Meiji Literature and Japan’s Most Famous Lite...

For decades, writing by women was treated as its own separate genre in Japan, joryu bungaku. In today's episode, we’ll start with an explanation of why joryu bungaku became its own separate genre. We’ll move on to the story of women’s writing between the Meiji Era and the Pacific ...  عرض المزيد

In this episode, we examine the history of the Aum Affair and its lasting impact on Japanese fiction.We'll start out with the history of new religions in Japan, including Aum Shinrikyo. We'll take a look at Haruki Murakami's non-fiction book, Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and ...  عرض المزيد

<div>Two stories from Japan about samurai (and wannabe samurai) following their dreams. Too bad it takes fights with giant creatures and a little bit of murder to do so.

The creature this time is ao nyōbō, and she doesn't want you to stop by her beautiful, horribly dilap ...  عرض المزيد

Three stories from Japan about love gone wrong. On the first, the fairest youth in all the land is set to marry the daughter of a rich noble. The problem? His father kind of oversold his looks... On the second, we'll see why moths and other nighttime bugs go toward the light, and ...  عرض المزيد

Two short stories from Japan. On the first, an old man is in a tree surrounded by demons and faced with a desperate choice. On the second, a man has a pet that his wife is not thrilled about, so she makes that known. With scissors.

The creature is a sad cow! Or a vamp ...

Two stories from Japan about the stories we tell one another. On the first, it's a not-so-famous musician who gets a massive new audience for the legend he has been telling. For the second, it's a man who needs to do his duty...which means doing something terrible to someone he l ...  عرض المزيد