All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Sam Betts and David Boyd (Europa Editions) ~Janet Brown

What happens to a person when she realizes at the age of thirty-four she has never made a choice? For her entire life Fuyuko has floated into opportunities when they’re offered to her, a brief sexual encounter, a job, a chance to make more money, passively and without pleasure. 

She has one talent that her work as a proofreader has uncovered. She has an eye for mistakes and seeking them out becomes an obsession.

Without friends in her workplace, she accepts an offer to leave and work as a freelancer, at home. Living under no externally imposed schedule, Fuyuko works fifteen hours a day, falls into bed, and wakes up to do the same thing again. The only deviation in her robotic existence comes on her birthday which falls on Christmas Eve. Observing this alone, she's adopted the habit of going out for a walk on that night, a solitary observer, watching "layers and layers of clouds like an enormous silent creature, hung in the night sky."

Suddenly, almost without knowing it, Fuyuko makes a choice. She chooses to drink, at first out of curiosity and then as a compulsion, finding that sake and beer "let her escape her usual self."  

One evening, hovering on the edge of passing out next to her kitchen wastebasket that holds unread promotional flyers, she begins to correct the errors that they contain. Suddenly one of them penetrates her alcoholic haze. A "culture center" offers a stunning assortment of community college courses and Fuyuko makes her second choice. She decides to sign up for one of the classes.

While waiting for her turn in a queue, sake rises up in her throat and she realizes she's going to be violently ill. On her way to the women's restroom, she's sick. Just sober enough to realize she may have spattered the shoes of a man she stood beside as she regurgitated, she finds him later to make an incoherent apology.

Then on her second attempt to enroll in a class, she passes out while sitting on a sofa. When she comes to, she finds her bag has been stolen and the man who had received her drunken apology on her first visit is by her side, taking care of her.

So begins an improbable friendship between two lonely people. Mitsutsuka is a 58-year-old bachelor who tells Fuyuko he teaches physics. In a series of meetings at a little coffee shop, the two of them discover a shared affinity for light. Fuyuko has no idea of why this natural phenomenon attracts her and Mitsutsuka is happy to give her a crash course in explanation. He gives her a book that explains the properties of light and a cassette disc that holds a lullaby composed by Chopin. 

When Fuyuko finally listens to this music, she hears "the sound of melted light," as if "the night is breathing." Her senses begin to open. When she meets Mitsutsuka, she discovers his coat holds "the smell of winter." When he tells her "At night only half the world remains," he gives her the reason for her nocturnal birthday walks.

But both of them have undisclosed secrets. Fuyuko has always come to their meetings when she’s drunk. Mitsutsuka is bathed in a hidden shame. These secrets keep their meetings and their nascent feelings of attraction within the realm of fantasy--until Fuyuko stops drinking, a choice that changes their friendship.

Some novels have the quality of a watercolor painting and All the Lovers in the Night goes from an undeveloped black and white photographic negative to the soft, blurred beauty of pale water-drenched colors, carefully put on paper. This strange little novel of a late-blooming life becomes more and more unforgettable with every passing page, defying any fictional category and skirting any conventional plot. It may, however, launch many walks through many city nights, with readers searching for the elusive beauty that Mieko Kawakami has shown them.

Milky Way Railroad by Kenji Miyazaki, translated by Joseph Sigrist and D.M. Stroud (Stone Bridge Press) ~Ernie Hoyt

As a longtime resident and ex-at living in Japan (21 years in Tokyo and 10 years in Aomori), I find my love for Japanese literature has grown over the past few years. Recently, I have been able to read many Japanese books in their original language. I also continue to read a number of Japanese titles and authors that have been translated into English.

The latest translation work I read is Kenji Miyazawa’s Milky Way Railroad which has also been translated into English with the titles Night on the Galactic Railway, Night Train to the Stars, and Fantasy Railway into the Stars. 

Miyazawa is also an author of short stories which has been compiled in the book Once and Forever : The Tales of Kenji Miyazawa (Asia by the Book, April 2020) and has written a series of children’s picture books - The Shining Feet, The Bears of Mt. Nametoko, and Crossing the Snow (Asia by the Book, September 2022). 

Milky Way Railroad is by far Kenji Miyazawa’s most popular work. It was originally published posthumously in the Japanese language as 銀河鉄道の夜 (Ginga Testudo no Yoru) by Bunkoshoin in 1934, a year after Miyazawa’s death. 

The story is about a boy named Giovanni who lives in the town of Hanamaki in Iwate Prefecture in Japan’s Tohoku region. He is the son of a poor fisherman whose father is miles away in Hokkaido. Giovanni’s best friend is Campanella who is the son of a professor.

The time of year is during Tanabata, known in English as the Star Festival. It is celebrated every year on the seventh day of the seventh month. It is a story about Cowherd (Hikoboshi) and Weaver (Orihime), star-crossed lovers who can only meet this one time during the year. 

On the night of the Star Festival, Giovanni was to get milk for his sick mother. He told his mother he would for an hour before coming home. As he was headed down to the river, he heard a bunch of voices. They were his classmates. Before he could say, “Going down the river?”, one of the boys started to mock him. Soon the other boys joined in as well. 

Giovanni also noticed that Campanella was with them. He was silent with a “rather pained smile on his face”. It looked to Giovanni that Campanella might have said, “You won’t be angry, will you?” Giovanni passed by the group of boys as they continued to whistle and shouted things at him. 

Giovanni felt so lonely that he just started to run. He had forgotten his promise to his mother about bringing home some milk. His only thought was, “I don’t have anywhere to play and be happy” and was thinking “and the others treat me like an animal”.

He continued running and stopped on a bridge to catch his breath. He “felt like crying but knew he shouldn’t”. After a short rest, he started to run again and ran up a hill that was located behind a farm. At the top of the hill, Giovanni looked to the sky and saw the Milky Way. 

While Giovanni was standing at the top of the hill, he heard a voice saying, “Milky Way Station! Milky Way Station!”. The next thing Giovanni knows is that he is on the Milky Way Express. Not only that, his friend Campanella is also on the train. 

Unbeknownst to Giovanni, Campanella has already drowned and he is on the train of death. The train stops at various places with people getting on and off but Giovanni will be the only person to return to Earth. 

Although Giovanni met other passengers on the train, he felt a deep sadness when the got off. At least Campanella was with him. As the train continued its journey, Campanella looked out the window and shouted, “Hey, don’t those fields look great, and everyone’s gathered there, and - that must be Heaven itself! And there’s my mother!”

Giovanni looked to where Campanella was pointing but all he saw was dim white smoke and two telephones across a river band that looked as if their arms were embraced. Giovanni was feeling an indescribable loneliness and said to his friend, “Campanella, we’ll stick together, right?” but when he turned to look at his friend, there was no Campanella, “only the dark green velvet seat”.

The most important message Miyazawa was trying to get across with this story is about having compassion for other people. Although Miyazawa’s characters live in a rural town in Iwate Prefecture in Japan, he gave them Italian names to give the story universal appeal. Miyazawa teaches us through Giovanni, that we all have our own paths to walk and it is up to yourself to find happiness.

The Place of Shells by Mai Ishizawa, translated by Polly Barton (New Directions) ~Ernie Hoyt

Mai Ishizawa is a Japanese novelist who has lived in Germany since 2017. She was born in 1980 and grew up in Sendai in Miyagi Prefecture. Her debut novel, Place of Shells, was originally published in the Japanese language as 貝に続く場所にて (Kai ni Tsuzuku Basho nite) in the June, 2021 issue of the  literary magazine 群像 (Gunzo). It was later published into a book by Bungei Shuju and won the Akutagawa Prize, Japan’s distinguished literary prize, in 2021, along with Taiwanese writer Li Kotomi for her book 彼岸花が咲く島 (Higanbana ga saku shima), translated as The Island Where Red Spider Lilies Bloom although the book is not yet available in English.

It is the summer of 2020. A Japanese student living in the German city of Gottingen is waiting at a train station to meet her old friend Nomiya. It had been nine years since the protagonist last saw her friend. He had died in the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami and his body was never found. Now he’s here in Gottingen, a city known for its Planetenweg, a planetary path made up of scale models of the solar system.

