Cultural Agency Supports Realm Of The Dead

[Mulboyne]

[floatl][/floatl]"Realm of the Dead" by Uchida Hyakken
"Uchida Hyakken (1889-1971) was the author of over fifteen volumes of fiction, essays, diaries, and poetry, including A New Account of My Hut, I am a Cat: The Fake Version, and Gates Close at Dusk. An essay of his was adapted into the movie Madadayo, which was directed by master filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. A major figure with a devoted following in Japan, this is his first book to be translated into English." (from CBC.org)

Like a number of recent translations of Japanese literature, this title is underwritten by the Japanese Literature Publishing Project. More on that initiative on their J'Lit site

[Mulboyne]

Like a number of recent translations of Japanese literature, this title is underwritten by the Japanese Literature Publishing Project. More on that initiative on their J'Lit site

Asahi: Gathering hints 'big bang' in Japanese literature is just around the corner

Buyers for U.S. bookstores dislike translations, book reviewers shun them and, as a result, American readers are unwitting victims of an "economic censorship" that limits translations to less than 1 percent of books published annually. Meanwhile, contemporary foreign literature is more interesting than contemporary American literature. Those views no doubt surprised many of the 200 or so fans of translation at a gathering titled "Bringing Japanese Literature to the World" on June 20 at Tokyo's International House of Japan. The ostensible purpose was to publicize the Japanese Literature Publishing Project (JLPP), an initiative of the Agency for Cultural Affairs...
... The Japanese literary scene is fertile ground, claimed second speaker Kelts, a lecturer at the University of Tokyo and an editor of the literary magazine A Public Space. "Japanese literary writers in some respects have exceeded their American counterparts. Like American writers two or three decades ago, they seem to know no limits." As examples, Kelts mentioned Kazushige Abe, Masaya Nakahara, Yoko Ogawa and--most important--Haruki Murakami. Kelts linked the latter with two other stalwarts of 21st-century Japanese culture: "Today the rosetta stones of Japanese culture--anime, manga and Murakami--are showing America another kind of freedom." Kelts argued that the absence of Judeo-Christian dualisms allows Japanese to avoid categories of right and wrong and view the world "kaleidoscopically." As an example, he cited abortion, a contentious topic in the United States but not in Japan...more...