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Japanese Poetry and what It Taught Me

October 3, 2022

creativity, criticism, guest post, Igor Livramento, Japan, literature, poetry

Today’s post – “Japanese Poetry and what It Taught Me” – is authored by Igor da Silva Livramento. He’s a fellow academic from UFSC, fellow author, fellow creative-writing advisor, and overall a great fellow. He’s also a composer, music theorist, and producer. Check out his papers on Academia.edu, his music on Bandcamp, and his personal musings on his blog – in Portuguese, Spanish/Castilian, and English. You can also find him on LinkedIn.

Let me begin by saying:

明ぼのや
白魚白き
こと一寸。

I mean:

akebono ya
shirauo shiroki
koto issun.

Which I will translate as:

White light,
white fish,
an inch of bright.

This poem, by the famous haiku writer Matsuo Bashō, gave me so much to think about. But before I discuss that, let me do a brief analysis of the poem.

japanese literature — Japanese poetry is an ode to simplicity

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Review of If Cats Disappeared from the World, by Genki Kawamura

May 9, 2022

Book Review, Criticism

book, experiencing, fiction, Japan, literature, love, review, society

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I love Japanese literature. Its themes are often focused, intelligent, quirky. I also love cats – indeed, for similar reasons, one may add! Combining the two, we get this review of If Cats Disappeared from the World, by Genki Kawamura.

You might also recall my review of The Travelling Cat Chronicles, by Hiro Arikawa, featuring a very similar theme. There are many similarities between the two novels, and if they weren’t both published in the same year, I’d be willing to ascribe the coincidence to an act of imitation instead.

So, what does a story like If Cats Disappeared from the World tell us?

Review of If Cats Disappeared — *What if Cats Disappeared? We don’t even want to think about it*

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Review of The Memory Police, by Yōko Ogawa

September 13, 2021

Book Review, Criticism

book, fiction, Japan, literature, review

2 comments

The Memory Police, by Yōko Ogawa, is basically a dystopian novel about a Japanese island where things “disappear” on an apparently random basis, and people must forget about them. If they can’t, no problem; Memory Police to the rescue. They make sure people forget the things that “disappeared” by forcing them to destroy these things.

All that sounds very dystopian, and it certainly is. There’s an undeniable aura of 1984 floating in Ogawa’s novel, but it’s much more subtle than that. That is good news, of course, but at times it also becomes problematic, for reasons that are both interesting and educational.

In other words, if you’re interested in dystopian narratives, you should pay close attention. Ogawa’s novel is an excellent example of how genre crossover can be problematic.

memory police — Secrecy, irrationality, submission. These and other elements of dystopian fiction are present in *The Memory Police*

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