Books Dec 8, 2018
Japan's modern crime literature: Centuries in the making
by Mark Schreiber
Japan boasts an impressively large and growing body of native-grown mystery fiction that dates back to the 1920s.
National / History | THE LIVING PAST Mar 18, 2017
The evolution of the Japanese ego: the discovery of themselves
by Michael Hoffman
'There was no room for mercy in view of their crime." None asked, none given. "They met their end ... with ... a touching acquiescence in their fate." The world we are entering is that of Osaka novelist Ihara Saikaku (1642-93). It was, first of ...
Books Nov 19, 2016
The shifting sexual norms in Japan's literary history
by Damian Flanagan
More than 3,000 women and almost 900 men — that's the number of lovers the main protagonist in Ihara Saikaku's 1682 novel "Koshoku Ichidai Otoko" ("The Life of an Amorous Man") tallies up as he reminisces. Saikaku, born in Osaka in 1642, became a ...
Lifestyle Feb 1, 2014
by Michael Hoffman
The merry residents of Japan have long sought to attain the 'pleasantest of all diversions