Books Jul 6, 2019
Hot new Japan book releases for the sweltering summer
by Iain Maloney
Time travel, yakuza, street photography and more feature in the best upcoming J-Lit releases for this summer (and beyond).
Books / Reviews | ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES May 4, 2019
Come face to face with human mortality in Yukio Mishima's 'The Temple of Dawn' — review
by Nicolas Gattig
A strange and uneven novel, Yukio Mishima's "The Temple of Dawn," the third volume in the "Sea of Fertility" tetralogy, is an elegy to the loss of pureness in the Japanese national spirit.
Books Apr 27, 2019
Yukio Mishima’s attempt at personal branding comes to light in the rediscovered 'Star'
by Nicolas Gattig
In "Star," Yukio Mishima confronts issues of celebrity, youth and aging in hypercharged and manically subjective first-person prose.
Stage Feb 12, 2019
'Kinkakuji': Staging a Japanese classic with a German twist
by Nobuko Tanaka
A new opera based on the quintessentially Japanese novel "Kinkakuji" is set to open in Tokyo following a premiere held not in Kyoto, where the famed golden pavilion of its title is to be found, but at the Opera National du Rhin in Strasbourg, ...
Books Jan 1, 2019
Japan's most exciting book releases in 2019
by Iain Maloney
2019's impressive lineup of books on Japan, include classic reprints, new fiction and studies of the nation's international relations.
Books Nov 24, 2018
'The Frolic of the Beasts': A Mishima classic, roused from its long hibernation
by Damian Flanagan
Andrew Clare has published an impressive array of translations of novels by Japanese authors, all while putting in long hours at the corporate coalface. Now, Clare is launching his translation — the first in English — of a classic, but little-known, Yukio Mishima novel, ...
National | Regional voices: Chubu Nov 12, 2018
From Yukio Mishima with love: Former lighthouse keeper reminisces about correspondence with novelist
Michio Suzuki, 87, of Toyohashi, Aichi Prefecture, met renowned novelist Yukio Mishima (1925-70) in March 1953 when he was working at Kamishima Lighthouse in Toba, Mie Prefecture. Since then, they exchanged letters, nine of which Suzuki has kept for more than 50 years. "(The letters were) ...
Books / Reviews | ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES Oct 13, 2018
Kenzaburo Oe's 'Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness': Reflections on father-son relationships
by Damian Flanagan
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.
Books / Reviews | ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES Jun 2, 2018
Yukio Mishima's demons are out in full force in 'Runaway Horses'
by Nicolas Gattig
"Perfect purity is possible," Mishima writes, "if you turn your life into a line of poetry written with a splash of death."
Books / Reviews | ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES May 12, 2018
Kenzaburo Oe's 'Seventeen and J: Two Novels': 1960s Japan on the brink of social revolution
by Damian Flanagan
On the cusp of the 1960s sexual revolution and the anti-Vietnam War movement, "Seventeen" and "J" are intriguing primers on the seething social turbulence of the age.
Books | How the visual arts shaped Japan's modern literature Jan 6, 2018
Yukio Mishima: Saints and seppuku
by Damian Flanagan
In March 1937, an official in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Azusa Hiraoka, traveled to Europe on government business and acquired some guides to Italian museums. Prudishly fearing, however, that his 12-year-old son might be exposed to the depictions of female nudes contained within, ...
Books / Reviews | The critics who shaped modern Japan Sep 2, 2017
Hideo Kobayashi: Spearheading the age of the professional critic
by Damian Flanagan
In the autumn of 1956, Japan's most renowned literary critic, the 54-year-old Hideo Kobayashi, engaged in taidan ( a "conversation" to be published in a magazine) with 31-year-old rising literary star Yukio Mishima. Early that year Mishima's novel, "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion," had ...