"The Sound of Waves" is a typical boy-meets-girl story. Shinji is a poor fisherman on Uta-jima, a small island in Ise Bay. Hatsue left the island as a young girl to train to be a pearl diver. When she returns, now a young woman, ...
In June 1948, novelist Osamu Dazai committed suicide. The 38-year-old, who had just completed his masterpiece, "No Longer Human," and whose fame was peaking, jumped into Tokyo's Tamagawa Canal with his mistress, Tomie Yamazaki, and drowned. With his acid wit and nihilistic vision, Dazai had ...
An unreleased recording of late novelist Yukio Mishima has been found in which he discusses death and the Constitution just nine months before his sensational suicide, it was learned Thursday. The roughly 80-minute recording of Mishima's conversation with British translator John Bester in Japanese is ...
Handwritten manuscripts of four early works by renowned Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) have been discovered, a literature museum in Kyushu said Friday.
Written in 1951 and translated into English in 1968, the title of "Forbidden Colours" represents taboo desires and beliefs, most notably homosexuality and misogyny. Shunsuke is an aging writer whose vile views on women are given the opportunity for physical manifestation in Yuichi, a ...
David Mitchell's world is always growing. Raised in England's West Midlands, Mitchell lived in London for a time before moving to Japan in 1994 — while he was in his 20s — to work as an English teacher. After eight years in Hiroshima, he ...
Ryohei Suzuki's body has been put to the test over the past 12 months. Last spring, the Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture-born entertainer shed 20 kilograms to prepare for the role of a tuberculosis patient in the TBS drama "Tenno no Ryoriban"("The Emperor's Cook"). Shortly afterward, he ...
Forty-five years ago this week — at just after 10 a.m. on the bright, cold morning of Nov. 25, 1970 — a telephone rang at the Tokyo home of popular enka singer Hideo Murata. On the line was author Yukio Mishima, a man who ...
John Nathan arrived in Japan in the early 1960s and set about constantly pushing his limits, becoming the first Westerner to graduate from the esteemed University of Tokyo. And by age 25, he had published a translation of Yukio Mishima's "The Sailor Who Fell ...
There is one critic of Japanese literature that towers above the rest: professor John Nathan, erstwhile associate of Yukio Mishima, Kenzaburo Oe and Kobo Abe. But he's not only a respected critic, Nathan's extraordinary career has seen him in the roles of film director, ...
Will he or won't he? It's about the time of year when the Japanese media descends into a frenzy of speculation about whether Haruki Murakami will land the Nobel Prize in literature, becoming the first Japanese literary laureate since Kenzaburo Oe in 1994. There is ...
It was 45 years ago this summer that Donald Keene, a leading critic and translator of Japanese literature, visited Yukio Mishima at his summer writing retreat on the Izu Peninsula. This was the last time the two close friends would leisurely enjoy each other's company. ...
