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 was forbidden and all practitioners, be they Japanese worshippers or European priests, had to apostatise or face brutal torture and death. The story tells of … Read more
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 characters were flat, the story dragged on and it all seemed unconvincing. The story tells of Miko Amino, a super-rich widow, who wants to … Read more
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, they do share an interest in the urban landscape, particularly urban decay and high rises. This novel tells of Shozo Sakai, a widower in his … Read more
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 incredibly complicated detective story as well as a searing indictment of contemporary (i.e. Japan in the 1930s) psychiatry where the doctors may well be more … Read more
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 politician of the same name and the book is nothing to do with the 19th century novel of the same name by Futabatei Shimei … Read more
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, very fit young man, who enjoys his evening walk, visiting second-hand bookshops. On returning from his walk, he has been accustomed to seeing an attractive … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Tōson Shimazaki‘s 夜明け前 (Before the Dawn). This a massive (750+ page) novel about the events before and after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, when the shogunate, which had essentially ruled Japan for 250 years, returned power to the Emperor, with the result that Japan moved from being a … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Shūsaku Endō‘s 侍 (The Samurai). This novel is based on a true story and tells the story of a Japanese expedition in the early sixteenth century to Nueva España (modern-day Mexico) and then to Europe. The Japanese are trying to establish a direct trade connection between Japan and … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Chiya Fujino‘s ルート225 [Route 225]. This tells the story of a teenage girl, Eriko Tanaka, and her brother, Daigo. One day, Daigo is late back from school and their mother is worried, as he had been previously arrested for stealing a bicycle. She sends Eriko to look for … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Chiyo Uno‘s 色ざんげ (Confessions of Love). This 1930s novel was written by a free-spirited writer who was also an expert in fashion. She claims that the story was actually told to her verbatim by her lover, the artist Seiji Tōgō. The story is about the very tempestuous and … Read more