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November 22, 2024
 

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Steve Finbow

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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 have...
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 as "Oyayubi...
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 Wind-Up...
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...
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.
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.
Ruling coalition and DPP strike last-minute deal over economic policy
DPP policy chief Makoto Mahaguchi speaks at the party's policy gathering in Tokyo on Wednesday.
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

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

The celebrated artist ‘updating’ the kimono
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