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November 22, 2024
 

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David Cozy
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Dec 16, 2012
Opening old wounds unhealed after decades
NISEI SOLDIERS BREAK THEIR SILENCE: Coming Home To Hood River, by Linda Tamura. University of Washington Press, 2012, 346 pp., $24.95 (paperback) A minority group enters a community and through hard work and perseverance gains a measure of financial security and grudging toleration from their neighbors....
CULTURE / Books
Nov 18, 2012
'Cool Japan is over': a sociologist looks at Japan's art world
BEFORE AND AFTER SUPERFLAT: A Short History of Japanese Contemporary Art 1990-2011, by Adrian Favell. Blue Kingfisher, 2012, 246 pp., $24.95 (paper)
CULTURE / Books
Oct 7, 2012
Seen through the victim's eye
THE STORY OF MY ASSASSINS, by Tarun J. Tejpal. Melville House, 2012, 544 pp., $27.95 (hardcover) Tarun J. Tejpal's "The Story of My Assassins" begins, "The morning I heard I'd been shot I was sitting in my office. ..."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Sep 23, 2012
The third space: the cafe's place in forming modern Japan
COFFEE LIFE IN JAPAN, by Merry White. University of California Press, 2012, 240 pp., $24.95 (paperback) Those of us interested in coffee, life and Japan will open Merry White's "Coffee Life in Japan" with high expectations. For most readers, alas, these expectations will be only partially fulfilled....
CULTURE / Books
Sep 2, 2012
A Borgesian look at a fictional Hong Kong
ATLAS: The Archaeology of an Imaginary City, by Dung Kai-cheung, translated by Anders Hansson and Bonnie S. McDougall. Columbia University Press, 2012, 192 pp., $24.50 (hardcover).
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jun 3, 2012
Portrait of a pickpocket
THE THIEF, by Fuminori Nakamura, translated by Satoko Izumo and Stephen Coates. Soho Crime, 2012, 304 pp., $23.00 (hardcover) In simpler times, in simpler tales, authors pitted heroes against villains, and there was no confusion about who wore the black hat and who the white. We no longer live in those...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Apr 15, 2012
Competent fiction
THE TOMB IN THE KYOTO HILLS AND OTHER STORIES, by Hans Brinckmann. Strategic Book Publishing, 2011, 150 pp., $12.95 (paperback). The five stories that constitute Hans Brinckmann's "The Tomb in the Kyoto Hills" are all competent. The prose seldom obtrudes on the reader's consciousness; the characters...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Apr 8, 2012
18th-century murder mystery still delivers
MURDER IN THE RED CHAMBER, by Taku Ashibe, translated by Tyran C. Grillo. Kurodahan Press, 2012, 268 pp., $16.00 (paperback). Anthony West has called "Dream of the Red Chamber," a Chinese novel written in the 18th century, "beyond question one of the great novels of all literature," and many eminent...
CULTURE / Books
Mar 25, 2012
An unserious look at the work of Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu
NORIKO SMILING, by Adam Mars-Jones. Notting Hill Editions, 2011, 239 pp., ￡12.00 (hardcover). "I can hardly be accused of being an expert on Japanese film," Adam Mars-Jones assures us early in "Noriko Smiling," his monograph on Yasujiro Ozu's "Late Spring." Such protestations at the beginning of a...
CULTURE / Books
Mar 11, 2012
Fear of conforming effects a perspective on sex
TOWARD DUSK AND OTHER STORIES, by Yoshiyuki Junnosuke, translated by Andrew Clare, introduction by James Dorsey. Kurodahan Press, 2011, 219 pp., ¥1600 (paperback). When the house in which Junnosuke Yoshiyuki grew up burned down, Lawrence Rogers tells us, "he fled the flames with only his Debussy records...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 26, 2012
A quintessential Korean epic to rival the very best of Tolstoy
LAND, by Pak Kyung-ni, translated by Agnita Tennant. UK: Global Oriental, 2011, Three Volumes, 1,172 pp., $187 (hardcover) Given its length — the 1,167 pages translated, in three volumes, into English, are only one section of a five-part, 6-million word epic — and given its scope, comparisons between...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jan 8, 2012
Sophisticated and sordid: a geisha's dance
RIVALRY, by Nagai Kafu. Translated by Stephen Snyder. Columbia University Press, 2011, 165 pp. $20.00 (paper) Nagai Kafu's "Rivalry," according to the late Edward Seidensticker, is "on the one hand nostalgic, lyrical, and reminiscent, and on the other a modern social novel, purporting to show how life...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jan 1, 2012
Unknown quantity rich in quality
ZERO and Other Fictions, by Huang Fan. Translated by John Balcom. Columbia University Press, 2011, 152 pp. $19.50 (paperback) Huang Fan, translator John Balcom informs us, is "a literary phenomenon" and "a bright star among Taiwan's so-called new generation of writers." He was, according to Balcom, "such...
