Well, it's been fun, but January (sadly) is over for another year, and it's time to pack away our kimonos and bid farewell to January in Japan. Before we shut up shop for 2014 though, I just wanted to remind everyone of what's been going on over the past month :)
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The past few Sundays have seen some great links in our Nichi-Yōbi News round-ups. I'm hoping to find a few quiet minutes to store them all on the J-Lit resources page for posterity, but for now, you can always check out all the pages for some great news, reviews and links to free online J-Lit.
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We've also been very fortunate, spoiled even, by the number of books offered for our
Golden Kin-Yōbi giveaways. So far, we've had twelve happy winners, and our final giveaway (which closes on Thursday!) will produce six more. Many thanks again to all the contributing publishing houses: PM Press, Pushkin Press, Columbia University Press, Kurodahan Press, Stone Bridge Press and Peter Owen Publishers.
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This year, we've continued every Wednesday with our J-Lit Giants series, and 2014 has seen five more greats of Japanese Literature inducted into our pantheon. This time around, we even managed to make up for some of last year's oversights - both Nobel laureates (Kenzaburo Oe and Yasunari Kawabata) were honoured, and Yoko Ogawa and Banana Yoshimoto became the first female members of our hall of fame. Many thanks to Matt Todd for his excellent contribution on Shusaku Endo too :)
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Finally, we had a few more events happening this year. Many people have submitted their reviews (see the 2014 Book Reviews tab at the top of the page), and the linky will remain open for a week or so for you to get your late reviews in. Jacqui was kind enough to submit a guest review of Hiromi Kawakami's Strange Weather in Tokyo (AKA The Briefcase), and we also had two group readalongs. The first, Yoko Ogawa's The Diving Pool, was a great success - the second, Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood... wasn't ;)
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Thanks to everyone who has taken part over the past month, whether that entailed taking part in the readalongs, posting reviews, leaving comments or just trying to win books - it all helps make the event what it is :) But that's it for 2014; it's been a lot of fun, but pretty frenetic too (I'm due for a rest now...).
If you're lucky, I might see you all in 2015... ;)
January is fast moving towards its end, and there isn't long to go for this year's January in Japan (sigh...), but let's not dwell on that - there's still a lot going on for you to enjoy :)
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A couple of weeks ago, via The Literary Saloon, I saw a piece on Haruki Murakami by translator and academic Michael Emmerich which would be of interest to the writer's fans. It was only when I got around to reading the article that I realised that it was actually part of a wider series, 'Chasing Murakami'. Click here to see all the articles available, or feel free to move on if Mr. M's work is not to your taste ;)
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Another interesting translation-related piece I saw recently was from a site called J'Lit - Books from Japan. It's one of those excellent sites that plugs away, promoting the country's literature, and one of its latest posts was on the translation of a lengthy piece of classic J-Lit, Ryotaro Shiba's Saka no ue no kumo (Clouds above the Hill). It's a very interesting piece on the translation of a big, big book - and the rest of the site's well worth a browse too :)
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One of my favourite bloggers, me. of Nihon Distractions, keeps me up to date with what's available online in J-Lit, and there was a recent post with more great (mostly) free online J-Lit links. Click here to see what the recent collection consists of, and don't miss the links at the bottom of the page to the first two posts.
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As always, don't forget to check out the rest of the JiJ blog to see what you might have missed during the week. Our latest J-Lit Giant inductee was Kenzaburo Oe (and about time too...) while this week's Golden Kin-Yōbi giveaway, courtesy of Kurodahan Press, features books by Osamu Dazai, Ivan Morris and Mieko Kanai.
That's all for this week, but before I go, I just thought I'd mention that our second readalong, of Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood, is scheduled for next Thursday (30/1). Just to avoid confusion, this date is actually the one when everyone is *posting* their review (next time, I really need to find an alternative word to 'readalong'...). I hope to see all your reviews then :)
We're more than half-way through January now, and January in Japan is motoring along. This was a big week in J-Lit, so there are a few interesting links to show you this week - ikimasho!
