Japanese Magical Realism: Tomihiko Morimi and The Night Is Short, Walk on Girl
Magical realism is a literary genre famous for unexplained fantastical encounters that pop-up in the otherwise everyday world. We’re going to take a look at magical realism in Japanese fiction. We’ll ...
6 Jan 202344min
Cats in Japanese Literature: Sakutaro Hagiwara and "The Town of Cats"
Today, we’re going to look at cats in Japanese literature. We’ll start with the history of cats in Japan. We’ll move on to cats in Japanese folklore and fiction, including the work of Haruki Murakami....
28 Nov 202242min
The Smile of the Mountain Witch: Minako Oba
In this episode… Is she a man-eating crone? Is she a lonely wanderer? Or is she a sensual matriarch? However you define her, she’s the yama-uba—Japan’s legendary mountain witch. Notes and sources at ...
25 Okt 202241min
Writing about Japan's "Have-Nots": Yu Miri and Tokyo Ueno Station
In this episode… Post-bubble Japan. The history of socially-conscious Japanese literature. And Yu Miri’s Tokyo Ueno Station, a powerful examination of Tokyo by one of the most invisible people imagina...
22 Sep 202244min
Translating Japanese Women: Sakaya Murata and Convenience Store Woman
In all our episodes so far, we’ve talked almost exclusively about what Japanese literature looks like in Japan. But we’re English-speakers and English-readers on an English-language podcast about Japa...
1 Sep 202242min
Banana and the Bubble: Banana Yoshimoto and Kitchen
In this episode, we’re talking about Japan’s bubble economy of the 1980s and the work of Banana Yoshimoto. Runaway consumer spending. Everything kawaii. A Nobel laureate’s contempt. And a young author...
23 Aug 202245min
Literature of Change in the 1960s: Yukio Mishima and Kenzaburo Oe
Today, we’re talking about the literature of change in the 1960s—how writers took on questions about what it meant to be Japanese in the post-war era and what was the continuing role of Japanese tradi...
14 Aug 202239min
Japanese Literature in WWII: Akiyuki Nosaka
Today we’re talking about the 1930s and 40s in Japan—fascism, World War II, and the American Occupation. In particular, how did 20 years of censorship shape Japanese literature? We're also taking a l...
12 Jul 202241min
