Tag - literature

 
 

LITERATURE

Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Sep 27, 2014
Read up on books about books about Japan
Revving up the metabolism of culture with the pulse of new artistic voices, a good literary journal doesn't usually have much to do with profit — it's all about circulation. Japanese literary journals enjoy a healthy transmission here, thanks to the financial backing of big publishing firms. How do...
WORLD
Jul 9, 2014
Harry Potter returns in new J.K. Rowling short story
Harry Potter has returned in a short story posted online by J.K. Rowling that features her best-selling hero at a school reunion, approaching the age of 34 and showing a few gray hairs.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / JAPAN TIMES BLOGROLL
Apr 17, 2014
Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai: Tales of the Weird and the Strange
While many overseas scholars are attracted to the retrained aesthetics of Japanese arts and letters, it was the country's wild and wooly folklore that captivated Zack Davisson, an American writer and translator. While pursuing his masters degree in Japanese studies Davisson immersed himself in the mysterious...
WORLD
Mar 23, 2014
'Poo' book scoops odd title award
A tongue-in-cheek book that purports to deal with an awkward but critical issue, "How to Poo on a Date," has scooped an award for the Oddest Book Title of the Year.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Jan 19, 2014
'Pilgrims' flock to site of death in Alaska's wilds
The old bus in which Chris McCandless died in 1992 in the interior of Alaska — made famous in Jon Krakauer's best-selling book "Into the Wild" and later in the Sean Penn film of the same name — long ago lost its windows to souvenir hunters.
COMMENTARY
Jan 12, 2014
Stories that enable us to make sense of our lives
How are we to make sense of ourselves and the world if not by reading stories? For isn't this how we've talked to ourselves — soothed, stimulated and improved ourselves — for thousands of years?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Jan 12, 2014
'Tiger mom' author stokes controversy with latest trope
Almost exactly three years ago, the Wall Street Journal published an excerpt from a book that remains its most commented article of all time. Under the fiery title, "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior," Yale law professor Amy Chua set out a manifesto for motherhood in proudly recounting her ironfisted...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Nov 24, 2013
'The Stranger': Nobel Prize-winning author Camus an outsider in France
It is a century since French Nobel Prize-winning author Albert Camus was born — and more than 50 years since he died in an accident on an icy road — yet the polemics over his legacy and "mysterious" death rumble on.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Nov 18, 2013
Doris Lessing, Nobel-winning writer, dies at 94
Doris Lessing, a Nobel Prize-winning novelist and essayist whose deeply autobiographical books and piercing social commentary made her one of the most significant and wide-ranging writers since World War II, died Sunday at her home in London. She was 94.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Oct 28, 2013
Copyright extension opponents ready for new fight
For most of history, a great character or story or song has passed from its original creator into the public domain. Shakespeare and Charles Dickens and Beethoven are long dead, but Macbeth and Oliver Twist and the Fifth Symphony are part of our shared cultural heritage, free to be used or reinvented...
Japan Times
WORLD
Oct 11, 2013
For Nobel laureate Alice Munro, the subject is 'simply life itself'
In describing Alice Munro, the Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood once wrote: "She's the kind of writer about whom it is often said — no matter how well-known she becomes — that she ought to be better known."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Sep 21, 2013
Protagonist returns with the burdens of later life
In popular Irish mythology it's often said that the seeds of the Celtic Tiger were sown shortly after Italia '90, when the country's team reached the quarter-finals of the World Cup soccer tournament for the first time.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Sep 14, 2013
Making Kobayashi's works sound as if written today
For most readers, Japanese literature may suggest romantic/erotic works by Nagai Kafu, elegantly classical and humorously or sinisterly "kinky" fiction by Tanizaki, or coolly stylish contemporary works by Haruki Murakami. For such readers, this volume will come as a shock — both refreshing and depressing....
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Sep 6, 2013
Big asteroid named after Chilean cult filmmaker
Paris AFP-JIJI
Japan Times
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Sep 4, 2013
Acclaimed sci-fi author Frederik Pohl dies at 93
Frederik Pohl, who helped shape and popularize science fiction as an influential agent, editor and award-winning author, died Sept. 2 at a hospital near his home in Palatine, Illinois. He was 93.
Japan Times
WORLD
Aug 31, 2013
Irish poet, 'Beowulf' translator Seamus Heaney dies
Seamus Heaney, the Irish poet whose verse captured the transcendent power, darkness and humanity of his conflicted homeland, died Friday at a hospital in Dublin. He was 74.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Aug 21, 2013
Influential crime novelist Leonard dies at 87
Elmore Leonard, a masterful crime novelist whose razor-sharp dialogue and indelibly realized lowlifes earned him an unusual mix of mass-market appeal and highbrow acclaim, dies at his home in Michigan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
May 26, 2013
Women's writings provide window on Tokugawa life
The Edo Period in Japan seems pretty much a feminist's nightmare. Samurai rule and strict societal boundaries confined women within the neo-Confucianistic bonds of a deeply patriarchal society.
CULTURE / Books
May 19, 2013
Ranpo's novella of a desecrated grave continues to send shivers
There has long been a taste in Japan for the bizarre and abnormal. The experimental Taisho Era was no exception. A desire for sensory experience existed even in cinema. During a funeral scene, for example, an attendant might light sticks of incense in the theater, drawing the audience into the ritual....

Longform

The sun shines from behind a waving Philippine flag at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial.
Eighty years after the Battle of Manila, old foes forge new ties