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First up today is an interesting piece from kamo over at this is how she fight start. In lieu of a review of two short introduction books, we have a post on Japan as the archetypal sci-fi nation, with some fascinating thoughts on Japan and 'first contact' - click here to have a look :)
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You may have heard of the Akutagawa and Naoki Prizes, but do you know exactly what they are? The Japan News fills you in with some useful information on the two prizes in one of its recent articles. It's good to have this background information...
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...because the latest winners have just been announced!
The Akutagawa Prize was awarded to Hiroko Oyamada for Ana (Hole) while the Naoki Prize was awarded jointly to Makate Asai for Renka (Love Poem) and Kaoruko Himeno for Showa no Inu (Dog in the Showa Era). This time round it's a female trifecta :) For anyone interested, there's more information here courtesy of the English version of the Mainichi newspaper. Don't hold your breath waiting for an English translation of the books though...
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It's been a big week on the January in Japan blog too. Wednesday saw Yasunari Kawabata's belated induction as a J-Lit Giant, while Thursday was the day when participants posted on our first readalong choice, Yoko Ogawa's The Diving Pool (reviews collected here). Finally, this week's Golden Kin-Yōbi giveaway was revealed as Natsume Soseki's Light and Dark, his final work, and widely considered as his masterpiece - click here to have a chance of winning one of three copies :)
That's quite enough for one Sunday - time for Momotarō and I to have a well-earned rest. See you next week...
It's Week 2, and January in Japan is in full swing, so here are a few more J-Lit morsels that the little guy and I dug up this week. There's nothing really new here, but I'm sure some of these links will be of interest :)
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If you've read a lot of J-Lit, you'll probably be aware of Donald Keene, a famous translator and Japanophile (see, for example, his anthology of Modern Japanese Literature). You may not have heard though that he's actually become one of the few foreigners to become Japanese, deciding to take the plunge after the recent natural disasters.
I'd heard about his new citizenship, but I hadn't heard about another honour he'd acquired - apparently a museum has been opened in his honour in Japan too! Click here to read all about it (I'd love to have a museum in my honour - how cool would that be...).
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Staying in Japan, another article I stumbled across this week looks at Japanese reading habits. Do you like e-readers? Well, according to this piece from The Japan Times, the Japanese aren't quite so keen - this article attempts to explain why. Another interesting insight into how the Japanese like their books.
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Just like last week, I have another piece blatantly lifted from Morgan at All Wrongs Reversed, an old post but well worth promoting. In the post, Morgan introduces ten female Japanese writers who deserve to be more widely known in English. All the writers sound wonderful, so if there are any translators and publishers out there with time on their hands... ;)
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That's all for this week, but (as always) make sure to check out the rest of what this blog has to offer. This week's J-Lit Giants piece was a great post by Matt Todd on Shusaku Endo, a worthy addition to the pantheon, and the latest Golden Kin-Yōbi giveaway (courtesy of Pushkin Press) has books by Yasushi Inoue and Ryu Murakami just waiting to be won (you have until Thursday to enter!). Oh, and be sure to check out the reviews listed - just click here to browse. Feel free to add your own J-Lit reviews to the list :)
See you next time!
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P.S. Don't forget - next Thursday (16/1) is the day for posting on our first readalong, The Diving Pool by Yōko Ogawa. Watch out for a special post with some ideas and links to reviews...
Welcome to another year of January in Japan and to our weekly J-Lit round up, Nichi-Yōbi News! Momotarō and I are back to keep you informed, having scoured the Internet for nuggets of information (well, I have anyway - the peach boy is still offended by the amateurish sign...). Shall we?
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First up today, courtesy of Morgan from All Wrongs Reversed, is a great piece on the shortlist for the famous Akutagawa Prize. The latest prize will be awarded on the 16th of January, and if you follow the link, you'll be able to see all the shortlisted writers introduced. Pay attention - one of these people might be the next big thing in J-Lit...
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Next up, it's a couple of interesting links I saw on Twitter earlier this week. @EstherHawdon linked to two great examples of Nobel Laureate Kenzaburo Oe's work. The first is a short story entitled 'Lavish are the Dead', translated by John Nathan; the second is a(n unauthorised) version of Oe's early novel Seventeen (a work which is *very* tricky to track down...) on the blog Tokyo Damage Report. The link goes to the translation of the first part, but the blog goes on to translate more of the book in later posts. It's well worth a look, particularly as there'll be more Oe coming soon on this blog (hint, hint!).