The narrator learned from their mutual friend Sawata that Nomiya would be coming to Gottingham. Although the town was still on a lockdown because of the corona pandemic, the restrictions were slowly being lifted. The narrator went to meet Nomiya with her roommate’s dog.

For the narrator, it was Nomiya’s gestures, rather than his face or his body, “that the nine year gap was attempting to be bridged”. She felt a sense of relief that he appeared solid enough and noticed the sun didn’t shine through him. “He may have been dead but he still cast a shadow at his feet”.

The dog was watching Nomiya from a slight distance. The dog didn’t move and seemed to be a bit hesitant in approaching Nomiya. The narrator guessed that the dog “didn’t realize Nomiya was a ghost, and yet it seemed his behaviour toward any type of stranger was consistent, with no distinction between the living and the dead”.

Seeing Nomiya again after the 2011 Tohoku disaster, made her think about where she was and what she was doing on that day. She was at her family’s house up in the mountains so the thought of a tsunami never even crossed her mind. She remembered experiencing the tremors. The quaking “made cracks appear in the walls in our house. Most of the tiles in the bathroom cracked and fell off, the books came flying from the shelves, various pieces of furniture toppled over, and almost all our tableware broke”.

Ninomiya was in his house in Ishinomake, one of the cities located along the coast in Miyagi Prefecture. Neither the narrator, nor any of Nomiya’s friends could piece together what happened to him after the quake. They “couldn’t work out where and how he had been swallowed up by the water”. Their hopes of understanding what happened to Nomiya in his final moments left a mystery. 

Nomiya’s entire house had been desecrated by the tsunami and his entire family had been swallowed up by the water, separately from one another. The sea, “which had remained a stable presence throughout the majority of Nomiya’s time, hadn’t left behind even the slightest trace of their memories”.

After Nomiya’s arrival, the narrator’s roommate’s dog began to dig and bring different items from the forest. A model of Pluto that was part of the Planetenweg (a scale model walking path that maps out the solar system), and was disappearing and reappearing. The strange manifestations all seem to center around the fading memories of people who died in unusual or uncertain circumstances.

The Place of Shells is a surrealistic journey into memories, lost and found. For many of the characters, it is a search for someone or something that has been lost and forgotten. The story makes one open their eyes to death and its effect on those still living. 

Polly Barton, who has also translated a number of Japanese titles into English such as Spring Garden by Tomoka Shibasaki (Asia by the Book, March 2026), Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda (Asia by the Book, May 2022), Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa (Asia by the Book, August 2025), and Butter by Asako Yuzuki (Asia by the Book, September 2025), makes Ishikawa’s prose sound poetic and haunting and makes you think about those friends who have passed that you haven’t thought about in a long time.

The Seekers of Deer Creek by Thao Thai (Mariners Books) ~Janet Brown

In the refuge of a deserted forest, two little girls draw "worlds more beautiful and sensible than their own." Their mother has vanished, never to return, and in the wake of her abandonment, the girls' father has become violent. Vivi looks at her younger sister's face and mentally mixes the colors that would replicate "the tender pink of consequence" that marks Calla's slapped cheek. 

"Stay close to your sister," their mother told Vivi just before she left and Vivi takes these final words as a command. They give a deeper layer to the children's game the girls learned from their father, the Vietnamese version of hide-and-seek that was perfected by warfare, Seekers or trốn tìm. Calla is expert at running and hiding. Vivi is expert at worrying and searching.

Both girls become steeped in the art world, Calla as a painter who puzzles gallery visitors, Vivi as an art conservator at one of Chicago's leading art museums. Their lives have diverged; only at their father's funeral do they establish a tenuous form of contact. 

Calla is still the wild child, drawn to chaos and addiction. Vivi is on the brink of a stability she's always wanted, recently engaged to a museum colleague. Samuel is gentle and careful, a single parent who "sees  the world as it should be, not as it was." She and Samuel share a project, an exhibit that centers around The Blue Mirror,a painting by a Vietnamese French surrealist painter, K.P. Ly.

This orderly existence falls apart when Calla bursts in with a strange link to this painting and its creator, a sketch and a letter found in their father's memorabilia. Vivi shrugs this off until she sees Ly's painting. She discovers pentimento and against all protocol, goes below the layers of paint, and unearths a whole other work of art, one that is the same as the sketch that Calla discovered. 

Against her better judgement, Vivi leaves her carefully constructed life and joins Calla in a quest to uncover the layers of family mysteries that span three continents. It's a search that takes the sisters from their hometown of Deer Creek to an estate in Provence and finally to the Mekong Delta and the Vietnamese village where their father's family waits for them. 

Thao Thai, author of Banyan Moon (Asia by the Book, July 2023,) goes far beyond the "warped little fairy tale" that Vivi claims is the life that she and Calla have wrestled with since childhood. Thai explores the bond between sisters that is perhaps the most powerful and potentially destructive relationship of all, with love, honesty, and without a sugar-coated resolution. Mirroring the fairy tales that echo throughout this novel, she gives each sister what she's always wanted but with the slightly bitter twist that's true to the times we live in.She skillfully skirts melodrama while not shying away from the drama that exists in every family, disclosing secrets and mysteries that never ring false. Studding the narrative with evocative details and careful research, she offers the scent of crushed lilies, the smell of "fried scallions and wet dog" that clings to a dilapidated taxi in Ho Chi Minh City, and the "pungency of scorched cheese and coffee grounds" that clings to a deserted kitchen. She defines what it means to "rediscover oneself in a river of names" as the shadows gain solid forms and bring clarity to a hidden history.

Grand Canal, Great River by Lu You, translated with annotations by Philip Watson (Frances Lincoln Ltd, Publishers) ~Janet Brown

Almost all travel literature in English that’s about China have been written by people "looking from the outside in," translator Philip Watson points out in his introduction to Grand Canal, Great River. From Marco Polo to Paul Theroux, readers are presented with accounts that skirt the boundaries between what's real and what's imagined. Without linguistic, historical, or cultural knowledge, how can writers understand what passes before their eyes?

This is far from the case in this diary that whisks its readers on a 157-day, 18,000 mile journey across China in 1170, 100 years before Marco Polo ever set foot in this country. Lu You was one of the most famous poets of his time and a highly educated government official who was politically astute and well-versed in Chinese history. When he was given a post in a small Sichuan town, this resident of Hangzhou had no choice but to take to the riverine highway that connected Southern China from east to west.

It was a journey that began along the Grand Canal that stretched from Beijing to Hangzhou. This led to the Yangtse River which would take Lu You to Kui, a walled town in the hinterlands of Sichuan, traveling through gorges so perilous that Lu and his party left the boat and traveled overland on sedan chairs until the dangers were behind them. It involved switching from boats powered by oars to a ship propelled by wind in its sails, a vessel that weighed “150 tons,” yet "yawed and sheered under mountainous river waves like a leaf."

There may have been more than a few of these moments but Lu doesn't dwell on them. He's a poet after all, traveling in the wakes of poets who came before him, Li Bo and Su Shi. He pays homage to them while making poetic observations of his own. "Reed flowers...like snow" blanket the river banks, the river with ripples ""as smooth as a mat," "thousands of acres of empty river, and the moon, like a dish of purple gold, welling forth from within the waters." Yes, this man could write.

As a prominent dignitary, Lu travels from meal to meal hosted by other officials but he gives no culinary details. He's obsessed by potable water and assesses what he drinks throughout his journey. The "pure green" water of Gushu Creek he extolls for its "sweet smoothness" while in Huang he dismisses the spring water as "not very sweet," blaming it for the foul taste of that area's wine. In the wonderfully named Jade Void Grotto he praises the water from a "fragrant stream," saying it "tastes delightful.""Unless you're a connoisseur, it's not easy to detect the quality of poor tea," he sniffs dismissively at one point. Clearly he sees himself a connoisseur of water, not surprising in a culture that produced lists of the Classification of Waters in the ninth-century work, Record of Waters for Boiling Tea.

There are remarkably few complaints, with most of them concerning the plagues of mosquitoes encountered along the way. Toward the end of the trip a rare mention of food surfaces when Lu is served a meal of "delicious venison and wine of a fine vintage." At around the same time, this Southern sophisticate begins to greet any sign of urbanity with enthusiasm.

