author

 
Menu
Search
 
July 19, 2024
 

Today's print edition

Home Delivery
Subscribe for more access
Steve Finbow

Meta

Twitter

@stevedfinbow

Steve Finbow
Steve Finbow writes book reviews and interviews authors. His most recent book, "Allen Ginsberg: Critical Lives," was published in 2012. He flits between Japan and England.
CULTURE / Books
Sep 19, 2010
A life lived for others
Sixty-five years after the Allied victory over Japan in the Pacific War, Paul Glynn chronicles the life of his brother and fellow member of the Order of the Rising Sun, Father Tony Glynn.
CULTURE / Books
Sep 12, 2010
Nara legends, myths and other weird tales
From May 1974 until March 1985, Kenji Inui wrote the column "Hometown Legends" for the prefectural news magazine Kensei Nara.
CULTURE / Books
Aug 22, 2010
Forbidden romance in Saigon
United by wars against the United States, yet divided by the economic results and effects of those wars, Vietnam and Japan are the real subjects of Aska Mochizuki's Knopf Kodansha Prize-winning novel "Spinning Tropics."
CULTURE / Books
Jul 18, 2010
Outer limits of kinky sex and violence
Bored with life and bullied by an overbearing mother, 17-year-old Mari finds a painful solace in the company of a translator of Russian, 50 years her senior. Yoko Ogawa's "Hotel Iris," beautifully translated by Stephen Snyder, deals with obsession, fetishism, loneliness and the multifaceted nature of...
CULTURE / Books
Jun 20, 2010
I left my bloody heart in London
A complicated tale, simply and well told, "King Death" is Toby Litt's 12th work of fiction, the "K" in his alphabetic collection and the second of his novels to be set mostly in a hospital.
CULTURE / Books
Jun 13, 2010
Sweeping tale of love, murder and guilt in old Nagasaki
"Black Swan Green," David Mitchell's fourth novel concerning a year in the life of 13-year-old Jason Taylor, reads like a first novel with its autobiographical backdrop and references to 1980s British pop culture, advertisements and brands. "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet" returns Mitchell to...
CULTURE / Books
May 30, 2010
Inspirational voice from the land of Gaza: What if postwar Japan had a similar history?
Beginning in a Gaza Strip refugee camp with the author taking tearful leave of his home to travel to the United States of America, this "untold story" is a double memoir/biography charting the lives of Ramzy Baroud's father and relatives and the history of the Palestinian people and Gaza.
CULTURE / Books
May 9, 2010
From a public toilet to outer space, sliding in filth all the way
In his 1989 essay "Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast" Tom Wolfe argues: "It was realism that created the 'absorbing' or 'gripping' quality that is peculiar to the novel, the quality that makes the reader feel that he has been pulled not only into the setting of the story but also into the minds and central...
CULTURE / Books
Apr 4, 2010
Worldview colored by blood
A truly international thriller, "The Man From Beijing" moves from a hamlet in Sweden to China, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, with Copenhagen and London thrown into the mix. The novel also moves in time, from the present day back to the China and U.S. of the 1860s, where it is concerned with the travels and...
CULTURE / Books
Mar 21, 2010
Distilled drama from a society in ferment
Think of gin and one thinks of England. Think of tequila and Mexico, vodka and Russia, brandy and France. Think of sake and one thinks only of Japan.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 14, 2010
Untamed past taken by the tail
Jid Lee, now a professor of English at Middle Tennessee State University, begins this memoir with the tale of the killing of her great-great-great-great- great-great grandmother by a tiger. A Buddhist monk predicted the death, saying it would bring rewards to her descendants. Her "sacrifice" is the touchstone...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 14, 2010
Strange bird Sanshiro
From Oct. 28, 1900, until Dec. 5, 1902, Natsume Soseki lived in Clapham, a district of South London. Ordered to England by the Meiji government, Soseki, without sufficient funds to study formally and with little else to do apart from the occasional cycle ride or part-time tutoring, spent most of this...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 24, 2010
Become a slave to rhythm
In the introduction to the first English translation of her work, Takako Arai refers to poems as vacant lots, alluding to the economic suffering of her hometown Kiryu, Gunma Prefecture, and to the open spaces left by terrorism and bombs in New York City and Belgrade.
CULTURE / Books
Jan 10, 2010
How do writers come up with this stuff?
Reading Mieko Kanai's stories is an unsettling experience, like swimming underwater, existing in a new and shimmering medium, and coming up for air between stories just to make sure everything is still real — or as real as you remember it. Concurrently, it feels as if one were skating on a slippery...
CULTURE / Books
Nov 15, 2009
Pants-droppingly good rants
