Reviews
Rich Lives
During my years in Japan, I met people living in the countryside who were engaged in non-mainstream work…. I saw that, for all their differences…they all share…an uncompromising insistence on having time in one’s life…
Read MoreThe Science of Satoyama
Japan’s traditional rural landscape, comprised of villages bordered by fields and tended woodlands, is known as “satoyama.”
Read MoreThe Classic Kyoto Guide
For the traveler who wants to savor the hidden charm and beauty of this ancient city’s backstreets at a leisurely pace, Diane Durston’s updated and fully revised edition of her 1986 book, Old Kyoto, offers a warm and personable guide.
Read MoreChronicling Japan’s Indelible Art
Traditional Japanese tattooing is one of Japan’s high arts and is widely recognized by the rest of the world as the pinnacle of the craft, though its virtues are widely denied in its native land.
Read MoreA Year at Eiheiji
Eiheiji’s reputation as the toughest Zen training center in Japan is born out in this memoir…after Nonomura passes through the Dragon Gate with seven other acolytes (three of whom will end up in the hospital within the first six months), he enters a kind of “boot-camp” hell…
Read MoreThe Shape of Tokyo’s Art Scene
Art Space Tokyo charts the ever-shifting Tokyo art scene via essays and interviews with curators, collectors, artists, journalists, art fair directors, critics and bloggers.
Read MoreStories of Forgetting, Remembering and Ritual
How do you deal with trauma until this or that civil society organization and tribunal comes to you with promises to heal your wounds? Mãnoa’s Maps of Reconciliation is a compendium of writings and images that grapple with this very difficult question.
Read MoreTea Tourism and Trade
In addition to promoting stunningly beautiful rows of tea bushes and romantic “exotic” peoples, there’s money to be made welcoming eco-tourists to stalk wild tea plants, visit plantations, gardens, processing facilities, markets and auctions.
Read MoreSex in the City and Memoirs of a Geisha: The Way of Tea(se)
Memoirs of a Geisha could have explored in good story-telling fashion the intimacy and fullness’s of one geisha’s life from the inside out. But no! The filmmakers fashioned yet another Orientalist representation of traditional Asian femininity crafted in the frozen imagination of a Western man…
Read MoreI Sing the City Eclectic
Veteran resident John Dougill offers a peek behind Kyoto’s glorious façade to reveal the history and workings of a remarkable culture…
Read MoreHatching Beauty: Life in Tonoharu
The art illustrating that plot remains exquisite…especially notable are the views Martinson gives us of mundane Japanese life, scenes that any resident will recognize.
Read MoreAn Interview with Yiyun Li
“My characters are always very stubborn. One thing all my characters want is connection with the world. With other people. But that connection, often times, is either disrupted or not provided or somehow messed up by the world…”
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