"There are shops, " he notes at one point and his relief is palpable. Later he views a settled town with a cry of joy, calling it "an enchanted land." Girls with hairdos that soar as high as two feet, anchored with silver hairpins and ivory combs as large as a hand also claim his delighted attention. Unfortunately his translator tells us at the end of his trip, Lu begins a "disconsolate” year, in a place that vanished beneath the floodwaters of the Three Gorges Dam, referring to one of the highlights of his new home as “the so-called Palace of Eternal Peace” that’s become “the prefectural graineries.”

But before he reaches the journey's end, he describes the sight of a "wooden raft, 100 feet wide and 500 feet long that holds 30-40 households, complete with pathways, alleys, livestock and a shrine to a deity. "This is still one of the smaller ones" of the raft communities found only on the Yangtse. One night he witnesses 500 lantern-bowls, "like a multitude of stars," released as an offering to the river in hopes that it will provide blessings and avert disaster. He's surprised by the belltower in the Hall of the Heartless that soars 100 feet or more, made of three storeys of brick "without a single piece of wood." He marvels at herds of wild water buffalo and schools of black and yellow dolphins, while feeling a stab of terror at the sight of a bright red creature that's several feet long,and swims against the current, churning the water into spouts a couple of feet high.

Philip Watson charitably converts Lu's ancient measurements into feet and miles and provides ample annotations that give insight into this 12th Century odyssey. Lavish use of photographs, showing the art and riverscapes of the time, make even the most ignorant reader an informed and enthralled part of Lu You's life and world.

Etna by Paul Yoon (Simon & Schuster) ~Janet Brown

Etna is born into a world of water, "sand floating in daylight" past "trembling grass." Within a year he's taken away to become a dog of war, trained to help troops from other countries who have come to fight in a place they've never seen before. He's given his name by the woman who drives him away from his family and his world, a human who can communicate in the silent language used by dogs. She tells him she's named him after a volcano and tells him what that is. Only years later does he learn that Etna, in its original form, means "to burn," and is asked by another dog, "Were you named after a war?'"

Etna is taught how to move, what to smell, and when to kill, fighting in a world of gunfire and shouting, for four years. When the war ends, he's covered with "scars like old worms" and no longer looks at his own shadow. He has one memory that gives him a reason to live. He remembers the ocean and he wants to go home.

He moves along "bombed-out roads" that lead to craters and woods that are filled with charred stumps. There are no birds and "living fields" carry death under their soil. When he finds another dog who becomes his comrade, that dog tells Etna how "the mountains burned" and cities were obliterated. "Just when you thought there was nothing left to destroy, it just went on." 

In fact, he informs Etna, it continues to go on. Up in the desolate destruction of the mountains, men "got so used to fighting" that they can't stop. "Maybe," he concludes, "there was never a place for us here."

Like Odysseus, Etna finds his way home to "the wind, the tide, the sand." Hearing waves on his first morning, he's lost in "the deepness of it...like first snow." Near the ocean, in a devastated landscape, there's life, a solitary human, a group of dogs playing in the surf, and a bird who knows the language of dogs and has lived through untold measures of time,

When Etna asks it how it survived the war, the bird answers with a question.

"Which war?"

That's a question that could be asked by anyone born in the last half of the 20th Century and into the beginning of the 21st. All of us came to life in the shadow of a war that was immediately succeeded by the next. Our visual vocabulary is filled with bodies lying in different parts of the world, but most of us have never seen that ourselves, other than on a screen or in a photograph. Most of us have never learned what life becomes in the aftermath of a war.

Paul Yoon is one of us, a person who has never gone through a war, but war is a central part of his family history. His Korean grandparents and parents had direct knowledge of what this does and Yoon has explored it in every book he's written, including Snow Hunters (Asia by the Book, November 2020), Run Me to Earth (Asia by the Book, December 2020), Once the Shore (Asia by the Book, November 2023], and The Hive and the Honey (Asia by the Book, April 2025). Each of these, through different voices, echo Etna when he says "There's no other place. This is the only world we have."

Poems, the ancient bird tells Etna, are the way humans really sing. Etna, through the voice of Paul Yoon, sings, not of "arms and the man," but of how to live in "the only world we have."

Video Night in Kathmandu by Pico Iyer (Vintage Departures) ~Janet Brown

In 1988 a book appeared that changed travel writing forever. Travelogues had dominated this category from its outset, taking readers from Point A to Point Z. That format had been in place from the days of Marco Polo right up through Dervla Murphy, and nobody saw reasons to deviate from it, until Pico Iyer came out with Video Night in Kathmandu.

This book broke right through the fourth wall that had stood implacably between the writer/instructor and reader/student. Iyer brought a subjectivity that was far from unassailable. He gleefully threw out observations and opinions that challenged conventional wisdom and invited opposing points of view. Instead of describing landmarks and monuments, he took the position that travel and travelers were a corruptive, inexorable force that were homogenizing the places they sought out as exotic.

Globalism wasn't a household word in the mid-80s but Iyer found it all over Southeast Asia, skipping blithely over this portion of the continent and finding Rambo in every country he visited. "Rambo," he claims, "was 'Reaganizing’ the world."

But Sylvester Stallone wasn't the only agent of change nor was America the only culprit. In Bali, the town of Kuta felt like an Australian 'holiday camp,' bristling with signs that promised "Aussie Breakfast" and "Bloody Good Tucker." In Ubud, where "the real Bali" was a strong selling point, the leading citizen is a Spanish artist, Antonio Blanco, who presents to Iyer a writer of "real genius," a role model to emulate. This literary god is Sydney Sheldon.

Hong Kong has no such perversions. An "expat city,” it’s a place where, two years before the hand-over, most of those expats are British. Their “voices of elegant irrelevance” identify them as Old Etonians to boot, lured by "a free flat, free holidays, free flights on Cathay Pacific." They pay for this ease by buttressing the truth that "Here work is life. There's no difference between the two." For the British, Hong Kong "is a tolerable halfway house fairly close to the tropics."

A train ride away, China, despite the intrusion of Rambo, remains resolutely untarnished. In 1985, traveling there was considered "an act of folly." Even in Beijing, those who journey from the West are corralled in foreign ghettos where they console themselves with expensive glasses of Coca-Cola. Only in Shenzhen, a city that’s in the rudimentary stages of construction, does Iyer find traces of Western decadence, Froot Loops in a local supermarket and a poster of Brooke Shields ornamenting an ice cream parlor.

In Japan Iyer discovers that America's national pastime has become Japan's national obsession. Baseball has replaced sumo wrestling all over the country. And yet when Iyer begins to investigate this takeover, he finds the Japanese have transformed it into a kind of "ideal social order." Fans exhibit a discipline that's "passion by remote control," within a setting of "unchanging ritual." Players submit to a tyrannical regimen. "Absolutely everything, " Iyer concludes, "was deadly serious" and the importation of American ballplayers was usually a miserable failure.

In an afterword written for the paperback edition, Iyer admits this book became obsolete so swiftly that within a Chinese calendar year he followed it up with a sequel, The Global Soul. Even so, this man, who in his own life (his Hindu upbringing in England, his Oxford education, and his stint of journalism in New York before finding a home in Japan) exemplifies globalism, has taken travel literature away from didacticism and into a whole new form of exploration. Half a century after he wrote it, Video Night in Kathmandu still rings true and still invites rebuttals.

Autumn Light by Pico Iyer (Knopf) ~Janet Brown

 A man who has become famous for writing about travel, Pico Iyer has had a solid base since he was 26. when he realized that if he didn't make the choice to live in Japan, that "meant a kind of exile." For over almost fifty years, that country has been his anchor, the place where he met his wife, where they share a home, and where he has found the stillness to write about his life there.

Autumn Light is part of a kind of trilogy that began with The Lady and the Monk (Asia by the Book, November 2025) and ends with A Beginner's Guide to Japan (Asia by the Book, April 2021). While the first book describes how he fell in love, with his wife and her country simultaneously, and the concluding volume tangentially addresses what happens when a dream becomes real, Autumn Light is an intimate look at the end of life, seasonally and inevitably, in a culture "that cherishes things precisely because they cannot last." 

