Review by Tina deBellegarde Sayaka Murata’s Life Ceremony, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori, is a wildly imaginative and chilling short story collection about loners and outcasts. Once again, Murata writes about non-conformity and once again she does it in her unique subversive style. She presents us with a world turned on its head, where what More…
Category: Reviews
Review—3 Memoirs: Ian Buruma, John Nathan and Mayumi Oda
A Tale of Three Memoirs: A Tokyo Romance, by Ian Buruma, Living Carelessly in Tokyo and Elsewhere by John Nathan and Sarasvati’s Gift: The Autobiography of Mayumi Oda–Artist, Activist, and Modern Buddhist Revolutionary, by Mayumi Oda By Leanne Ogasawara It was Japan before the Bubble. And yet, despite the lack of economic miracles, 1960s Tokyo More…
Review—Spirit of Shizen: Japan’s Nature Through its 72 Seasons
An anthology to accompany the Spirit of Shizen exhibition at the National Museum of Natural History in Luxembourg
Review—The Widow, The Priest and The Octopus Hunter
The Widow, the Priest and the Octopus Hunter: Discovering a Lost Way of Life on a Secluded Japanese Island Review by Tina deBellegarde With The Widow, the Priest and the Octopus Hunter, Amy Chavez has presented us with a gift of cultural preservation. The author conducted a year-long oral history project on the Island of More…
Review—Kanazawa by David Joiner
Review—Places, by Setouchi Jakuchō
Review—Heaven, by Mieko Kawakami
A heartbreaking, yet uplifting, story of two outcasts who find and protect each other through a year of school bullying.
Review—Where the Wild Ladies Are
In Matsuda’s collection, familiar ghosts are treated as commonplace: They are neither surprising nor frightening as they comfortably situate themselves in the modern world
Review—Buddhism and Modernity: Sources from Nineteenth-Century Japan
Review—On Haiku, by Hiroaki Sato
Hiroaki Sato reveals how the radical brevity of the haiku genre contains worlds within worlds. This is a book to cherish, and which nurtures in return.