The Japan Society Review

By Ogawa Yoko The novel takes place on an unnamed island where, for the past 15 years, things have regularly disappeared, not just physically but from memory. This disappearance is enforced by the Memory Police, the [...] Review by Jill Dobson

By Luiz Hara The Japanese Larder goes beyond being simply a recipe book and rather is an informative introduction to a wide and varied range of those Japanese ingredients. It helps to expel the myth that Japanese food [...] Review by Laura Richardson

By Michael Wert In this very handy sized and concise book of just over one-hundred pages Professor Michael Wert attempts to explain in easy to understand terms the origins and development of the samurai, that most [...] Review by Trevor Skingle

By Durian Sukegawa Durian Sukegawa’s Sweet Bean Paste is a tender story chronicling the unlikely bond between an ex con and an elderly lady with a shadowy past. The novel starts in a comical vein like a classic ‘odd couple’ [...] Review by Chris Arning

By Jeremy A. Yellen The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere is in fact a truly timely addition to the historiography of modern Japan in general and a fundamental contribution to the study of the Japanese wartime [...] Review by Francesco Cioffo

By Stephen Turnbull The book’s narrative revolves around the Higo-kunishu Ikki (Higo People’s Revolt), the conflict which helped trigger the katanagari sword hunt in 1588, commonly referred to as the Taiko’s Sword Hunt, to [...] Review by Trevor Skingle

By Miyamoto Teru Kinshu is an epistolary novel, told in a series of letters between a divorced and thoroughly estranged couple. Aki and her former husband, Yasuaki, have neither spoken nor seen each other in over a decade. Review by Robert Paul Weston

By Edward Marx Edward Marx has clearly done extensive research and has presented the most well-documented account of Yone Noguchi’s life so far. Review by Peter Kornicki

By Mishima Yukio A welcome addition to the English language translations of Yukio Mishima’s work in the lead-up to the fiftieth anniversary of his death, it is an exuberant if patchily saucy read and reveals a different angle to [...] Review by Susan Meehan

By Ruth Ozeki My Year of Meats is essentially a story of the human life and the human body. It asks us to question what it means to be a woman, what we put in our bodies and how our offspring will value themselves in a world [...] Review by Azmina Sohail