Although the cherry blossom season draws local residents and tourists to admire and contemplate, Iyer prefers autumn, "the season of fires and farewells." He's called back home during that season by the death of his father-in-law, and finds his wife is taking care of matters with her customary "emotional efficiency.” Yet, when the two of them are alone, Iyer is given access to her emotional depths, a discovery that leads him to a greater intimacy with the people he loves, the people who have befriended him, and the world he strives to be part of.

Although Japan often describes itself as a country with four seasons, Iyer has learned its year actually contains seventy-two, each one lasting for five days.  His own suburban neighborhood is based on an agrarian calendar that is marked by nine harvests and prayers to the goddess of the sun. With time distinguished by periods of planting, blooming, ripening, harvest, and death, this cycle is always in focus and accepted.

Iyer, a man who works from home while his wife leaves for her job every day, has been given a nickname that he's heard from boys on the street. He's called Isoro, a parasite, since he seems to live a life of domestic leisure. There's one place where he feels accepted, if not understood, in a ping-pong club at a local exercise center. 

Surrounded by people who are old enough to be his parents, Iyer finds himself "entering Japan through the narrow gateway of ping-pong." As he plays and is soundly trounced by a community of the elderly, he observes and imitates them, feeling as if in this place he can almost "pass as a local while remaining the token foreigner." 

At home he travels through grief with his wife. At the ping-pong club he watches his comrades grow older and begin to fall away. Walking through tree-lined streets where the "leaves are scraps of flame" he wonders "how long these days of gold can last."

"Dying," he says, "is the art we have to master." In Autumn Light, both Iyer and Japan give concise and beautiful hints in how to master that art.

Inseparable by Yunte Huang (W.W. Norton & Company) ~Janet Brown

The men who were the inspiration for the coinage of "Siamese twins" as a popular description for conjoined siblings have been the subject of curiosity and intrusive speculation for over two hundred years. They weren't the first babies to ever share a body but thanks to a Yankee businessman, they became the most famous. Their history continues to evoke interest, with at least four books written about them in this century alone. 

What is usually overlooked in all the miles of print that focus upon their lives is the extraordinary success the brothers achieved in a country far from where they were born. This is what Yunte Huang has chosen to  illuminate in his biography of Chan and Eng, Inseparable.

Born in a Thai fishing village in 1811, the twins immediately excited local curiosity that they turned to their benefit as they grew up. In their teens, they began their entrepreneurial career by selling ducks and preserved eggs in the public market, with their unusual status drawing more than their fair share of customers. When two New Englanders discovered them, the men instantly recognized the twins' potential. But even then, when they were seventeen, Chang and Eng knew how to drive a bargain. They knew their worth. They had already been presented to the King of Thailand and his royal court, where they had received attention and gifts.Before they agreed to leave home, they arranged for their mother to receive $500 and negotiated a five-year contract in which they would receive "ten Spanish" a month with all expenses paid. 

By this time, Chang and Eng were fluent and literate in Chinese, the father's native tongue, and in Thai, the language used by their Sino-Thai mother. During the four-month voyage from Thailand to Boston, they learned basic English and when they reached America, they continued to learn three or four English words a day. As their vocabulary became more extensive, the twins began to add comic badinage to their hours on stage and became avid readers, presenting their favorite book, The Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, to a university that had hosted them in a Southern town.

On a thirteen-month tour of England, the twins were given A Dictionary of General Knowledge, a hefty one-volume encyclopedia, that they kept and read throughout their lives. (It was found on their bedside table after their deaths and was obviously well-used.)

Perhaps it was through this gift that Chang and Eng realized they had legal rights. At 21, they declared themselves free from the men who had profited from them, hired a manager, and began to tour independently. In addition to booking stage time and selling tickets to their exhibition, they returned to their roots, selling merchandise to their audiences. By the time they were 28, Chang and Eng had more than $10,000 dollars in savings, which would amount to over $385,000 in 2026 dollars.

Their tour took them to North Carolina where the climate and topography made them feel at home. They hunted, fished, and decided this was where they would settle down. They established a general store, bought 150 acres of farmland, and had a house built to their specification, with big windows in every room to capture the light and a view of the nearby Blue Ridge mountains. Sending their manager to New York as their personal shopper, Chang and Eng revealed a taste for elegance and luxury in their daily lives. 

Perhaps it was their status as sophisticated and successful men of the world that made them successful when they began to woo two sisters who would become their wives. It certainly helped them to achieve American citizenship which by law was conferred only to "free white persons." Marrying was more problematic. Miscegenation laws got in the way, as well as newspaper articles that inveighed against women marrying "quadrupeds." Still Chang and Eng stood out in the rural South with their charm, fame, wealth, and good taste. They held a double wedding with the brides coming home to a house that was described as "uncommonly elegant." The sisters were now both Mrs. Bunker, the surname their husbands chose to put on their marriage licences, since in Thailand at the time of their birth, surnames weren't used.   

Chang and Eng had developed a way of living together that brought the concept of "alternate mastery" into play. Every week one of them took his turn in making decisions and having a private life, while the other kept silent and "turned his face away," essentially blanking out as a person, an act of disassociation and survival. This practice was observed religiously, even more so when each twin set up his own household in a separate home. (When one of Eng's children died in infancy, he refused to attend the baby’s funeral because it was his week to be the invisible man. This may be why his wife refused to be buried in the family cemetery, next to her husband, her brother-in-law, and her sister.)

By the time the Civil War broke out, Chang and Eng owned 800 acres, two homes, and 32 slaves. Patriotic citizens of the Confederacy, the twins put their money in Confederate bonds. At the end of the war, their wealth plummeted from $34,000 (over $725,000 in 2026 dollars) to just over $9,000, with most of that tied up in acreage.

The twins abhorred P.T. Barnum. They'd worked with him in the past and decided that of all that Barnum exhibited, he himself was the most freakish of all. But they were wiped out. First they submitted themselves to Barnum's flim-flam, then they went out on their own. But times had changed and the twins were old men. They once had prided themselves that they were "never part of a circus," but their final appearance was in a Berlin arena, appearing after the clowns and bareback riders. Humiliated and depleted, they returned home.

By now Chang was an alcoholic, in poor health, while Eng's only vice was being "an addict of late night poker." After suffering a stroke on their final voyage from Europe, Chang became an invalid, while Eng, still healthy, did all he could to keep his brother alive, knowing that without him, he would himself become a "walking shadow." When he awoke one morning to learn that Chang had died, he immediately told his family. "Then I am going too." He died several hours later, killed by failure of the liver that the twins had shared.

When considering the lives of Chang and Eng. men who made a successful place for themselves in a foreign country, refusing to deny themselves as much normalcy as they could muster in their connected bodies, and founding a dynasty of Bunker descendants that number around 1500 today, Chang and Eng are men who deserve to be regarded with marvel. Instead their shared liver is gawked at every day at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. If the twins could see that, they probably wouldn't be surprised.

The Foursome by Christina Baker Kline (HarperCollins) ~Janet Brown

It would be easy to mistake The Foursome as a romance novel or even as a retelling of Beauty and the Beast. Two daughters of a wealthy plantation in rural North Carolina have been touched by scandal. Despite the beauty of the youngest and the ample charms of her sister, they remain unmarried until two gentlemen come to town. One of them is attracted to the youngest but he can't marry unless his brother does too.

The prospective suitors are the richest men in the county and they intend to stay. They've opened a general store, purchased 150 acres of farmland and have furnished their newly built house with a taste for luxury. They are "uncommonly elegant," well-traveled, and cultured. They have only one drawback. They are Chang and Eng, the world-famous Siamese twins, joined at the breastbone by a four-inch piece of cartilage. They've been together since birth and they will never be apart.

Once exhibited by showmen, they were able to break their contract when they turned twenty-one and are now U.S. citizens with all the rights that this confers. But they will always be seen as curiosities or, worse yet, freaks. Their existence provokes gossip and vulgar rumors about how two men in one body can conduct basic physical actions.

The youngest sister, Adelaide, swiftly makes her decision. She will never have a better offer than the one she's received from Chang and she's pragmatic enough to accept it. But she can only marry him if her older sister accepts Eng. One woman in a bed with two men will incite charges of polygamy.

