One winter day, Reiko asks her friend Rika to pick up some butter on her way over for dinner. But due to a product shortage, this simple favor turns into a trip to several grocery stores and results only in the purchase of a tub of margarine, setting the stage for a story where just one ingredient can change everything.   Asako Yuzuki’s novel Butter, recently released in an English translation by Polly Barton, is based on the true story of Kanae Kijima, the Konkatsu Killer, who was convicted of seducing and murdering multiple victims. In the novel, the accused Manako Kajii fascinates ..read more

Ludwig II was born in 1845. He became King of Bavaria in 1864, when he was only 18 years old. Within Bavaria, he is sometimes called the Swan King or even the Fairy Tale King. Outside of Germany, he is sometimes called Mad King Ludwig. Over the course of his 22-year reign, he gradually lost interest in affairs of state. Instead, he became interested in the arts—especially architecture and the work of Richard Wagner, who lived from 1813-1883. Although he used his own money to fund his artistic extravagances, his tendency to ignore all of his counselors’ advice did not make him popular at court ..read more

Seicho Matsumoto was one of Japan’s most celebrated mystery writers —with two dozen novels to his name from the late 1950s, at a time when Japan was rebuilding after the war until just before his death in 1992—but only in recent years his work has been translated into English. Point Zero, translated by Louise Heal Kawai, is one of his early novels. The story, set in 1958 and the first part of 1959, takes place mainly in Tokyo and the western port city of Kanazawa and is defined by both the hope of the new era and the agonies of war.   Unlike most noir stories of that time, Point Zero ..read more

In his Akutagawa Prize-winning Cannibals, Shinya Tanaka doesn’t shy away from dark topics, dealing with crippling poverty, violence and sexual abuse in an often matter-of-fact way. Perhaps the author’s candor is part of the reason that Cannibals (a literal translation of the original Tomogui, though the original has a secondary meaning of ‘mutual destruction’) received Japan’s most prestigious literary prize, although it often walks such a fine line between the frank and the gratuitous that readers themselves may settle on either side in their own assessment. In a stiflingly hot and forsaken l ..read more

Joy, Despair, Illusion, Dreams: Twenty Plays from the Nō Tradition, Royall Tyler (trans) (Columbia University Press, April 2024) Nō drama, which integrates speech, song, dance, music, mask, and costume into a distinctive art form, is among Japan’s most revered cultural traditions. It gained popularity in the fourteenth century, when the actor and playwright Zeami (1363–1443) drew the favor of the shogun with his theatrical innovations. Nō’s intricacies and highly stylized conventions continue to attract Japanese and Western appreciation, and a repertoire of some 250 plays is performed today. J ..read more

Glynne Walley, translator of classic Japanese novel Hakkenden, joins us on the podcast again to talk about his second translated volume: Hakkenden, Part 2: His Master’s Blade. Unlike Part 1—which is all preamble!—in Part 2 we meet some of the fabled eight dog warriors and the Confucian virtues they represent: Shino, for filial piety; Gakuzo, for duty; Dosetsu, for loyalty. There’s betrayal, drama… and a lot of secret, intertwined family relationships.     Eight Dogs, or “Hakkenden”: Part Two—His Master’s Blade, Kyokutei Bakin, Glynne Walley (trans) (Cornell University Press, Februar ..read more

The Dawn of the Warrior Age: War Tales from Medieval Japan, Royall Tyler (trans), (Columbia University Press, April 2024) The war between the Heike and Genji clans in the 13th and 13th centuries is among the most compelling and significant moments in Japan’s history, immortalized in The Tale of the Heike. Beyond the events recorded in this canonical text, the conflicts of the surrounding years are crucial to medieval Japanese culture and history. In 1156, power began to slip away from the court nobility in Kyoto. A shogunate was later founded in Kamakura, and in 1221, it won a decisive victory ..read more

Kiyoko Murata’s A Woman of Pleasure is a story of Japan’s pleasure quarters in 1903 and 1904. Fifteen-year-old Aoi Ichi grew up on a rocky volcanic island, “the sort of place where stumbling upon a folkloric demon would come as no surprise”. She always expected to grow up like her mother, a strong swimmer and diver who supports her family with the fish and shellfish she catches. But now, to support a loan to her impoverished family, she has been sold to an exclusive brothel in Kumamoto, a regional capital along an inland sea on Japan’s southern island of Kyushu. While Ichi is the central chara ..read more

Futaro Yamada, discovered by the hugely influential mystery writer Edogawa Rampo, was hugely prolific in his lifetime, with many of his stories being adapted to film, such as Nagisa Ōshima’s thriller Pleasures of the Flesh (1965) and Samurai Reincarnation (Kinji Fukusaku, 1981). If Yamada’s name is known in the Anglophone world, however, it is usually for the manga and anime adaptations of his series The Kouga Ninja Scrolls. This newly translated edition of his 1979 novel The Meiji Guillotine Murders is an opportunity to experience his work more directly. Though published by Pushkin Press’s Ve ..read more

In 1864, on a midsummer’s day, Kawai Koume, a 60-year old matriarch of a samurai family in Wakayama, makes a note in her diary, which she had dutifully written in for over three decades. “There are reports of armed clashes in Kyoto. It’s said that the emperor has ordered the expulsion of the foreigners, and it’s also said that a large band of vagabond soldiers has gathered in Senju in Edo. It’s said that in Edo people are wearing their [winter] kimono linings, and in Nikko it has been snowing. I don’t know if it’s true. But really, every day we hear nothing but disturbing rumors.” The Meiji Re ..read more