Japan News and Discussion
Latest In book reviews
TOKYO — A booklet detailing sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army has been published to serve as a bridge between the victims and those who have…
Previously In book reviews
Others In book reviews
There is a world of difference between reading Japanese that has been specially contrived for students and reading real Japanese — that is, real-world Japanese…
Criticizing Haruki Murakami is a bit like kicking a puppy or farting on someone’s birthday cake. People look at you with a mixture of horror…
Hiroshi Moriya's book is a collection of ancient Chinese maxims that encapsulate some of the Far East's most cunning tactics for battle and deception —…
TOKYO — Internationally popular novelist Haruki Murakami is working on an extremely lengthy novel. But he appears to cherish every moment. ''Everyday, I am sitting at my…
If, as the British writer L P Hartley famously wrote, “the past is a foreign country,” then this paperback reprint of an 1880 travelogue by…
How do you clean spilled candle wax on a wooden floor? And what could scallions possibly have to do with a stuffy nose? Lisa Katayama,…
Dutch-born author Hans Brinckmann came to Japan in 1950, not as part of any occupying army, but as an employee of a bank. He remained…
"My war aim is to win." Georges Clemenceau's retort when asked to define France's war aims during the first world war had the great advantage…
In his famous novel “Magister LUDI,” Hermann Hesse wrote, “History’s third dimension is always fiction.” This book is a case in point. Although the words…