Sarah agrees to a double wedding and the sisters and brothers enter into a marriage that will last for over thirty years, until the deaths of Eng and Chang. The brothers build a second house when their wives begin to have children and long for homes of their own. Eventually they have large families, Sarah with eleven children and Adelaide with ten.

In this account of two unconventional marriages, Christina Baker Kline delves into the lives of the two sisters, concentrating mainly upon Sarah, who was inexplicably buried far from the graves of Eng, Chang, and Adelaide. Kline has reason for this focus. Sarah and Adelaide, she says, were "distant cousins of mine,” and she is one of 1500 descendants of the family the two women formed with these two men from Siam.

Her research has been thorough. Even the most incredible details in her book are corroborated by a scholarly examination of Chang and Eng's lives, Inseparable by Yunte Huang. (in fact Kline took the name of her book from a chapter in Huang's that describes the two marriages and is entitled The Foursome.)

The solution that the twins find to the dilemma of sharing a body as described by Kline is corroborated by Huang. Every three days, a husband lives with his wife. During that time, his brother remains as detached as possible, silent and emotionally removed. This was the way they led their lives, Huang says, "with an understanding of 'alternate mastery. Each in turn controlled all actions, while the other practiced a "mental withdrawal," "blanking out."

The twins die within hours of each other. Sarah and Adelaide reluctantly agree to an autopsy in which it was found that the two men could never have been separated, nor could one live without the other. The brothers shared a liver and were connected by its tissue.

This organ is now exhibited at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, ensuring that two men who did their best to live normal lives are still gawked at by hordes of intrusive strangers.

The Forest of Wool and Steel by Natsu Miyashita, translated by Philip Gabriel (Penguin Books) ~Ernie Hoyt

Did you ever see something or hear something that would change your life forever? That’s what happened to seventeen-year-old Tomura. He was asked by one of his teachers to meet with a visitor who was scheduled to visit the school at four o’clock. The teacher was in the middle of a staff meeting and wouldn’t be able to meet the guest himself. 

Tomura was a junior high school student. It was the second term of the year. It was the week of mid-term exams so all club activities were suspended so students could focus on their studies. Tomura wasn’t busy at the time so he didn’t mind doing the favor for the teacher. Although he had more school tests the following day, the only thing he had left was graduation and searching for a job.

Tomura was born and raised in a small rural town in Hokkaido. He grew up living near a forest. He was thinking to himself, “I inhale the scent of a forest close by. I can smell the earthly fragrance of autumn as night falls, the leaves gently rustling. I can feel the damp air of dusk descending”. However, Tomura is not in a forest. It is only in his imagination. 

He is standing in the corner of an empty school gym. He has just brought a man with a black briefcase here. The man is here to tune the school’s piano.  “He gently presses down on the keys and the scent of warm and whispering leaves rises up in my mind, drifting from beneath the open lid of the piano.”

And so begins Natsuya Miyashita’s story, The Forest of Wool and Steel. The man he met at the school gymnasium was a Mr. Itadori from the Eto Music Shop. After Tomura led the man to the piano, he was going to go back to study for his upcoming tests but then he heard the sound of the piano. 

For Tomura, it was “mellow and rhythmic”. Tomura took a deep breath and listened again. The sound was hard for him to describe but he felt that his “soul was suddenly filled with a nostalgia and longing” and something else he “couldn’t quite define”. 

Mr. Itadori moved around the piano, opened the lid, and pressed a few more keys. It was then that Tomura “smelled the unmistakable scent of forest at nightfall”. The sound of Mr. Itadori tuning the piano changed his life. Mr. Itadori said he was welcome to come to the shop. When Tomura went to visit, he could not forget the memory of Mr. Itadori tuning the school’s piano. He asked if Mr. Itadori would take him on as a piano tuner, even though he has never learned how to play or even touch a piano.

This begins Tomura’s journey to become the best piano tuner he can be. The story follows Tomura’s path as he goes to a specialist school, then begins to work for Mr. Itadori’s shop. Aside from Mr. Itadori, Tomura is taken under the tutelage of two other master piano tuners - Mr. Yanagi and Mr. Akino. No matter how hard Tomura tries, he’s always asking himself, “Do I have what it takes?”

The Forest of Wool and Steel is a beautiful story about finding your calling in life and striving to be the best you can. It was originally published as a serial from the November 2013 through the March 2015 issue of the literary magazine, Bungei Shunju Extra, as a serial in the literary magazine, Bungei Shunju Extra. The original Japanese title is 羊と鋼の森 (Hitsuji to Hagane no Mori). It was subsequently published as a book in 2015 by Bungei Shunju, then published again in 2018 by Bunshun Bunko. It won the 2015 Japan Bookseller’s Award and was adapted into a full length feature film starring Kento Yamazaki and directed by Kojiro Hashimoto.

When I was a seventeen-year-old high school student, I still had no idea what I wanted to do for a living. It’s refreshing to read a story about a young person who finds his calling early in life and strives to be the best he can. It’s an inspirational story about perserverance, self-confidence and believing in what you’re doing, no matter what path you choose.

デッドエンドで宝探し by 能町みね子 (Mineko Nomachi) (Hayaoki Books) *Japanese text only ~Ernie Hoyt

Mineko Nomachi is a Japanese writer, illustrator, and manga artist. She was born in and raised in Ushiku City in Ibaraki Prefecture. In 2005, Nomachi started writing a blog titled オカマだけどOLやってます (Okama dakedo OL yatte masu). The title translates into English as I’m a Gay Man but Work as an Office Lady. The following year, a book based on the blog with the same title was published officially starting Nomachi’s writing career. Nomachi is also known for having gender-affirming surgery, still known to older generations as sex-change operation, shortly after her book was published. 

デッドエンドで宝探し (Dead End de Takara Sagashi) which has the English subtitle of Treasure Hunt at the Dead End is her collection of essays compiled from a column she wrote on a blog titled まるごと靑森 (Marugoto Aomori) or Amazing Aomori in English. The blog is operated and managed by the Aomori Prefectural Office. Its purpose is to provide information on tourism, regional products, and local cuisine. 

Before Nomachi started writing the blog, she would come and live in Aomori City to escape the hot and humid summers of Tokyo. She fell in love with the city when she would visit the place on vacation but became even more enamored of it when she decided to live there for a few months of the year. 

She would tell whoever would listen to her that Aomori is such a beautiful place and how much she loves it. However, she said the ninety percent of the Aomori citizens would ask her, “Why?” or laugh and say, “There’s nothing here”. Still others were more harsh in their criticisms saying things like, “You’ll realize how hard it is once you live here” or “Try living here in the winter”. 

Nomachi realized that what many of the citizens said were true. Although she has visited Aomori in the winter, she has never lived through an entire winter season and since she only lived in Aomori during the cool summers, she came to realize that she was cherry-picking the best of what the city had to offer. Heeding the word of many Aomori citizens, she packed up her things and began to live in the city full time. 

She thought once she starts living in Aomori, she would get to know the city and prefecture more deeply and wants to share her appreciation of it with others. In her column, she started writing about the “dead ends” of Aomori Prefecture. 

Pictured above is a map of Aomori Prefecture. It is the northernmost prefecture on the island of Honshu. There are two distinctive peninsulas. On the east side of the prefecture sitting between Mutsu Bay and the Pacific Ocean is the Shimokita Peninsula. On the west side sitting between the Sea of Japan and Aomori Bay is the Tsugaru Peninsula. 

Nomachi has alredy been to the ends of both peninsulas - Cape Oma in the Shimokita Peninsula and Cape Tappi in the Tsugaru Peninsula. In this book, she focuses on going to other “dead ends” of the Prefecture. She starts by going to a place called Oshima,  a small island that is located at the ends of the Natsudomari Peninsula located in Hiranai City and lies between Aomori Bay and Mutsu Bay. 

Her local travels also take her to Metoki, the last station on the Aoimori Railway line located in Sannohe Town near the border of Iwate Prefecture. She goes to Itagai, a small settlement in Fukaura Town near the border of Akita Peninsula. She often rides the bus to the final stop where she would meet a couple of her co-workers who would then take her to her chosen spot by car. 

