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December 22, 2024
 

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KOBO ABE

A Tokyo man who scuttles around the city in a dirty cardboard box finds himself fighting off odd characters in Gakuryu Ishii’s “The Box Man.”
CULTURE / Film
Aug 17, 2024
'The Box Man': Absurdist Kobo Abe adaptation speaks to the present
Director Gakuryu Ishii makes the novel’s philosophical musings and metaphorical conundrums more audience-friendly while saying something true about the modern day.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 13, 2021
‘Woman of the Photographs’: An existentialist fable for the Instagram age
Takeshi Kushida's debut feature playfully riffs on Kobo Abe's novel, “The Woman in the Dunes,” in a surrealist fable about the pitfalls of image retouching.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Aug 1, 2020
‘A Late Chrysanthemum’: A short story collection full of pathos and maturity
This anthology of short stories may tend toward the morally dubious, but it's a solid introduction to literary masters of the 20th century.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Dec 8, 2018
Kobo Abe's 'The Ark Sakura': A surreal narrative worth reading twice
'The Ark Sakura,' Kobo Abe's puzzling, dream-like narrative about an obese recluse living in a vast underground bunker, is a dense interlacing of punning wordplay, psychological excavation and surreal imagery.
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Oct 13, 2018
Kenzaburo Oe's 'Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness': Reflections on father-son relationships
In Oe's 'Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness,' the lifelong sense of obsession and profound sense of guilt engendered within his own familial history finds acute literary expression.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Jun 9, 2018
Kobo Abe's 'Kangaroo Notebook' is absurdist, surrealist and occasionally exasperating
Is this bizarrely oneiric journey, daikon sprouts and all, really just Kobo Abe's exteriorized exploration of a tortured psyche?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Apr 7, 2018
Lose yourself in 'The Face of Another,' Abe's existentialist fantasy
Losing face and the public humiliation associated with it is something that we all dread but, in Kobo Abe's 1964 fantasy 'The Face of Another,' the metaphorical term is made real.
CULTURE / Books
Aug 29, 2015
Mishima, Murakami and the elusive Nobel Prize
Will he or won't he? It's about the time of year when the Japanese media descends into a frenzy of speculation about whether Haruki Murakami will land the Nobel Prize in literature, becoming the first Japanese literary laureate since Kenzaburo Oe in 1994.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 12, 2015
A disfigured face drags ghosts back to postwar Berlin in 'Phoenix'
In Kobo Abe's 1964 novel "Tanin no Kao" ("The Face of Another"), a scientist left disfigured by an industrial accident dons a synthetic mask and poses as a different man in order to seduce his estranged wife. When she responds rather too readily to his advances, he reacts angrily, only to discover that...
JAPAN / History
Jan 1, 2015
Donald Keene reflects on 70-year Japan experience
My first visit to Japan was very short, only a week or so in December 1945. Three months earlier, while on the island of Guam, I had heard the broadcast by the Emperor announcing the end of the war. Soon afterward, I was sent from Guam to China to serve as an interpreter between the Americans and the...
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Dec 27, 2014
The Woman in the Dunes
Certain books must be read, even with the knowledge that the reading will be painful. Kobo Abe's masterpiece "The Woman in the Dunes" is one such book. Called an "existential fable," it is no surprise that Abe's favorite writers were Franz Kafka, Friedrich Nietzsche and Edgar Allan Poe.
Nippon Steel alleges undue White House influence on doomed deal review
U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the economy at the Brookings Institution in Washington on Dec. 10.
Record 78% of people in Japan feel anxious, government survey finds
The public opinion survey on people's lives, conducted by the Cabinet Office, found that 28.1% of respondents think that their standard of living is at a lower-middle level among the general public — the highest percentage to give that response in 35 years.
Police raided suspect's home to arrest him after fatal Kitakyushu stabbing
Broken window glass is seen at Masanori Hirabaru's house in Kitakyushu's Kokuraminami Ward.
Taiwan lawmakers brawl over bills that would 'damage democracy'
Lawmakers from the Democratic Progressive Party and opposition party Kuomintang brawl in parliament in Taipei on Friday.
Mother hopes for reunion with daughter ensnared by Tokyo host clubs
The Kabukicho district in Tokyo, where the daughter of a woman in her 60s fell deeply into the host club culture.
Casual workouts, cool living, ‘complete’ food: Japan’s health trends of 2024
In 2024, efficiency trumped effort among Japan's fitness-focused aspirants.
The mighty Mekong River's growing plastic problem
A group of elephant keepers in Chiang Saen, Thailand, remove plastic waste from the Ruak River, a tributary of the Mekong River, as a pair of Asian elephants bathe behind them.
Japanese officials inspect Yokota Air Base over PFAS concerns
The Yokota Air Base in western Tokyo in September 2019. An inspection of the base by Japanese government officials on Friday came amid public pressure to investigate suspected links between the use of PFAS-containing firefighting foam by the U.S. base and contamination of soil and groundwater in western Tokyo.
Crime numbers rise in Japan for second straight year
A police officer stands in front of the residence of a man alleged to have stabbed two junior high school students in Kitakyushu.
A year of Oscar wins and a quiet push for diversity
Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “Evil Does Not Exist,” released in Japanese theaters in April, sharply dramatizes the clash between rural and urban values. The film won five awards at the 2023 Venice Film Festival, including the second-place Silver Lion prize.

Podcast

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

Longform

Yasuyuki Yoshida stirs a brew in a fermentation tank at his brewery in Hakusan.
The quake that shook Noto's sake brewing tradition
By Alex K.T. Martin

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