Anyone who reads Japanese literature has surely noticed the overwhelming number of books about cats. It’s not just a phenomenon of fiction in translation—there are a lot of Japanese cat books to tr…
Sep 3, 2024 • Subscribe
More like this
Books: Japanese Drinking
By Shelley Pallis. Masaaki Watanabe’s anime series Bartender is part of a long tradition of TV shows about smart loners who help others in secret. Its leading man…
Books: Japanese Cinema
By Jasper Sharp. There are many paths one might take through the vast and varied terrain of Japanese cinema. Peter Cowie’s addition to the ever-expanding range of publications…
The Cat Who Saved Books
Japanese Title: 本を守ろうとする猫の話 (Hon o mamorō to suru neko no hanashi)Author: Sosuke Natsukawa (夏川 草介)Translator: Louise Heal KawaiPublication Year: 2017 (Japan); 2021 (United States)Press: HarperColli…
Books: She and Her Cat
By Andrew Osmond. She and Her Cat was one of the first animated films by Makoto Shinkai, five minutes of software-aided monochrome that he made mostly by himself,…
Books: Branding Japanese Food
By Jonathan Clements. In 2013, the Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe took the remarkable step of appearing on YouTube to talk about Japanese food. He was addressing the…
Books on Japanese Culture and Society
This past semester I taught a class on Japanese science fiction and fantasy, and I was surprised by how interested my students were in learning more about the…
100+ Japanese Books under 200 Pages
Japanese literature excels at novellas and short fiction. RJL brings you a list of 100 Japanese books in translation under 200 pages, listed in alphabetical order by title.…
10 Japanese Literature Books To Read This Halloween
In the spirit of spooky season, it’s time to delve into the mysterious, the unsettling and the downright terrifying.
Which Japanese Books Get Left Out of Translation?
There are more Japanese books being made available in English every year. Still, only a small portion of them get translated.
20 Books in 2020 (Part V) Japanese Literature
So, here we are. After spending a whole year attempting the challenge to read 20 books’ worth of Japanese literature in 2020, the deadline is here.
Books: Japanese Film and the Challenge of Video
By Jonathan Clements. Tom Mes’s new book begins in 2022 with Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car winning an Oscar, followed by a flood of gushing articles about how…
20 Books in 2020 (Part IV) Japanese Literature
It’s getting closer and closer to the end now, but there’s still a little while to go. Thanks to my Kindle screen becoming a temperamental little nuisance (by…
Read Japanese Books with the Listening-Reading Method
Want to read Japanese books and novels? We outline a method to help get you started - and build your Japanese listening skills along the way.
10 Japanese Literature Books For Your Autumn Reading List
If you're looking to add some spice to your autumn reading and wish you could travel to Japan this fall, let the pages of a book take you…
Japanese Company Suspends Controversial New “Cat Subscription” Service
A new service called "Cats Unlimited" will suspend operations after accusations that it amounts to a "cat subscription", its company said.
A Novel About a Cat and a Boy (A Review of "The Cat who Saved Books" by Sousuke Natsukawa)
" In our stifling daily lives, we're all so occupied with ourselves that we stop thinking about others. When a Person loses their own hear...
Junko Takekawa’s Recommended Japanese Books – Cheltenham Literatur...
Junko Takekawa’s Recommended Japanese Books – Cheltenham Literature Festival 2022 Our Senior Arts Programme Officer joined one of the events with Daniel Hahn as part of the Cheltenham Literature…
Junko TAKEKAWA's Recommended Japanese Books - The Times and Sunday Tim...
Junko TAKEKAWA's Recommended Japanese Books - The Times and Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival 2024 On Saturday 5 October, as part of the free programme at this year's The…
Japanese Book Guide : 27 Books You Ought to Read about Japan
Here’s a collection of books to help expand your knowledge about Japan. I’ve referred to these books for my various writing projects. This list skews toward history because…
Japanese Book Guide : 27 Books You Ought to Read about Japan
Here’s a collection of books to help expand your knowledge about Japan. I’ve referred to these books for my various writing projects. This list skews toward history because…
Books & Sake
「高円寺古本酒場ものがたり」狩野俊 Story of Koenji Books & Sake, by Suguru Karino The “Story of Koenji Books & Sake” is Suguru Karino’s account of how he started a bookstore and…
Books: Sexiled
By Shelley Pallis. Tanya is twenty-five years old. She’s got half a decade of adventuring behind her, looting treasure from dungeons, spell-casting to protect her friends from goblins…
Books & Sake
「高円寺古本酒場ものがたり」狩野俊 Story of Koenji Books & Sake, by Suguru Karino The “Story of Koenji Books & Sake” is Suguru Karino’s account of how he started a bookstore and…
Books: Ghibliotheque
By Andrew Osmond. The Ghibliotheque podcast started in 2018, and soon became an institution. It offered a journey through the films of Studio Ghibli, presented by Michael Leader…
Books: Orienting
By Jonathan Clements. “My stay here has been so short,” said Rabindranath Tagore to Japanese students in 1916, “that one may think I have not earned my right…
Junko Takekawa’s Recommended Japanese Books – The Times and Sunday...