As with Nomachi, I am also a transplant from Tokyo to Aomori City and like Nomachi, I have also fallen in love with the most northern of prefectures on Japan’s main island. My wife and I also drive to places in Aomori Prefecture that are often not listed in any guide books. However, I am not quite as manic as Nomachi. My wife and I choose places where there are things to see and are not so far off the beaten path. 

It doesn’t matter how long you have lived in one place. One person’s perspective is going to be different from another. I have been to many of the places Nomachi has featured and yet, I have also found that there are more places in my adopted prefecture to discover. I believe getting to intimately know the place you’ve chosen to settle will make living in that city, town, or village even more special.

The Beggar Student by Osamu Dazai, translated by Sam Bett (New Directions) ~Ernie Hoyt

It appears that the Japanese writer from Aomori Prefecture in the Tohoku region of Japan is becoming popular as the years go on. It seems that more and more of his early works are being translated into English. The Beggar Student became available to English readers in 2024. 

The Beggar Student was originally published as 乞食学生 (Kojiki Gakusei) as a serial in 1940 in the July through December issues of 若草 (Wakakusa), a magazine that centered on reader submissions and evolved into a literary journal. Kojiki Gakusei was later published as a book in 1941. 

The story begins with a writer who is not pleased with his latest offerings but forces himself to send it to his publisher. As he drops the manuscript into a mail box he thinks to himself, “Another crummy story. On the surface, it pretends to be a mirror to my soul, although I know as well as anyone the slimy worms of compromise are wriggling in the muck at the bottom”. 

The writer continues to admonish himself for writing such a terrible story. He feels so ashamed he wants to scream and run around in circles. “A lousy piece of trash. I have no right to call myself a writer”. The way Dazai writes, it makes you, the reader, want to read the story he just sent to his editor just to see why he thinks it’s so bad.

Even after dropping off the story, the writer continues to agonize over his decision to send the story. “I should have torn that lousy story into pieces and retreated to the mountains, never to return”. But what’s done is done. The writer then tells us “the misery that followed was beyond compare”. 

The writer was so depressed he didn’t feel like walking home so he headed in the opposite direction and walked along the banks of the Tamagawa Canal. It was in the middle of the day in April and he was watching leaves floating downstream. He had just crossed Mansuke Bridge. Near this bridge, a teacher once tried to save one of his students but ended up drowning himself. Ever since then, this area became known as Maneater Brook.

It was right about that time that the writer heard a voice coming from the river, “Whew! That’s cold!”. What he saw was a “pale-skinned naked boy swimming in Maneater Brook. No, not swimming, he was being pulled downstream.” He saw the boy look at him. The boy was grinning from ear to ear and shouting, “Whew! That’s so cold! So cold!”.

The writer was caught in a conundrum. He thought to himself, if I don’t save him, he’s going to die. “So what if I can’t swim, I can’t just let him die! I’m going to die someday, it may as well be now.” The writer ran along the bank to catch up with the boy but he was caught short when he heard a yelp. It was the boy floating downriver. 

The writer was surprised to see that it was the boy from the river. This upset him even more and he shouted at the youngster, “Watch out! This river isn’t safe.” It took him a minute to realize that the boy was already out of the river but continued to scold the boy and said, “I’ve come to save you.”

The boy looks at the writer as if he’s crazy. In fact, he says to the writer, “You’re crazy, you know that? Didn’t even look before you ran over me.”　The boy’s attitude enrages the writer and the two start an intellectual debate. The writer thought he would give the boy a good thrashing. However, the boy’s rebuttal gets the best of the writer and the writer ends up taking the boy out for lunch to continue their “debate”. 

Most of Dazai’s famous works are dark, dreary and depressing but in The Beggar Student, Dazai shows another side to himself. His writing shows that he is also full of humor and is a master of intellectual banter, even if the characters are his own creations. It’s a tragedy that he ended his own life at such a young age, he was thirty-eight years old at the time of his death. I’m sure he would have written more masterpieces but it’s great that many of his early works are now available in English.

Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim (Tor Publishing Group) ~Janet Brown

In the world that Isabel J. Kim creates in Sublimation, when someone crosses a border with the intention of leaving their home country to live in another nation, they split in two. One self remains, the other moves on into a new life, taking on another "settled culture with intent” and severing “the self from the self.” One person becomes two, like identical twins or physical clones, yet they’re separated by different environmental and societal influences.

In Kim's world, this has existed forever, or at least since 1753 B.C. when it was mentioned in Hammurabi's Code of Laws. It's called "Instancing" and the divided selves are known as "instances." They can be reunited in an act known as "reintegration," when two instances touch, skin to skin. But, as Soyoung wonders in a Seoul shopping mall where she meets her friend Yujin, a man who is also an instance, is this act of reintegration "emotionally equivalent to murder?" 

She has reason to wonder. Her grandfather, on his deathbed, issued his last request: that she and her instance, Rose who lives in Brooklyn, reintegrate. Soyoung has told Rose that their grandfather has died but fails to mention his dying wish, not even when the two of them meet for the first time in Seoul at his funeral.

Their two selves are far from compatible and the two women have jagged encounters. Yujin is the one to tell Rose what the grandfather wanted. When she's given an envelope with the deed to the family home, willed to her by her grandfather, the tensions between the two women heighten and in a moment of rage, Soyoung grabs Rose by the hand. They merge into one body but their separate beings and their separate remain intact. 

YJ, Yujin’s instance, works in a New York high-tech firm and he’s told Yujin that he's working on something called Mitosis, which will reverse the reintegration process. The woman that's now a blending of Soyoung and Rose sets off to find this man so their two selves can resume their separate existences.

When Soyoung-Rose persuades YJ to let them become part of the Mitosis beta-testing, they learn it’s far more than just a reintegration process. Mitosis works through special gates that can both prevent and cause instancing. It can allow, or force, instancing and reintegration to take place. Its gates can create a border anywhere and it will soon be sold to the U.S. government. From there it will be put on the market to other countries as a state monopoly. Instancing and reintegration will stop being voluntary, except for those who can afford it.

"Instancing relies on the knowledge that you're never going to return, that you don't want to return...(Mitosis) decouples the action from the emotion."

Kim cleverly links the ethical and psychological implications of this to Eve and Adam biting into the apple of knowledge. Soyoung-Rose becomes aware that with Mitosis everything will change. No longer will people face the private question of "Do you want two selves?"

Sublimation is a thriller that goes for the throat and hangs on right up to its last word. But for some readers, it will go deeper, heading straight to the heart. For anyone who has left their birth country and made a home in another part of the world, the two selves created by instancing are very real, each one always painfully aware of who they are in another part of the world. As Kim shows in her stunning debut novel. those people have taken a bite from the apple of knowledge and will always live with the uncomfortable yet profoundly exciting result.

A Spoonful of Promises by T. Susan Chang (Lyons Press) ~Janet Brown

One of the best ways to approach food is during those moments when you talk about it with a good friend. This is exactly what happens while you read A Spoonful of Promises by T. Susan Chang (or Susie as she introduces herself to readers at the book’s beginning)-—if your good friend happens to be the granddaughter of a Chinese financier, millionaire, and “mobster (probably),” the daughter of the man who practically invented the coffee table book in all of its sumptuous glory, and an adventurous eater who enjoys every cuisine on the planet.

Approach this book with the advice Susie gives her children. “Try one bite.” Whether it’s paella or phad thai, scallion pancakes or stroopwafels, you’re going to find something that you’ve never tasted before and certainly never dreamed of cooking, or drinking either. No matter if it’s a Basil Mojito, a Lavender Vodka tonic, or the non-alcoholic Longest Day Tea, this lady is going to convince you to make and sip a “Garden in a Glass.” 

At times Susie seems formidable. She’s often spent half an hour making steamed eggs or a soufflé omelet for a very young son who would eat eggs in no other form until she introduced him to egg crepes with truffle oil. But she becomes less terrifying when she provides easy recipes for apple sauce, pumpkin bread, or a cold mixed-berry soup for those summer days when cooking is the last thing on anybody’s mind. She admits to almost committing arson with a funnel cake and confesses that she once stole chanterelles to cook with roasted monkfish and garlic chives. “It was good enough to be a last meal on Death Row … amorally delectable.”

