Tag - fiction

 
 

FICTION

Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 26, 2023
Jim Rion casts a keen eye on the spirit of Yamaguchi
Author, translator and certified sake professional Jim Rion puts people at the heart of sake production in his nonfiction debut, 'Discovering Yamaguchi Sake.'
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 1, 2021
'Kiba: The Fangs of Fiction' shows the gory details of modern-day publishing
Director Daihachi Yoshida brings a sympathetic lens to an industry in trouble in his film “Kiba: The Fangs of Fiction.”
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 25, 2021
‘Kiba: The Fangs of Fiction’: The politics of publishing can deliver a real bite
Warring editors of middling magazines go to battle over writers and readership in Daihachi Yoshida's intriguing drama about the publishing world.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / 20 QUESTIONS
Mar 21, 2020
Ken Mogi: Brain science and other thoughts
Ken Mogi talks about the significance of studying the brain and how he likes to use his.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / RECENTLY PUBLISHED BOOKS ABOUT JAPAN
Jan 12, 2019
'Friendship for Grown-Ups' evokes the ambiguity of everyday life
Keshiki is a chapbook series published by Strangers Press designed to showcase some of the most exciting writers working in Japan today. "Friendship for Grown-Ups" by Nao-Cola Yamazaki is the second book in the series. The recipient of five Akutagawa Prize nominations, Yamazaki's skill in evoking the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / RECENTLY PUBLISHED BOOKS ABOUT JAPAN
Sep 22, 2018
There's a story for every taste in 'Speculative Japan 4'
'Speculative Japan 4' is the latest in Kumamoto-based Kurodahan Press' mission to bring the best of Japanese science fiction and fantasy to the English-speaking world.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Dec 2, 2017
Eli K. P. William's dystopian 'The Naked World' is not a tale for technophobes
It's been a banner year for science-fiction films. In October, cinema fans flocked to see Harrison Ford in "Blade Runner 2049." And "Star Wars: The Last Jedi," featuring Mark Hamill and the late Carrie Fisher, premiers in the U.S. on Dec. 15.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Mar 4, 2017
Sawako Ariyoshi's 'The River Ki' explores characters who swim against life's current
When we read Japanese history it's easy to forget that the revolutionary changes that washed through the country from the 19th century into the 20th all took place within a single human life span.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Feb 25, 2017
'A Dark Night's Passing': Naoya Shiga sounds the depths of rootlessness
It takes a brave writer to make their main character as unlikeable as Kensaku Tokito. It is even more startling because Naoya Shiga was consciously writing within the 'I' novel tradition, where the author deliberately draws on their life story for source material.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 8, 2016
The topic of AI always raises HAL and more
An astronaut in deep space finishes up some repairs to the parabolic antenna on his spacecraft's exterior. Through his helmet's microphone, he commands the ship's controlling supercomputer, HAL 9000, "Open the pod bay doors, HAL." A second later he gets a calm, cold response in his helmet: "I'm sorry,...
CULTURE / Books
Dec 5, 2015
Hanzai Japan
Hackneyed writing and plot devices grow like kabi (mold) in crime fiction, but this anthology of 16 stories by writers in and outside Japan serves up tasty surprises. "Jigoku" by Naomi Hirahara is a heartfelt, surefooted tale by a serial killer confined to a cardboard-box in hell. Carrie Vaughn's "The...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / 20 QUESTIONS
Jul 11, 2015
Steve Spencer Baker: 'No one in their right mind gets on a frantic elevator'
Freelance company director on science fiction, social media and early incarnations of Simply Red
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 2, 2015
'Selma' and the biopic perversion of history
The Ava DuVernay-directed film 'Selma' is at the center of controversy due to its semi-snubbing by the Oscars and correct observations that it plays loose with history.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 15, 2014
Holiday gifts they'll cherish from cover to cover
As the holiday season rolls around, it's time to dash about in a mad panic in search of gifts that say "I've given this one some thought, honest." Or you can just let us do the thinking for you, with gift suggestions from our regular book reviewers — tailor-made for the Japanophile reader.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 8, 2014
Phantasm Japan
In simple terms, "Phantasm Japan" is a fantasy anthology on the theme of "light and dark, from and about Japan."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 1, 2014
Fuminori writes noir, but not as we know it
Fuminori Nakamura has won many of the major literary prizes in Japan and is quickly making the same kind of impact in the English-speaking world. His third novel to be translated into English, "Last Winter, We Parted," is out now. It's a tense, layered story centered around a young writer commissioned...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 1, 2014
Malice
"The incident took place on April 16, 1996, a Tuesday." This meditative, clever novel from the author of 2011's "The Devotion of Suspect X" begins with a journal entry by Osamu Nonoguchi, a children's author who happens upon the body of his friend and fellow writer, Kunihiko Hidaka, facedown in his office....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Oct 25, 2014
No Longer Human
Osamu Dazai's "No Longer Human" comprises a series of three fictionalized notebooks, with each increasingly darker than the last. The character writing these books, Yozo, is detached from the beginning and is afraid of human interactions, but he learns how to socialize with people by playing the clown...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Oct 25, 2014
Perfidia
This sprawling period piece from the prolific author of such works as "L.A. Confidential" and "The Black Dalia" takes place in Los Angeles and environs between Dec. 5 and 29, 1941. Central to the plot are the enigmatic slayings of a Japanese family of four in the suburb of Highland Park on the eve of...

Longform

Yasuyuki Yoshida stirs a brew in a fermentation tank at his brewery in Hakusan.
The quake that shook Noto's sake brewing tradition