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 was a city bubbling with excitement. The deposed (WWII) god-man, Hirohito, was still on the throne, albeit with a quieter presence. A time of change brought a divided nation, with the communist league of students putting pressure on the US-Japan Security ..read more

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 Shiraishi, the place she has called home for over twenty five years. In so doing, she has revealed to us a culture that has disappeared in most places in Japan and may soon disappear on Shiraishi as well. Not since Donald Richie’s The Inland Sea have we had the privilege of se ..read more

Review by Tina deBellegarde With Mami Suzuki: Private Eye, Simon Rowe delivers a delightful twist on the traditional private investigator (PI) novel. This charming new sleuth is a middle-aged single mother from Kobe who sleuths in her off-hours to help cover the household expenses for herself, her mother and her young daughter.  Suzuki is no Miss Marple. Fashionable but frugal, professional and low-key, she struggles to make ends meet, and often turns to a beer or a whiskey to ease her burden. Rowe’s book is an attractive blend of the modern and the classic, much like Japan itself. He tak ..read more

Review by Chad Kohalyk Setouchi Jakuchō—energetic nun, outspoken activist, and prolific author—passed away last month at the age of 99. Spending nearly half her life as a Buddhist nun of the Tendai sect, Jakuchō charmed the Japanese public with her television and public speaking appearances. Prior to 1973, the year she went forth into monastic life and took the Dharma name Jakuchō, she was Setouchi Harumi, a prize-winning author as well as a biographer of Japanese feminist pioneers such as novelist Tamura Toshiko. How did Harumi become Jakuchō? That is the question she sets out to answer in Pl ..read more

Review by John Rucynski The Nature of Kyoto is the fifth anthology from Writers in Kyoto (WiK), a “group of published and self-published English-language authors working or living in the city.” Anthologies always run the risk of focusing on too narrow a theme, attracting a certain number of readers, but giving pause to many others who wonder whether the volume will sustain their interest. Fortunately, the editors of this anthology approached the project with a broad definition of nature, noting they “wanted contributors to investigate the myriad aspects of Kyoto’s ‘nature’–referring to both th ..read more

An Excerpt from The Wedding Party, by Liu Xinwu, translated by Jeremy Tiang (Amazon Crossing, Nov 16, 2021) To many adults, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution feels like it happened just yesterday. Ten years of turmoil put a sudden stop to many developments that had been well underway. When the chaos was over and people tried to pick up the threads of the past as they righted themselves, they had no choice but to treat the last decade as a blank, as if time had frozen in the summer of 1966 and thawed in the fall of ’76. For the last few years, newspapers have been referring to writers i ..read more

Review by Ian Josh Yates Within A Passion for Japan: A Collection of Personal Narratives, John Rucynski has collected varied and intriguing snippets of life from the authors who have all come to live and search for a passion in the Land of the Rising Sun. The writers themselves come from all parts of the earth, with all slants of backgrounds, and overall, only share two commonalities: One, that they have landed, either momentarily or eternally, at some spot along the string of islands that creates Japan, and two, that they want to share with others what Japan is to them, and through doing so ..read more

Books on Asia interviews Danica Davidson and Rena Saiya about the two manga books they’ve created together Danica Davidson lives in the USA. Her articles on manga have been published in CNN, MTV, Publisher’s Weekly, Booklist, Otaku USA, and Anime News Network. She has also edited English adaptations of Japanese manga. She has co-authored with Rena Saiya Chalk Art Manga: A Step-By-Step Guide. Rena Saiya lives in Tokyo. She is a manga author who has worked on 12 books with the Japanese publisher Shogakukan.She is co-author, with Danica Davidson, of Chalk Art Manga: A Step-By-Step Guide. Books On ..read more

Review by Chad Kohalyk The rapid modernization of Japan after the Meiji Restoration is often expressed in kilometres of railway laid down, or number of telegraph lines strung up. But there was also a spiritual revolution happening: Japanese Buddhism in the Meiji Period (1868-1912) was in crisis. Changing laws revoked state privileges for Buddhist institutions and prioritized a new “national Shintō,” which disrupted the delicate balance between Buddhism and Shinto that had evolved over a millennium and a half. Soon a ban on Christianity—instated in 1637 and which provided the genesis for Japan ..read more

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 we accept today, is outlandish tomorrow. These stories present an alternate reality. From stories about recycling human remains, to funerals where the celebrants are expected to pair off and procreate, this book forces us to question our norms. Murat ..read more