Death by Water

Nobel Prize winner Kenzaburo Oe’s new novel is a finely woven masterpiece about a writer who searches for the truth behind his father’s death and discovers a new family legacy…

Bankei Zen

The Crazy Iris and Other Stories from the Atomic Aftermath

“In compiling this anthology I have come to realize anew that the short stories included herein are”a means for stirring our imaginative powers to consider the fundamental conditions of human…

Goodbye Tsugumi

“Yoshimoto’s words are considered, and each of them has the weight of a small, perfectly round stone dropped into a still pool. . . . In Tsugumi the author has…

Grove at Home: April 11—17

…keeping with tradition, Ōe delivered a Nobel Lecture a few months later, entitled “Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself.” After a discussion of how he survived the war as a boy…

Grove at Home: March 23-27

…sentiment. If you haven’t read it, read it. “But it’s too simple to blame Trump for what is happening. In the 1980s, officials from both parties cast Japan as the…

Grove at Home: November 22-28

…unsuccessful coup that aimed to overturn Japan’s 1947 constitution. In this stunning interview, Mishima shares his opinions on various aspects of Japanese culture. “Economic prosperity… gives a big, huge spiritual…

Grove at Home: October 4—10

…writes her books, and much more. “Until recently, Sayaka Murata, who won Japan’s most prestigious literary award, the Akutagawa prize, worked in a convenience store. She had toiled in them…

Grove at Home: July 19—25

…name reflects her love of banana flowers — is today an admired writer with a global readership, and something of an unofficial spokesperson for a generation born in 1960s Japan….

Grove at Home: July 5—11

…Chinese, Japanese, Sanskrit, and European languages, Suzuki became legendary as perhaps the key figure in introducing European and American audiences to centuries of thought in the Zen and Shin Buddhist…