She assumes nothing and tells all, how to clean a monkfish, how to use a knife, how to cook rice, how to make a simple syrup, and how to roll “jiao zie,” the traditional New Year’s dumpling, in three easy steps, with photographs. And she doesn’t ignore her single friends. There are six recipes that will launch an assortment of meals for a solitary eater, including a chocolate mousse that “serves one on a bad day.” 

Hungry for Braised Chinese-Restaurant-Style Spareribs? Daunted by the thought of tracking down ‘the Elusive Red Bean Curd?” Look for it in “the Scary Inscrutable Jars section” of an Asian grocery, and if you “just can’t find it, make the recipe anyway.” Want Thai food without leaving the house? Yam Neua is worth the “tearful complications” of slicing those lethal little bird chiles and the four or five shallots. “Mere flickers of agitation,” Susie Chang warns, “could prove incendiary," which is probably why her recipe for yam neua calls for a paltry  ½  of a Thai chile, or perhaps one for the daring cook.

A Spoonful of Promises offers more than recipes. It's studded with wit —“There’s nothing wrong with canned pumpkin puree, other than it lacks poetry.” An essay about saffron leads to an insightful examination of living with an aging father, The unfading presence of a mother who died young pervades the page of this book, evoked in tender stories and the fragrance of baked apples. “We are dreamed of by our parents and remembered by our children,” Susie says. Dream and remember as you read her "food autobiography."

Retrograde by Osamu Dazai, translated by Leo Elizabeth Takada (One Peace Books) ~Ernie Hoyt

Retrograde is a collection of three early stories written by one of Japan’s literary legends, Osamu Dazai. Although he never won Japan’s most prestigious literary award, the Akutagawa Prize, and he ended his own life at an early age, he left behind a legacy of written works. His most famous being No Longer Human (Asia by the Book, August 2022).

Osamu Dazai was born in Kanagi in Aomori Prefecture. He wrote 逆行(Gyakko) in 1936 after moving to Tokyo. Although Dazai was a nominee for the Akutagawa Prize for his story, he was disheartened when we didn’t win. 

Dazai’s literary ambitions almost ended before it even began when he learned about the death of his favorite writer and idol Ryunosuke Akutagawa, who took his own life in 1927. After that Dazai’s life would be”marked by alcohol, prostitutes, and Marxism”. 

Author and translator and Japanese native Leo Elizabeth Takada “received the honor of translating Osamu Dazai into English”. Before proceeding with her translations, Takada decided to read Retrograde in its original language. However, she had a hard time deciding what edition to buy. She was also confused by her friend’s response when she told her, “I’m looking for 逆行 (Gyakko) to which her friend responded, “Ah, from his final years?”

Takada corrected her friend saying, “No, it’s one of his early short stories”. Her friend was aware of that and told her, “Yeah, from The Final Years.” Takada was at a bookstore when she ran into one of her writer friends, Akutagawa Prize nominee Megumi Kawano, who immediately pulled a book from the shelf and handed it to her.

Takada said to Kuwano, “I thought you said it’s from his final years?”. Kawano explained that the story was part of his collection of short stories in a book titled The Final Years. He was “intending it as a subtitle for his own suicide note”. 

In the same year that Dazai wrote 逆行 (Gyakko), he also wrote two other short stories - ダス・ゲマイネ (Das Gemeine) and 葉桜と魔笛 (Hazakura to Mateki) which are both included in this collection as well. In the English translation, Das Gemeine retains its original title. It is German for “common”. The final story is translated into English as Blossom-Leaves and the Spirit Whistle. 

As with Dazai’s later writings all three of these short stories are filled with torment and anguish. They are told in the first-person and you feel if Dazai is speaking to you personally. Dazai also inserts his own characters in the stories. In Das Gemeine, he introduces a character named…”Osamu Dazai”. The character who meets “Dazai” says he is “terribly annoying” and “he’s adorned with bad taste, head to toe”. It’s hard to tell if Dazai is mocking himself or if he truly despises his life. 

If you are interested in classical Japanese literature but are not sure where to start, Leo Elizabeth Takada’s translation of Osamu Dazai’s Gyakko is a good place to start. His stories may seem dark and dreary but his writing will keep you interested in his characters. There is not a dull moment in any of the stories that are collected in Retrograde and as Takada says in her Afterword, “It’s my humble hope that this collection will serve as nourishment for fans of Japanese literature in the English-speaking world”, I share those same sentiments.

Anima by Kapka Kassabova (Greywolf Press) ~Janet Brown

There are things and places and states of being that are neither this nor that, the space between sleep and wakefulness, the passage between birth and life, the moments between life and death, the gender that exists between male and female, the indefinable territory that lies along borders. Academics define these states of being as liminal spaces. Kapka Kassabova offers no definitions. Instead she inhabits them. 

In Border (Asia by the book, January 2024) Kassabova explored the region where "Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey converge...where something like Europe begins and something else that is not quite Asia."

"We are not Europe and we are not Asia," an Eastern Orthodox priest said in Border.

"This is not even Europe," Kassabova is told by the man who will give her entry to the world of pastoralism that she lives in and describes in Anima, "this is the Balkans." However what Kassabova discovers goes deep into history and moves far beyond manmade labels. 

She is allowed to experience the life of the Balkan Karakachan herders, "the oldest nomads to have entered modernity with their animals." Their roots go back several millennia into Central Asia, when "a moving human-animal rug" brought a pastoral world into the Balkans and the Mediterranean. Almost stamped out by Communism and the Iron Curtain, it was revived by a couple of Karakachan boys who fell in love with a dog, one that was interrelated with their own history. Kitan was one of the last purebred Karachakan dogs who have the gait of wolves and "human eyes," who have one mission in life. They are guards, with a yearning for mountains and an appetite for predators.

The boys searched for more of Kitan's kind and became dog breeders, custodians of "an animal army" that had almost died out. But the dogs needed sheep, and raising sheep required the use of horses. The boys, now men with an obsession, found the sheep and horses that had been bred for moving across mountains, preserving the original Karakachan strain for both. They transform an abandoned village into "a metropolis of lost animals," bringing a strain that had almost been extinguished back to life and with it the pastoralism that the animals demanded.

"Pastoralism is the movement and grazing animals in search of pasture," and as the brothers practice this, it becomes "transhumance," a seasonal journey to high places with tender grass. This requires a particular kind of person who can withstand long periods of isolation and extreme weather, who can live without comfort, and who has not just an ability to work with the sheep and the dogs, but knows that everything is "connected by a living breath," that there "is no evil in animals." A shepherd is a man "walking through a beautiful world devoid of humans with just the clothes on his back."

In a time that "has no place for free-moving people and animals," the shepherds and the sheep, the dogs and the horses, continue to move, while knowing that "Everything has a beginning and an end. And we're toward the end."

Spending a summer with eight dogs, five hundred sheep, "animals that would survive the apocalypse and not even notice," and their shepherd, Kassabova enters a life of poetry, beauty, and sadness. Alone with a man with whom she finds a surprising connection, she begins to "smell of sheep and smoke," she learns to "inhabit the round clock of the mountain," and begins to think of the world as a place divided between "above and below," where time and distance are circular,not linear. When she goes into the "lower world,"walking along the flat road doesn't feel like walking." She's gripped by "shepherd's syndrome" when "your body feels like cement" without slopes to climb.

The dark side of pastoralism emerges with the alcohol that the owners of the sheep provide as a way of keeping their shepherds under control. Darkness breeds darkness and the only act of violence is committed by Kassabova as a rebellion against her comrade's persistent bouts of drunkenness."Life here is a game of roulette," she tells him, "I can't take it anymore." Yet when she leaves, the life in the mountains follows her. Remembering its wind, she recognizes it as "the world's soul. Anima."

Owls in the Ginza (and other stories from a life in Japan) by Suzanne Kamata (ThingsAsian Press) ~Ernie Hoyt

Suzanne Kamata is a permanent resident of Japan who lives in Tokushima City in Tokushima Prefecture which is located on the island of Shikoku, the smallest of Japan’s four major islands. She was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan and came to Tokushima to teach English when she was twenty-two. Little did she know it would become her permanent home. 

Owls in the Ginza, as its subtitle suggests, is about Kamata’s experience of living in Japan. She is married to a Japanese man and has two children who are twins, a son and a daughter named Jio and Lilia. The children were born prematurely; her daughter is deaf and has cerebral palsy. 