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I'm sure most of you already know this, but I just thought I'd mention that Haruki Murakami's new book, Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage, is due out in English in August - which is a long way away. However, any of you who can read in German will be able to pick it up a lot sooner as the German translation will be out on the 10th of January! Of course, if your Japanese is up to scratch, you've probably tried it already...
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That's all for this week, but don't forget to check out what's already happened on the blog. We inducted Yoko Ogawa as our first female J-Lit Giant, and you have until next Thursday to enter our first giveaway, where PM Press are offering two books by Tomoyuki Hoshino. Remember to follow the blog - there'll be more giants, prizes and (of course) news next week. See you then - and don't forget to leave your J-Lit reviews for others to read!
Parting is such sweet sorrow, but when your event is called January in Japan, there comes a time when the welcome has been well and truly out-stayed. Sadly, that time is now, and today's Nichi-Yōbi News is the official wrap-up post for the event :(
Before we all get our hankies out though, there are still a few loose ends to tie up...
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Firstly, I'd like to say a big thank you to all those bloggers who have contributed reviews to our Review Page. At time of publishing this post, there were 71 reviews listed (and I've had promises of a few more!). That is far more than I expected :)
I haven't yet closed off the Linky, so if you're quick, you might just be able to get a sneaky last-minute post in. Hurry though - I will be closing it off at some point over the next few days...
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Thanks also to all those who participated in the readalong of Hiromi Kawakami's The Briefcase. While not all the opinions were the same, the overwhelming consensus was that it is a book which is well worth reading :) Any more reviews that come in will be added to the Linky and linked from my review.
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Our first series of J-Lit Giants also came to an end with my piece on Haruki Murakami, leaving us with seven giants in our initial pantheon. Naturally, in a such a select group, there are some glaring omissions. Neither of the Japanese Nobel Laureates were covered (although I actually thought at one point that I *had* posted on Kawabata...), and - as several people pointed out - there were no female giants/giantesses in the group.
To which I can only say gomen - hopefully this will be rectified in the future...
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Speaking of women and writing, the recent furore over the horrendous cover for the new edition of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar inspired Morgan at All Wrongs Reversed to look at how the covers of some female Japanese writers (namely Risa Wataya and Hiromi Kawakami) fared in translation. For a fascinating look at how their books look in English, French, German and Polish, please click through :)
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And, as promised, I have the result of my second giveaway! Everyone who had submitted a review on the Review Page by this weekend was eligible (only one chance each!), and the winner, as chosen by Random.Org, was:
Congratulations Jackie! I'll be in touch soon to organise the prize :)
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And that's it - January in Japan is officially over :(
It's been great fun, if a little hectic at times, and I hope you all enjoyed the chance to share in the J-Lit love. The January in Japan blog will remain online as a resource, and there's always the chance of a new J-Lit Giants post every now and then.
Next year? We'll see ;)
January is drawing to a close, and sadly this is the penultimate Nichi-Yōbi News - January in Japan will be officially closed in next week's edition :( But don't despair - we still have a lot more J-Lit fun to get through before then :)
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As always to start off, I'd like to point you in the direction of our Reviews Page - the total is now pushing fifty, and I'm sure there's something there for everyone to enjoy. Also, this week's J-Lit Giants post was Gary's take on Kobo Abe - if you haven't already done so, please check it out. I'll be contributing one last post to the series on Wednesday (any guesses?!), so make sure you come back then too :)
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I received a couple of review copies this week, but unfortunately I won't have time to review them for our event. However, I though this might be a good time to introduce the publisher to those of you who are unaware of their work. Kurodahan Press is a small publisher based in Japan, with an interesting catalogue of works. They offer a variety of genres, and perhaps the most interesting books for many people are their Speculative Japan collections (three so far) of Japanese science-fiction and fantasy stories. I'm not such a fan of those genres myself, but one of the books I received, Osamu Dazai's Blue Bamboo (mentioned in Patrick's J-Lit Giants post!), is more to my taste :) Take the time to browse the catalogue - you never know what you might find...
