Issue 113 (June 2026, Volume 21, Number 2)

The June issue of The Japan Society Review brings together works that explore Japan through history, literature, biography, landscape, and cultural encounters. The issue opens with Andrew W. Bernstein’s Fuji: A Mountain in the Making, which examines how Mount Fuji became one of Japan’s most enduring national symbols. Moving between geology, religion, politics, and cultural memory, the book offers a rich account of the mountain’s changing significance across centuries.

Questions of representation and storytelling continue in The Cinema of Kinoshita Keisuke: Films of Joy and Sorrow, edited by David Desser and Earl Jackson. This collection reconsiders the prolific filmmaker’s contribution to Japanese cinema, highlighting the emotional range, formal innovation, and social engagement that have secured his place in the history of film. Literature likewise offers fresh perspectives on identity and convention through Torikaebaya Monogatari: A Japanese Tale of Gender-Swapped Siblings, a new translation of the classical tale in which gender roles and courtly expectations are playfully and provocatively inverted.

Several of this issue’s reviews consider encounters between Japan and the wider world. Pierre Loti’s Madame Chrysanthème, one of the most influential foreign literary portrayals of Japan in the late 19th century, provides a revealing glimpse into Western perceptions of the country during the Meiji era, while also inviting reflection on the origins and legacy of many enduring cultural stereotypes. Charlotte Cory’s Six Months of Dreaming offers an imaginative blend of fiction, archival research, and artistic homage, reconstructing the life and ambitions of the largely forgotten neck-tie designer Kajikawa Yutaka. Through a creative engagement with rediscovered designs and historical sources, Cory explores artistic ambition, cultural exchange, and the possibilities of re-imagining overlooked histories.

The final books in this issue focus on voice, memory, and personal experience. Ito Hiromi’s The Thorn Puller combines pilgrimage, folklore, and contemporary life in a distinctive narrative that moves between the spiritual and the everyday with wit and emotional depth. Emily Midorikawa’s A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing concludes the issue with a poignant memoir of family, grief, and identity, reflecting on loss while tracing the complexities of mixed heritage and belonging.