The book is a collection of Kamata’s essays that have been previously published in a number of other periodicals and books such as Borderless Journal, Eye-Ai, and Traveller’s Tales 2017, just to name a few.

There are a total of twenty-four essays which also include full-color photos from the author’s collection and illustrations done by Martin Sedaghat. Although most of her adventures take place around Tokushima and Shikoku, she also writes about traveling to other areas in Japan and about a couple of experiences she has abroad. 

She goes to Akita in the Tohoku region of Japan where her son plans to go to university. She travels with her daughter and with a friend visits an owl cafe in Tokyo. She also takes a trip with her daughter and a friend to Naoshima, an island known for its large number of museums. 

Kamata had learned about a place called Okushima from one of her friend’s Facebook posts. It is also known as “Rabbit Island.” The place is famous for its cute and furry residents of which there are a large number, although the total number is unknown. The island also has a dark history as it is home to the Poison Gas Museum. 

Kamata and her daughter also go to Hawaii where they take an open-door helicopter ride for a “once-in-a life-time” mother-daughter experience. Another trip they take is to New York City where they made reservations to stay at the Algonquin Hotel in Times Square. 

Her daughter’s first question after they checked in was, “Do they have wi-fi here?”.  Kamata, as a published author, had a more profound reaction. As she “glanced around at the dark wooded tables of the Round Table Restaurant”, she was “eager to channel past visitors through less modern means”. 

“Perhaps the ghost of one-time resident legendary actor John Barrymore” or the spirit of “rapier-witted Dorothy Parker”. Maybe she will get a chance to see “Pulitzer Prize winner Edna Ferber, who penned Showboat and Giant” here. 

Kamata’s essays are filled with wit and humor, whether the stories about fun activities she has taken part in such as going on a “Mystery Dinner” tour or weeding with locals at a neighborhood shrine or dealing with the tragedy of losing a family member and having to make a sudden trip to South Carolina in the United States. 

I really enjoy reading about people’s experience of visiting or living in Japan as I am also an expat who has lived in this country for more than thirty years. Going on vacation to a foreign country is a lot different than actually living for years in a different country. Japan may be a small country compared to the United States but reading essays from other expats about our adopted country only shows that there is so much more to see, visit, do and explore.

Japanese Yokai : Explore the Magical World of Monsters, Demons and Mythical Creatures by Fleur Daugey (Tuttle) ~Ernie Hoyt

I’m fascinated by Japanese yokai culture. They have previously been featured on this blog (Yokai Attack! The Japanese Monster Survival Guide (Asia by the Blog, May 2024). Japanese Yokai is aimed more towards children and is a great introduction to the subject. It was originally published in the French language as Le Monde Etrange des Monstres Japonais in 2017 by Actes Sud. 

Fleur Daugey gives thanks to Japanese manga master Shigeru Mizuki whose works made her “dream of strange and mysterious yokai”. I am also a big fan of Mizuki and used to watch an animated series on television titled during my elementary school years when I lived in Japan. The title of the program was [Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro]. Every episode would feature a yokai.

There is no definite one to one word in English to translate yokai. It is often translated as a demon, creature, monster, or spirit. However, in Japanese, yokai can refer to shape-shifters, demons, and even haunted objects. They can help or harm, they can be nice and harmless or they can be violent and wrathful. They usually appear at dusk, the time between daylight and before it gets dark. They can move freely from the spirit world to the world of humans. “No matter what, they’re out there, living among us with their many shapes and forms.”

Pokemon is a popular anime series that has been distributed and translated into different languages throughout the world. The title means “pocket monster” and many of the characters were inspired by yokai. 

It is believed that yokai originated in the Heian period (794-1185) and blended Shinto beliefs influenced by Chinese Taoism to explain the unexplainable. The images of yokai became popular in the Edo period (1603-1868) as they were featured in Ukiyo-e woodblock prints, the most famous being Toriyama Seiken who drew the Hyakki Yagyo, translated into English as Night Parade of 100 Demons with a a yokai called Nurarihyon at the head of the procession.

Some of the most common yokai are animal or animal spirits. The kitsune is a fox. These yokai can take the shape of a beautiful woman and they live to trick people. “That piece of candy you’ve just been given? Look out, it’s been turned into a turd.” 

The tanuki is a raccoon dog. They also like to have fun and pull pranks. They can turn themselves into a human or even an object. They love to drink sake (Japanese rice win) and have very large testicles. 

One of the most common yokai in Japanese folklore is the kappa. They have a bird’s beak, a turtle shell, frog skin, and webbed feet. They also have a plate on top of their head that is filled with water. They love to live in water such as in rivers, lakes, swamps, and even rice fields. If the water spills from the plate on their head, they will die. 

The tengu is also a very common yokai you will see at shrines and temples. Their most prominent feature is their long red nose. Some of them may even have wings. If you come across a tengu and are kind to them, they may even help you, but if you make them angry, “they can be very nasty when they want to be!”. 

Japanese Yokai is beautifully illustrated by Sande Thommen. She gives thanks to the Ukiyo-e masters Toriyama Sekien, Katsushika Hokusai, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, and Utagawa Hiroshige. Her thanks would not be complete without mentioning Shigeru Mizuki “whose fascinating images of the world of yokai influenced her while illustrating this book”. 

The next time you see a magical creature or if a prank has been pulled on you, don’t jump to conclusions and blame one of your friends or a human, you may just have been the victim of a yokai.

Writing and Enjoying Haiku : A Hands-on Guide by Jane Reichhold (Kodansha) ~Ernie Hoyt

What is haiku? I was exposed to this word when I was an elementary school student living in Japan. I learned a little more about it when I was in high school when one of my classes was covering poetry. What I remember from my class is that haiku is a traditional form of poetry in Japan consisting of three lines containing seventeen syllables in a 5-7-5 pattern. 

In my youth, I used to write poetry - mostly limericks or other poems whose first two verses would rhyme. I had never given any thought to writing haiku. Recently, I’ve been watching a television variety show called [ﾌﾟﾚﾊﾞｯﾄ！！] (Prebatto!) and one of the segments is dedicated to haiku. The title of the television show is a shortened form of “pressure battle”. Selected panelists are given a theme or shown a picture and they must write a haiku to describe the subject. A haiku master would then judge each haiku and a winner would be chosen. 

I could not understand how the haiku poems were judged by the haiku master. I decided to delve a little deeper into the subject by reading a book about haiku in English. Writing and Enjoying Haiku : A Hand’s-on Guide by Jane Rechhold would be my re-introduction to the genre. 

Jane Reichhold is an American author and translator whose specialty is haiku. She is a three-time winner of the Haiku Society of America Merit Book Award and has been a member of the Haiku Society of America, Haiku Poets of Northern California, Haiku Canada, Haiku International (Tokyo, Japan), and the Poetry Society of Japan. She also runs a website called Aha! Poetry (www.ahapoetry.com).

So, what exactly is haiku? It seems to be more than three lines of seventeen syllables in a 5-7-5 pattern. As this book is more about writing haiku, Reichhold says you must first be able to read haiku. She says, “That sounds fairly simple, but like everything else concerned with haiku, levels are buried under levels and archeology seems child’s play in warm sand”. 

Haiku is a short form of poetry that originated in Japan. The traditional Japanese haiku consists of three phrases composed of seventeen mora which is a small unit of timing that is equal to or shorter than a syllable. A haiku requires a kireji (cutting word) and a kigo (a word or phrase associated with a particular season). 

Reichhold also states that the traditional rules for haiku in Japanese are often difficult to follow in another language. She says if you want to start writing haiku, forget the technicalities of the Japanese language and follow these six basic rules. 

1. Write in three lines that are short, long, short without counting syllables

2. Make sure the haiku has a fragment and a phrase

3. Have some element of nature

4. Use verbs in the present tense

5. Avoid capital letters or punctuation

6. Avoid rhymes

It may seem difficult at first but once you understand how to read haiku, writing your own may be the next step. The rules may seem overwhelming at times all you have to do is remember what Reichhold said in her Foreword, “Let go of your preconceived ideas and simply do whatever brings you the most enjoyment.” Keeping that in mind, I might attempt to write my own haiku now.