Issue 64 (August 2016, Volume 11, Number 4)

In this edition of the Japan Society Review we feature three superstars of contemporary Japanese literature, Furukawa Hideo, Tawara Machi and Wataya Risa, all of whom have achieved both critical and popular acclaim.

Furukawa Hideo has been described as the new Murakami, and while the comparison holds true in terms of his popularity and prolific output, his breadth of style and genre set him aside. Not only does he do Murakami-esque magic realism, but his novels are also suffused with history, classicism, autobiography and philosophy. In the case of Horses, Horses, In the End the Light Remains Pure he juggles all of these at once as he attempts to come to terms with 3.11.

Poet Tawara Machi’s Salad Anniversary was released in 1987 when she was only 26 and has sold nearly three million copies in Japan and eight million worldwide, with Tawara herself credited with reviving the tanka form. Here Chris Beckett reviews Pushkin Press’s new pocket-sized edition alongside poet Erica Facey’s dual-language collection Images.

Wataya Risa is another Japanese author to have experienced success at a young age. Her second novel I Want to Kick You in the Back won her the Akutagawa Prize at only nineteen in 2003 and has now made a long awaited appearance in English. She offers a fresh perspective on Japan’s fan culture.

Elsewhere in this issue, Chris Corker considers Murakami Ryū’s Tokyo Decadence and asks whether the former enfant terrible retains the ability to shock, Charlotte Goff unpicks the many conflicts that characterise University of Hawaii Press’s new collection of Okinawan literature, and Dominika Mackiewicz reviews Michael Lucken’s reassessment of Japanese artistic mimeticism.

Editor
William Upton

Reviewers
Chris Beckett, Chris Corker, Alice French, Charlotte Goff, Eluned Gramich and Dominika Mackiewicz

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