Written by Yoko Tawada | Translated by Margaret Mitsutani It can take decades for us to begin to see where dystopian novelists were coming from when they wrote their stories. When their ideas start to pop up in real life, we feel a shaken sense of awe at their powers of foresight, overshadowed by the dread that they were right. They were never meant to be right...
Translated by Anne Ishii For the bulk of his career, fifty-four-year-old manga artist Gengoroh Tagame has focussed his creative energy into producing gay erotica. He has been a driving force for gay men in the world of Japanese art, influencing countless gay writers and artists. This year he has come out with something far more introspective and thematically...
China in Ten Words was written by Yu Hua and translated by Allan H. Barr. Censorship in China One thing that is globally known about China, and is undeniably true, is its strict censorship laws and the control which the government has over its media, stretching as far as its social networks. I remember being in Shanghai in 2015 when a tragic accident occurred in...
The Palace can be seen at Jeongdong Theatre, Seoul. A beautiful location with a lovely cafe to chat about the show after. We absolutely loved this play (and you can see why in great detail below). It’s on until July 2018 so you have plenty of time to go see it. Honestly, I was open-mouthed for a good portion of it; delighted by the dazzling colour, sound, and a...
Translated by: Bodhi Fishman Japan Today Wherever you were born and raised, you know that World War II changed everything. You may not have been alive before WWII to know this first hand, but you studied history and you spoke to your grandparents who likely lived through a recession, and possibly a subsequent economic boom depending on where you are from. You know...
Wu Ming-Yi is Taiwan’s most celebrated author, and at the time of writing, only two of his novels have been translated into English (The Stolen Bicycle, and The Man with the Compound Eyes). Longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2018 (alongside Han Kang’s illustrious The White Book), it’s certainly my hope that the acclaim this book is bound to shower him...
Translated by Grace Jung It’s troubling to think on what we’ll miss when we’re gone, and what we may never know about what has already passed. How much of history is lost to us? How many wonderful and terrible things will we never live to see? Both of these questions were in mind as I pored through the stories in this collection. A Unique Publishing House First and...
Translated by Jocelyn Allen Back in the summer of 2016 I was walking through Tokyo, somewhere near the Shibuya district, when I stumbled across a Gay Pride parade marching gleefully, cheering and singing under the crisp blue June sky. It was a wonderful sight, and filled the air with electric vibrancy and colour. A few weeks later, a student of mine at a Tokyo...
In many ways, the women of East Asian literature are the prominent voices of their cultures today. In Japan and Korea especially, those writers who have the greatest clarity of mind and creative spirits are insightful, fascinating, and imaginative women. Women who speak for the sidelined and the unrepresented, women who show us our lives and our cultures from an...
In an interview with fivebooks.com, Yiyun Li discussed the concept of the ‘anti-memoir’. This term came around because, as Li put it in the interview, “[…] there has to be a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ – an epiphany. But to me, all these things are artificial. Life is lived in a much messier way.” This rather perfectly encapsulates the issue that Li, and many...