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I've been trying to bring you all the J-Lit news over the past few weeks, but who is going to do this when January in Japan has finished? Well, you could do worse than follow Junbungaku, a blog which concentrates on what is going on in the world of Japanese literature. Consider this link a public service for those of you who can't cope with going cold turkey ;)
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Finally, I've been doing a lot of thinking about my second giveaway for our event, and in the end I decided that rather than try to attract lots of page views and comments, I would rather use it to reward the people who have taken part. As a result, I have decided that I will be giving away any J-Lit book (up to the value of approximately AU$15 - I won't quibble about cents!) to one lucky person, sent via the Book Depository (the book, not the person...).
How can you enter? Many of you already have... This contest is open (and limited) to anyone who has posted a review (or J-Lit Giants post) on the January in Japan blog. I will be closing the Review Page linky next weekend, so if you've got your review up and posted by the end of Friday, the 1st of February, you'll be in the draw. Good luck :)
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That's all for this week, except for a brief reminder about our readalong. I'll be posting my review of Hiromi Kawakami's The Briefcase next Thursday, and I hope that some of you will be joining me. I can't wait to see if you had similar feelings to mine...
Some of you may have caught last week's discussion on the great Ten-Ten controversy (in the comments section of last Sunday's post), and being the avid linguist I am, I googled a few things researched the matter thoroughly on your behalf. Having come to the conclusion that, in usage at least, Matt was correct, I have used my great technological skills to manipulate the image on the left accordingly (Momotarō is still less than impressed...). Let's all move on, shall we?
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As always, I'll start by pointing you in the direction of our in-house posts. This week's J-Lit Giants submission was a great piece by Patrick on Osamu Dazai. If you haven't already done so, please check it out :)
While you're here, why not have a look at the reviews page too? The list is growing very nicely, and by the end of the month we should have a wide range of interesting and well-written posts. If you haven't submitted your review yet, please leave your link on the page. Next week, I'll let you know why that might be to your advantage...
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One of my favourite J-Lit blogs, Nihon Distractions, pointed me in the direction of Asymptote magazine this week, where you can read an excerpt from Toh EnJoh's Akutagawa-Prize-Winning book Harlequin's Butterfly. It's a book which has yet to be fully translated into English, but on the strength of this extract, it's one which would be worth trying :)
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While we're on the topic of the Akutagawa Prize, the latest award was announced this week, and as the Japan Times reports, it has gone to Natsuko Kuroda. What is especially interesting here is that at the ripe old age of seventy five, Kuroda (for her book ab Sango) has become the oldest ever winner of the prize - one which is for up-and-coming literary talents!
Also this week, Ryou Asai & Ryotarou Abe were jointly awarded the Naoki Prize, the popular equivalent of the more-literary Akutagawa Prize. We can look forward to seeing all three books in English - some time around 2033...
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...and speaking of Akutagawa-Prize-winning authors whose works are still unavailable in English, a tweet courtesy of @wrongsreversed sent me to an old post written by Risa Wataya about a lecture tour she went on in Germany and Italy. It's an interesting piece by a writer whose books should be translated into English - hopefully, this oversight will be rectified very soon...
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That's all for this week, but come back on Wednesday for another J-Lit Giant - and there'll be more news next Sunday, of course! I'll have some more interesting links, and I'll also be letting you know about my second giveaway (which will be a little different from the usual kind...). See you then!
Well, it turns out that Momotarō was right to look away in disgust last week - it seems that my Japanese wasn't quite as impressive as I'd hoped. Matt of A Novel Approach informed me that the ten-ten (the little marks on the top right of the final character) are actually superfluous. Gomen - I'll fix it up next week, promise...
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Anyway, let's get on with this week's summary of what's been happening in January in Japan. Once again, we've had a good number of reviews on a wide range of books, from Murakami to Kawabata, Ekuni to Tanizaki - all collected for you here.
And, speaking of Tanizaki, old Jun'ichiro was the subject of this week's J-Lit Giants post. Please have a look - he's a writer well worth checking out. Next week's giant? I'm afraid you'll just have to wait until Wednesday to find out...
