Saiichi Maruya: 笹まくら (Grass for My Pillow)
The latest addition to my website is Saiichi Maruya's 笹まくら (Grass for My Pillow). This is an excellent novel about a somewhat taboo subject in Japan: draft desertion. Shokichi Hamada…
The latest addition to my website is Saiichi Maruya's 笹まくら (Grass for My Pillow). This is an excellent novel about a somewhat taboo subject in Japan: draft desertion. Shokichi Hamada…
The latest addition to my website is Yōko Ogawa's 博士の愛した数式 (The Housekeeper and the Professor). This is a delightful novel about a single mother, uneducated housekeeper, who goes to work…
The latest addition to my website is Naoya Shiga's 暗夜行路 (A Dark Night’s Passing). This novel, written in the I-novel style, is a semi-autobiographical/confessional novel about Kensaku Tokito, a would-be…
The latest addition to my website is Fumiko Enchi's 女面 (Masks). This is a beautifully written book about masks (both real and figurative ones) as well as about various other…
The latest addition to my website is Shūsaku Endō's 沈黙 (Silence). This novel is set in the early seventeenth century, when Japan had forcibly clamped down on Christianity. The religion…
The latest addition to my website is Masahiko Shimada's 雁 (夢使い (Dream Messenger). This one could have been a good book but did not work for me, not least because…
The latest addition to my website is Keizo Hino's 夢の島 (Isle of Dreams). Keizo Hino has been compared to J G Ballard and, while they are different in many ways,…
The latest addition to my website is Kyūsaku Yumeno's ドグラマグラ (Dogra Magra). This is another Japanese epic - seven hundred pages in the Japanese original - which is both an…
The latest addition to my website is Fumiko Hayashi's 浮雲 (Floating Clouds). Before saying anything else about it, I should point out that this Fumiko Hayashi is nothing to with…
The latest addition to my website is Mori Ōgai's 雁 (The Wild Geese). This is a gentle novel of love. Okada is a medical student at Tokyo University, a good-looking,…