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Popular Hits of the Showa Era
Ryu Murakami is subversive by any standard but the target of his bile has always been his native Japan: the mindless Japan of piped music, fussing over pointless tasks, the ritualization of social...
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The Shackles of the Past
Every nation is shackled to its history but R. Taggart Murphy argues that Japan’s chains are not only thick and heavy, but forged by its own hand in modern times. Although the Tokugawa era, Japan’s...
View ArticleLife is only one
I dislike the kitschy cutie kawaii crap that Japan and its imitators pump out. Did I just use the word ‘dislike’? Man, I’m being way too polite. But like any genre or style, there is the broad,...
View ArticleThe Devotion of Suspect X
My wife related to me the bizarre narrative from the Chinese translation of a Japanese mystery novel she was reading. I happened to have recently finished a mystery by a Japanese writer translated into...
View ArticleBattle Royale
Published in 1999, made into a laughably bad movie in 2000, condemned by the National Diet (Japan’s parliament) for its portrayal of crazed murdurous school children, turned into an overnight...
View ArticleJapan rocks!
A fun trip to Tokyo – staying here, and eating here – was anchored around Summer Sonic, one of Japan’s two big summer music festivals. It offered two days of rock’n’roll, punk blues, R&B (Pharell...
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Podcast: Crime fiction & Gaijin Cowgirl
What is crime fiction? What’s the interplay between character, setting and plot? Why write a story like Gaijin Cowgirl, and why read one? I sat down in December to talk about these themes with Simon...
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Podcast now on iTunes
My podcast with Simon Overton – talking Gaijin Cowgirl, Bloody Paradise, and writing crime fiction – is now available at the iTunes store. Episode 12. Simon’s other podcast interviews are also...
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Ransom
Jay McInerney became a literary superstar with his debut novel, Bright Lights, Big City. It was the sort of book I felt I had to read when I moved to New York in the mid-1990s, ten years after its...
View ArticleKyushu, part 3 of 3: traditional Japan
The island of Kyushu is no longer active as Japan’s gateway to Asia. Even as a port it is now dwarfed by Tokyo. Therefore it no longer plays the role of distiller of foreign ideas, technology and...
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