CULTURE / Books
Dec 25, 2011
Fantasy alive in the real world
Fantasies are central to several of the best books published in the last year. These works are not, of course, tried and tired swords-and-lords style epics, but rather books that tackle the imaginings that have made and molded the world in which we live.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 27, 2011
Viral entertainment at full throttle
REAMDE, by Neal Stephenson. William Morrow, 2011, 1042 pp., $35 (paperback). Neal Stephenson's novels can be counted upon to offer two things: a lot of information and a lot of pages.
CULTURE / Books
Oct 23, 2011
Tying up the loose ends of gaijin life
A ROOM WHERE THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER CANNOT BE HEARD: A Novel in Three Parts, by Levy Hideo. Translated by Christopher D. Scott. Columbia University Press, 2011, 115pp., $19.95 (hardback) One is certain that more than a few reviewers of Levy Hideo's "A Room Where The Star Spangled Banner Cannot Be Heard"...
CULTURE / Books
Oct 16, 2011
Russia's grand schemers
RED SHAMBHALA: Magic, Prophecy, and Geopolitics in the Heart of Asia by Andrei Znamenski. Wheaton, Illinois: Quest Books. 268 pp., $17.95 (paper). Alexander Barchenko was a "dropout medical student and popular mystery writer." He believed that "by introducing the elite of Red Russia to Tibetan Buddhism...
CULTURE / Books
Sep 18, 2011
Ai Weiwei: an enemy of the state
AI WEIWEI'S BLOG: Writings, Interviews, and Digital Rants, 2006-2009, by Ai Weiwei. Edited and translated by Lee Ambrozy. The MIT Press, 2011, 307 pp., $24.95 (paper) The Chinese government hates the artist Ai Weiwei, and it's easy to see why. The artful criticism he posted on his blog from 2006 until...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Aug 21, 2011
Modernity on the move
Movement is central to modernity. Baudelaire's flaneur, a walker drifting through city streets, "a perfect idler, ... a passionate observer," who is a part of the urban throng even as he remains apart from it, is paradigmatic.
CULTURE / Books
Aug 14, 2011
Blavatsky's Book of the Dead
THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD: A Biography, by Donald S. Lopez, Jr. Princeton University Press, 2011, 175 pp., $19.95 (hardcover) In 2005 a journalist telephoned the eminent scholar of Buddhism and Tibetan Studies, Donald S. Lopez, Jr., and asked him whether "The Tibetan Book of the Dead" was the most...
Two of America’s biggest debt holders are dumping Treasurys
The U.S. Treasury building in Washington. Investors in Japan and China sold a pile of U.S. debt in the last quarter, just before the U.S. presidential election.
Russia launched intercontinental ballistic missile during attack on Ukraine, Kyiv says
A Yars intercontinental ballistic missile is launched during a test from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in Northern Arkhangelsk region of Russia, in this still image captured from video released on Oct. 29.
Ishiba aggravates his own political failures with diplomatic faux pas
Prime Minster Shigeru Ishiba is greeted at the APEC summit in Lima by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday. The Japanese leader was criticized for remaining seated while meeting several world leaders at the event.
Japan's 3.31 million visitors in October set monthly record
Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto in December 2023. Famous autumn leaf colors contributed to increased tourism demand last month from many markets across Asia, Europe and North America, the Japan National Tourism Organization has said.
Japan ranks last in romance satisfaction for second straight year
In a survey of 31 countries, Japan ranked last in terms of those who felt loved, with just 51% of respondents saying so.
Japan, U.K. and Italy discuss inviting more countries to joint fighter project
A new concept model of a next-generation fighter jet to be jointly developed by Japan, Britain and Italy is on display in Farnborough, Hampshire, in July.
Haruki Murakami's 'The City and Its Uncertain Walls' gives deep deja vu
For “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” translated into English by Philip Gabriel, Haruki Murakami confronts the ghosts who won't leave him alone.
Japanese expats in Asia find community through rugby
The Taiwan Fivewoods celebrate their victory at the 2023 Asian Japanese Rugby Cup in December of last year.
In Fukushima, a weekend of prose, poetry and translation
Aomori-based writer JJ Carter presented on tabletop gaming as creative inspiration for building characters and narratives.
For Dr. Nakamats, aging is just experience in action
Though he didn't win the recent gubernatorial election in Tokyo, the 96-year-old Dr. Nakamats' run was seen as inspirational in Japan's aging society.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?
By Kathryn Wortley

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