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As you all know, our group readalong book is Hiromi Kawakami's The Briefcase, and it seems to have been a good choice (if I do say so myself!). This week, the novel was one of five chosen for the shortlist of the 2012 Man Asian Literary Prize, giving Kawakami the opportunity to become the first Japanese writer to take home this award - congratulations!
As the news of the shortlisting unfolded, another piece of news soon appeared on Twitter. Apparently, Portobello Books will be publishing another Kawakami book in July, one entitled Strange Weather in Tokyo, bringing the number in English translation to three (after The Briefcase and Manazuru). I enjoyed The Briefcase (as you'll see in my review at the end of the month), so this is a book I'm looking forward to :)
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Another successful writer is (of course) Haruki Murakami, and Friday of this week was his 64th birthday - happy birthday, Murakami-san :) Conicidentally, Random House have released an i-Pad app, a calendar for 2013 which (apparently) also has a few stories which are previously unreleased in English. I'd like to see the list of stories first, but it still sounds like a nice little present for your favourite J-Lit fan... or yourself ;)
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Finally today, a tweep(!) I followed recently, @wendy_tokunaga, has been forwarding all kinds of Japanese-related links. I'm a sucker for these things, and I can't resist reading them, even when not all are that relevant. However, a couple of good ones were a page giving information about Japanese culture in New York and an interview with a sake sommelier in a New York restaurant. If that sounds like your kind of thing...
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That's all for now - I'll see you next Sunday with some more rubbish useful information - hope you'll join me ;)
Welcome, one and all, to the first weekly instalment of my January in Japan round-up posts, Nichi-Yōbi News! For those of you unfamiliar with Japanese, Nichi-Yobi means 'Sunday' - and the picture to the left is my pathetic attempt to put it into Japanese writing (poor Momotarō is looking away in disgust...). Anyway, let's see what's been happening this week :)
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First up, I have to point you in the direction of all the reviews we've had so far. For a couple of days, I did think that my two would be the only ones there, but we've had several more posted over the past few days on a wide variety of books. Just click on this link (or the Book Reviews tab at the top of the page) to see who has been reviewing what this week :)
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This week also saw the third in our J-Lit Giants series, the first by a guest contributor. Gary, from The Parrish Lantern, submitted an excellent post on poet Ryuichi Tamura that you should all check out :)
Again, you can see all the submissions so far by clicking here or on the J-Lit Giants tab at the top of the page. There are more giants to come before the end of the month. In addition to a couple I'm planning to write, Gary has kindly offered up another bio, and one other guest contributor has sent me a great biography to post. And if you would like to talk about your favourite J-Lit writer, my ear is always open...
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As well as reading a lot of J-Lit over the past few weeks, I have also listened to a couple of podcasts on the subject. The Centre for the Art of Translation in San Francisco has a podcast entitled Two Voices, which usually features a translator discussing some of the writers whose works they have brought into the English language. The programme features translators from all languages, but (naturally) I was interested in the ones concerning J-Lit.
The first featured Stephen Snyder, who talked about Yoko Ogawa and informed the audience how her stories came to be featured in the New Yorker magazine, how the editors interfered with her stories and why The Housekeeper and the Professor was earmarked as the novel likely to be a hit in translation.
The second was a double teaming of Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel, talking (of course) about Haruki Murakami. This was recorded just after 1Q84 had been published, and it was interesting to hear what the two translators thought of the book. Perhaps of more interest to most readers was a casual mention by Rubin that a retranslation of Murakami's first two novellas, Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973, was underway (although I've been unable to find any other mention of this on the net...).
The quality isn't perfect (the Q&A sections at the end are virtually inaudible...), but these podcasts are well worth a listen :)
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And on that note, I'll bid you farewell for this week. Remember to use the #januaryinjapan hashtag on Twitter to mark posts of interest, and don't forget the readalong of Hiromi Kawakami's novel The Briefcase at the end of the month. If you would like to join in, simply post your review on the 31st of January (and leave a link on the Book Reviews page).
Same place, same time, next week? Ja, mata ;)
