under the shadow of the internment camps of the American northwest.
'The Journey': Jiro Osaragi depicts a society coming to grips with defeat and occupation
Jiro Osaragi's "The Journey" is an intriguing literary and psychological depiction of a society coming to grips with the aftermath of defeat and occupation.
Strongly autobiographical, 'Death by Water' reflects on Kenzaburo Oe's own oeuvre
Written in dialogue with Oe's own, earlier works on similar subjects "Death by Water" is a careful, multilayered contemplation on the methodology and potential of art itself.
