Kyūsaku Yumeno: ドグラマグラ (Dogra Magra)

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

Mori Ōgai: 雁 (The Wild Geese)

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

Yoshikichi Furui: 白髪の唄 (White-Haired Melody)

The latest addition to my website is Yoshikichi Furui‘s 白髪の唄 (White-Haired Melody). This is a superb story about an elderly man (he is, in fact, only fifty-seven) and his confrontation with ageing and death. The unnamed narrator, his young friend, Yamagoe, and his two fifty-seven year old friends, Sugaike and Fujisato, confront death on a … Read more