THE GREAT FLOOD, by Frank Spignese. Printed Matter Press, 2009, 108 pp., $20 (paperback with CD) Frank Spignese's short book of poetry, "The Great Flood," comes with an audio CD of Frank reading pieces from the collection. I delved into the book first and then listened to the CD. Maybe I should...
CULTURE / Books
Oct 25, 2009
Kafkaesque tale for the new porn era
THE APPRENTICESHIP OF BIG TOE P, by Rieko Matsuura. Kodansha International, 2009, 448 pp., ¥2,730 (hardcover) As Kazumi Mano awoke one morning from a troubled dream, she found her big toe transformed into a monstrous penis. So it starts — Kafkaesque but oh so Japanese. First published in 1993...
CULTURE / Books
Oct 11, 2009
Behind the sinister science of sleep
PAPRIKA, by Yasutaka Tsutsui. Alma Books, 2009, 350pp., £9.99 (paperback) Comparisons to Haruki Murakami and J.G. Ballard on the cover of this book do Tsutsui little service. His novels do not have the steely gaze and cool prose of Ballard's "Crash," nor the magical-realist tint of Murakami's "The...
CULTURE / Books
Aug 2, 2009
Occult novel dredged from Tokyo's shadowy history
To say the second book in David Peace's "Tokyo trilogy" is haunting would be to start this review with a cliche of which "Occupied City" is devoid. Yet the book stays with you, hunkers down in your memory like some needling parasite.
CULTURE / Books
Jun 28, 2009
Seduced by the stereotype: a meeting and parting of East and West
A prequel to her autobiographical best-selling novel "Fear and Trembling," Amelie Nothomb's "Tokyo Fiancee" is a slight tale of love and doubting in Japan. The narrative overlaps the time period of "Fear and Trembling," recounting the years between Amelie's return to Japan from Belgium after 16 years...
CULTURE / Books
May 17, 2009
Casting from which 'Audition'?
Ten years after the release of Takashi Miike's film of the novel, Ryu Murakami's "Audition (Odishon)" has finally been translated into English. Aoyama, a fortysomething documentary maker, decides it is about time he remarried. His beautiful, talented and understanding wife Ryoko has been dead for seven...
Yen rally shakes markets, sending dollar to weakest level since May
The yen rose to the ¥155 range against the dollar, the highest in almost two months, in Tokyo on Thursday.
Cutting ties with JCP not easy for CDP despite Renho's defeat
When Renho (center) announced her candidacy for the Tokyo gubernatorial election on May 27, the head of the Japanese Communist Party's secretariat, Akira Koike (far left), was also in attendance.
Trump's VP pick signals stronger focus on China
Former U.S. President and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to his vice presidential pick, Sen. J.D. Vance, during the second day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Tuesday.
Japan’s minimum wage might not budge much if corporate fears prevail
Unionists hold a rally in Tokyo in April. Households' real cash earnings have been falling year on year for more than two years, with the weakening of the yen making the situation only more difficult as prices of imported goods increase rapidly.
New uniforms to help protect athletes against secret photography
Members of Japan's women's Tokyo 2020 Olympic volleyball team. Along with table tennis and hockey, volleyball is set to be one of the sports at the 2024 Paris Games in which Japan's female players will don new uniforms that help protect them against secret photography while they compete.
After Tokyo Olympic disappointment, Nadeshiko Japan look for redemption
Japan's Hikaru Kitagawa dribbles past a defender during an Olympic qualifying match against North Korea at National Stadium in Tokyo in February.
How to beat Japan’s summer heat in ways better for the planet
Tenugui towels hang up to dry at a dyeing company in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture, on May 8. The durable and versatile tenugui, which many people have in their homes, can be used in many ways to cool one’s body.
After Trump shooting, U.S. presidential race might take a violent turn
United States Secret Service Counter Snipers stand guard on a rooftop during a campaign rally for U.S. President Donald Trump in Avoca, Pennsylvania, in 2020.
No AC this summer? No problem (for me).
Think air conditioning is a requirement for a Tokyo summer? Think again.
She’s paying ¥1 million to help behind the scenes at the Paris Olympics
Mai Tarumi, who previously volunteered at the postponed Tokyo Olympics in 2021, has a travel budget of ¥1 million for her trip to volunteer at the Paris Games.

Podcast

You can often see generations of families enjoying performances together at Fuji Rock Festival.
Japan’s summer music festivals are feeling the heat in more ways than one

Longform

Akiko Trush says her experience with the neurological disorder dystonia left her feeling like she wanted to chop her own hand off.
The neurological disorder that 'kills culture'
By Tomoko Otake

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Festival overcomes a nuclear accident and COVID
Festival overcomes a nuclear accident and COVID

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTS note

Read more

SUPPLEMENTS BINDER