japanamerica

I'll be participating in two public events next month, one of which may have a live audience in addition to Zooming heads. Hope you'll join us, online or off.  •    Saturday 10/10, 10am - 12 pm Japan Standard Time (Friday 10/9, 9pm - 11 pm EST, 6pm - 8pm PST): Voices from Japan: Launching the New Literary Journal MONKEY , with Motoyuki Shibata, Tomoka Shibasaki, Hideo Furukawa, Satoshi Kitamura, Ted Goossen, Meg Taylor, Polly Barton and Jordan Smith. Hosted by Hitomi Yoshio at Waseda University. Click here to register. •      Sunday 10/18, 10am - 11:30 am Japan Standard Time (Saturday 10/17, 9pm - 10:30 pm EST, 6pm - 7:30pm PST):  Mieko Kawakami (BREASTS AND EGGS) in conversation with Roland Kelts (JAPANAMERICA) , with Motoyuki Shibata (introduction) and Hitomi Yoshio (interpretation). Hosted by International House Japan and The Asia Society. Click here to register.

Still swinging for the fences: Murakami in conversation The Times Literary Supplement “You see, I’m like a cat”, he tells me, twice. “I know the best position, and I go there straight. And I do it on my own time. Many people don’t like that about me.” Despite Murakami’s discomfort in Japan, and the disdain he receives from Japanese literary critics ten or more years his junior, his legacy is everywhere in contemporary Japanese culture. He’s there in the unvarnished prose and surreal happenstance in the work of younger writers, including Sayaka Murata (whose bestselling Convenience Store Woman is an eerily Murakamiesque blend of the magical mundane punctuated by violence) Mieko Kawakami and Hideo Furukawa (who wrote what he calls “a remix” of an early Murakami story, entitled Slow Boat ), all of whom claim that his model as an independent, uncompromising artist forged their paths from the parochial forests of Japanese letters to the broader plains of world literature. The...