The Japan Society Review

By Furukawa Hideo Horses, Horses was first published in the Shinchō journal in July 2011, and therefore can be read as an almost immediate autobiographical response to the 3.11 tragedy. As a Fukushima native whose [...] Review by Alice French

By Tawara Machi Salad Anniversary, is a delightfully small-sized book, with a washed pink cover, light but solid. And Tawara Machi’s poems are short but lively and personal. They feel more like an album of small photos telling a [...] Review by Chris Beckett

By Davinder L. Bhowmik and Steve Rabson (eds.) This new collection of Okinawan literature refutes the image of a peaceful land where danger comes at the fangs of the habu snake or the box jellyfish rather than the tensions between its inhabitants. Review by Charlotte Goff

By Murakami Ryū The stories of this collection, connected by topics of prostitution and unusual sexual proclivities, include shocking elements. From a trucker that enjoys self-emasculation and dressing up as a woman to the [...] Review by Chris Corker

By Erica Facey This delightful bilingual collection is made up of one-vertical-line haiku in the Japanese, and 3-line haiku in English. The Japanese section meets its English counterpart in the middle coming the other way. Review by Chris Beckett

By Douglas Clark Clark has scoured the archives, journals and relevant family records for photographs and sketches of the principal legal players so as to build up a fairly comprehensive picture gallery of them all – the most [...] Review by Chris Roberts

By Michael Lucken In this interdisciplinary study, the author attempts to both discern the past in contemporary Japanese art, while also focusing on its innovative characteristics, unpicking and complicating the idea of Japan as [...] Review by Dominika Mackiewicz

By Susan Southard This work joins an increasing number of books about the enormity of suffering undergone and delivered by the Japanese more than 70 years ago. Southard’s motivation to research the story of the hibakusha [...] Review by Elizabeth Ingrams

By Alex Kerr From the first page readers find themselves guided through the author’s extraordinary journey through vivid accounts of traditional Japanese life, from the landscape of Shikoku to the dressing rooms of Tokyo’s [...] Review by Harry Martin

By Yokoyama Hideo 1989 saw Japan move to the Heisei era. In the closing days of Shōwa, the novel’s first victim, seven-year-old Amamiya Shoko, was kidnapped and killed. The ascension of a new Emperor underlined the failure of [...] Review by Charlotte Goff