The Berlin-based author Yoko Tawada recently remarked that one of the difficulties she faced when translating Kafka's short story "Metamorphosis" into Japanese was that the associations Japanese people had with insects — even presumably giant beetles — were different to those of Europeans. Tawada was alluding to the idea that Japanese appreciation of insects is one marker of Japanese cultural uniqueness.
Insect Literature, by Lafcadio Hearn
272 pages
Swan River Press, Nonfiction.
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