The Nobel Prize committee cited Rudyard Kipling’s (1865-1936) writing on the manners and customs of the Japanese when they awarded him his Nobel prize in 1907.Kipling, an English journalist and author of books including The Jungle Book, visited Japan in 1889 and 1892. No other leading English literary figure… Read more »

The publication in 1981 of The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, by Soji Shimada, generated a boom in whodunnits in Japan and a reappraisal of the somewhat out-of-favour and often derided genre, known locally as honkaku mysteries, classical, authentic  or orthodox mysteries, which had often been looked… Read more »

Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) is notorious for a variety of things including killing himself; being nominated multiple-times for the Nobel Prize in Literature and never winning; as well as being one of David Bowie’s (1947-2016) favourite authors. In his short writing life (around 21 years), Mishima… Read more »

In 1905, a Japanese aristocrat, Baron Suyematsu (1855-1920), who was educated at Cambridge University, felt compelled to write two books in English in an early form of ‘myth-busting’ and ‘fake news’ management.It was a time where books were being written about Japan by Western writers… Read more »