Over at their website, Haikasoru announced the table of contents of their Japanese and Japan-related science fiction anthology The Future is Japanese: Stories From and About the Land of the Rising Sun.
Read more →Due to scheduling and time issues, I’m going to just go through the literary highlights of this week. You can always check out the whole list at Tohan.
Read more →Authors Okuizumi Hikaru and Horie Toshiyuki are the two newest judges for the Akutagawa Prize, reports just about everyone. Okuizumi Hikaru (born in 1956) won the Akutagawa Prize himself in 1994, as well as the Noma Literary Prize. He also teaches at Kinki University. The Stones Cry Out is his only novel to be translated [...]
Read more →The List has been updated to include Kitano Takeshi’s novel A Guru Is Born, which will be coming out in May from Vertical. From the publisher: Having lost his job and his girlfriend, Kazuo becomes a member of a religious sect, after seeing the Guru heal an old woman in a wheelchair. He soon discovers [...]
Read more →In a press conference held on the 20th, Kodansha’s president Noma Seiya announced that starting in June, Kodansha will prepare e-book versions of all newly acquired or published books, the Asahi reports. Not that they’re necessarily going to be published at the same time as the paper version. Kodansha will just be getting the author’s [...]
Read more →Or should I say… the new release. くるすの残光 〔２〕月の聖槍 仁木英之 The Afterglow of the Cross 2: The Sacred Moon Spear Niki Hideyuki The sequel to a historical novel about the followers of Amakusa Shiro, who was a teenager who led the Shimabara Rebellion, notable for his age and for his Catholic faith, though in this version [...]
Read more →If you read the Japanese news, you probably know that there’s a lot of people discussing Tanaka Shin’ya’s now infamous quote from the initial press conference, which basically translates to “I deserve this.” (I personally was having trouble parsing out that quote, so I never reported on it.) Well, he’s at it again, but I’m [...]
Read more →Though this year’s Akutagawa winners were originally published last year in various literary magazines, literary magazine Bungei Shunju traditionally reprints the winning piece(s) in their March issue, as (the parent company) the Bungei Shunju publishing company actually awards the Akutagawa and Naoki Prizes. Well, due to some of this year’s controversy and also hopefully because [...]
Read more →Fueled by Akutagawa prestige and the fact that the author apparently likes to say semi-controversial things in press conferences, Tanka Shin’ya’s “Eating Each Other” has now reached number one on the bestseller list, which honestly, is pretty cool. It’s just nice to see fiction up there that’s not “The Mystery Will Be Solved After Dinner.” [...]
Read more →23 year old office worker Akegata Misei has won the 17th Nakahara Chuuya Award, the Asahi reports, for her poetry collection ウイルスちゃん (“Virus-chan”). The Nakahara Chuuya Award celebrates the life of poet Nakahara Chuuya (1907 – 1937) and the best in contemporary, free verse poetry (Nakahara himself worked initially in tanka and switched over to [...]
Read more →Another light week. But one thing that is interesting is that Murayama Yuka and Aoyama Nanae seem to work on similar schedules. Both have new books this week, after also releasing books in the same week back in November. You’ll see below. (They also seem to like writing about familial relationships.) 花酔ひ “Flower Drunk” 村山由佳 [...]
Read more →Lying somewhere between a character study and a traditional thriller, The Thief doesn’t quite transcend the clichés it employs, but is enjoyable nonetheless.
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