Junko Takekawa’s Recommended Japanese Books – The Times and Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival 2023 During The Huddle Free Programme at The Times and Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival…
Whiskers in the East: A Deep Dive into Japanese Cat Culture
Japan’s enduring cultural fascination with cats surpasses mere appreciation, and can be tracked through the pages of folklore, mythology, art, and literature, into modern popular culture displays l…
Books: Spirit Chronicles
By Shelley Pallis. Yuri Kitayama’s Seirei Gensouki: Spirit Chronicles has several different beginnings, and to be frank, I am not sure that it has stopped beginning yet, even…
Books: Otherside Picnic
By Shelley Pallis. Sorawo Kamikoshi is a loner, a twenty-year-old nerd studying cultural anthropology at a Saitama university, whose hobby is exploring spooky places. Nor are these randomly…
Books: Tearmoon Empire
By Jonathan Clements. Then she woke up, and it was all a dream. Or was it? The teenage princess Mia Luna Tearmoon vividly recalls being eight years older,…
Books: Hell Mode
By Shelley Pallis. Kenichi is a gamer suffering from that common modern malaise, a frustration with games that make life too easy for him. He’s just spent three…
Books: Monster Kids
By Jonathan Clements. In his lively new book Monster Kids: How Pokémon Taught a Generation to Catch Them All, Daniel Dockery talks us through the original plans in…
The Best Books
Buying books, especially old books, is a fascination and my biggest weakness. I love the old wear and tear on antiques, and sitting and pondering where the scraped…
Books: Anime’s Identity
By Jonathan Clements. Stevie Suan’s new book, Anime’s Identity, cannot resist telling a story from the production of King’s Avatar (above), a 2019 Chinese animated series that subcontracted…
Books: Tatami Galaxy
By Tom Wilmot. Any mention of The Tatami Galaxy usually brings to mind Masaaki Yuasa’s much-loved 2010 anime. The charming series has become something of a modern classic,…
Books: Kyoto Stories
By Jonathan Clements. “Riding on public transportation in Japan makes you feel a part of the general population,” writes Steve Alpert in Kyoto Stories. “One of the people.…
Books: Infinite Dendrogram
By Shelley Pallis. Infinite Dendrogram is the best game ever invented, a “virtual reality massively multiplayer online game” but not a crap one like all the ones that…
Books: Reading Murakami
By Jonathan Clements. Almost everything that is written about fiction is either reception (what the reader thought of the book) or production (an occasional making-of about the author…
Books: Rebuild World
By Jonathan Clements. When we first see Akira, he is gripped in the jaws of a mutant dog. Nafuse’s Rebuild World ditches the tiresome induction scene of many…
Books: Terminal Boredom
By Jonathan Clements. “There is something wrong with our present society,” Izumi Suzuki once wrote, “and I can’t stand SF written by people who don’t understand that… Even…
Books: Leiji Matsumoto
By Jonathan Clements. For all the passion and excitement that the contributors bring to the new collection Leiji Matsumoto: Essays on the Anime and Manga Legend, their subject…
Books: Rediscovered Classics
By Zoe Crombie. Anime has taken inspiration from Western cultures throughout much of its history, from Astro Boy’s Disney-inspired aesthetics to the gorgeous European locales of films like…
Books: Studio Ghibli
By Jonathan Clements. Producer Toshio Suzuki was entertainingly underwhelmed when he was approached by agents for the pop stars Chage and Aska, who asked if Studio Ghibli would…
Books: Combat Baker…
By Jeannette Ng. The light novel series The Combat Baker and the Automaton Waitress follows Lud “Silver Wolf” Langart, a former captain and mech-operator who retires after a…
Books: Hayao Miyazaki
By Andrew Osmond. Hayao Miyazaki, published to tie in with the current exhibition about the director at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles, is a whopping big book.…
The Capable Cat #09 — Cat Sitting
This episode proved my personal hypothesis that two episodes of this in a short span is a bit more than I can stomach. Impressions: Or maybe it…
Dark Cat
Dark Cat is a 1991 Action Horror Original Video Animation from Agent 21 studios. While this is only one episode, that does not mean that it can’t pack…
Black Cat
I'd make a joke about bad luck crossing your path, but I think they already do that in the manga a couple of times... 2:13 - Black Cat 29:41 -…
Square Enix Manga & Books Reveals New Books Coming Spring 2023
The good folks from Square Enix Manga & Books have sent us their upcoming release slate for spring 2023. Headlining their releases is the Ch...
Books: The Deer King
By Motoko Tamamuro. A salt mine controlled by the Empire of Zol is attacked by a pack of dogs. The workers and slaves are all bitten, and within…