Yesterday, my friends and I attended an online geisha event. I thought it was very interesting, but while I write my recap of it, I thought I’d share a bit from this book that I’ve almost finished. It’s called 中世の遊女 (Courtesans in the Middle Ages) by 辻浩和 Three Myths about Courtesans In this case, the… Read More Reading in Japanese: 3 Myths about Japanese Courtesans (From 中世の遊女 by 辻浩和)
This will be, I hope, the start of a new series. One of the things I planned to do more of this year was to read in Japanese, and I had the perfect opportunity when I was given a stack of books for the World of Genji project. It was pretty hard to decide what… Read More Reading in Japanese: Family and Sex in the Middle Ages by Takahashi Hideki (中世の家と性）
I stumbled across this book while browsing through Overdrive and knew that I was going to read it someday because it’s related to the World of Genji project I’m doing. I kind of put it off for a few weeks because it looked a bit intimidating, but I told Pan Pan about it and basically… Read More The Search for the Beautiful Woman by Cho Kyo
As part of my research into the world of Genji, I decided to read up about the history of Kimono. Unfortunately, most library books are for reference, so I borrowed the only one that wasn’t – The Kimono: History and Style. This book is a very beautiful book that takes a pictorial look at the… Read More The Kimono: History and Style by Ito Sacico
After reading about Nagai Takashi’s – a Japanese Christian – response to the bombing of Nagasaki, I decided to go back in time and continue reading about Christianity in Japan. This time, however, the topic is completely different. Christ’s Samurai is an account of the Shimabara rebellion, which has the dubious honour of being the… Read More Christ’s Samurai by Jonathan Clements
Today happens to be the anniversary of the Church that I’m attending in Sasebo and 平和聖日 (Holy Day of Peace) for the 日本基督教団 (United Church of Christ in Japan – for convenience, I use ‘the Church’ and ‘United Church of Christ in Japan’ pretty much interchangeably in this post, but I am not talking about… Read More (Part Of) Japanese Church History
I don’t know if this film is going to make its way out of Japan, but I hope it is because this is a must-watch!! I went in expecting to watch a moving tale (and I did, having cried for half the movie), but I came out feeling like there’s still hope as long as… Read More Movie Review: Sughiara Chiune (Persona Non Grata)
This is another one of those “saw in the library and had to borrow it” sort of books. And after reading it, well, I want my own copy. Unlike the previous ninja-related book I read, The Kouga Ninja Scrolls, Samurai and Ninja is neither a novel, nor does it take an idealistic/unrealistic view of ninja/samurai.… Read More Book Review: Samurai and Ninja by Antony Cummins
It’s time for a very rare book review! Anyway, I requested this book from NetGalley because it’s an aspect of World War II that I haven’t heard about before, I mean, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard of a Kawashima Yoshiko in any of my textbooks. Kawashima Yoshiko (born Aisin Gioro Xian… Read More Book Review: Manchu Princess, Japanese Spy by Phyllis Birnbaum