A satire on human foibles from the standpoint of a cat, I Am a Cat is one of the most original novels of the Wagahai wa Neko de aru, one of the best loved works by the Japanese writer Natsume… Read More ›
Japanese Literature
Analysis of Kawabata Yasunari’s House of the Sleeping Beauties
In House of the Sleeping Beauties, by the Japanese Nobel Prize–winning author Kawabata Yasunari (1899– 1972), the protagonist, 67-year-old Eguchi, visits an inn where old men pay to spend a chaste night with beautiful young women who have been drugged…. Read More ›
Analysis of Yukio Mishima’s Forbidden Colors
The third novel by Japanese writer Yukio Mishima (1925–1970) returns to themes earlier explored in his semiautobiographical first novel, Confessions of a Mask. The title, a euphemism for homosexuality roughly equivalent to “forbidden love,” frankly announces the novel’s subject matter… Read More ›
Analysis of Sawako Ariyoshi’s The Doctor’s Wife
The Doctor’s Wife by Sawako Ariyoshi (1931–86) gives a fictional account of the life of Hanaoka Seishū, who lived from 1760 to 1835 and performed the first known operation under anesthesia in 1805, 37 years before the use of ether… Read More ›
Analysis of Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s Diary of a Mad Old Man
The Japanese writer Jun’ichirō Tanizaki (1886–1965) began his career as a writer of sensational, rather diabolical tales influenced in part by Western writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, and Oscar Wilde. Celebrated for his masterful plotting and psychological… Read More ›
Analysis of Shūsaku Endō’s Deep River
The Japanese writer Shūsaku Endō (1923– 96) was a Christian author who embraced a faith that combined both Eastern and Western spirituality. The novel Deep River centers on a visit to India by a group of Japanese tourists. The novel… Read More ›
Analysis of Yukio Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask
Confessions of a Mask, a post war autobiographical novel, subverts the conventions of the traditional and dominant Japanese “I” novel of the 20th century. This book, Yukio Mishima’s (1925–70) first commercial success, received praise from the Japanese literary elite and… Read More ›
Analysis of Natsume Sōseki’s Botchan
Botchan is one of the best-loved novels in Japan and a true comic masterpiece. Written at the beginning of the 20th century by Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916), the novel tells the story of a gauche middle school teacher. Botchan, or “little… Read More ›
Analysis of Masuji Ibuse’s Black Rain
Black Rain is one of the most powerful works of literature in any language dealing with the aftermath of a nuclear catastrophe. Comparable, at least on the surface, with American author John Hersey’s Hiroshima (1946), Black Rain by Japanese author… Read More ›
Analysis of Yukio Mishima’s Stories
The world will never know what course the literary career of Yukio Mishima might have taken had he not died at the age of forty-five. Nevertheless, he was the best known of post-World War II writers among critics and readers… Read More ›
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