Japanese literature Archive
Stories Without Women
Men Without Women is a familiar, easily identifiable, and oddly comforting book for the Murakami reader, privileging the emotional landscape of lonely Japanese men through scaffolding characterization, personal idiosyncrasy, and monkey-wrench narratives.
Pursuing Essence through Ambiguity: On Kawabata’s Palm-of-the-Hand Stories
Among the known instances of writers reworking published material, Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata stands apart for his seemingly untenable decision to turn his acclaimed novel Snow Country (for which, along with Thousand Cranes and The Old Capital, he received the 1968 Nobel Prize) into an eleven-page story. Kawabata completed