I couldn’t find an English translation for this work yet. There isn’t even a Wikipedia entry for this writer. That makes this particular article, Japanese literature turns page with foreign writers, in the Daily Yomiuri Online all the more interesting.

Daily Yomiuri writer, Yomiuri Shimbun,  sees broader trends at work:

The number of foreigners living in Japan has already reached 2.15 million. About 100 entries written by people from Asia, the Middle East, Europe and other regions are sent annually to “Ryugakusei Bungakusho,” the Japanese literary prize for international students studying in this country. It is undeniable that the base of foreigners writing Japanese-language literature has been expanding.

Writers from other countries are among winners of Britain’s Booker Prize and France’s Prix Goncourt, both leading European literary prizes. For example, Kazuo Ishiguro, who moved to Britain from Japan as a child, has won a Booker.
Such examples of the globalization of literary prize winners are helping to enrich literature in the English- and French-speaking worlds. Likewise, the sensibilities of foreign writers will stimulate Japanese-language literature and in turn give it new vitality.

Here is a link to YouTube news report and interview with Yang Yi that is translated.

As part of the Washington’s Cherry Blossom Festival, there is a street fair downtown sponsored by the Japan-America Society. The attendance was large and there was great music, food and things to buy. Here are some photos.

Some sandals for sale. I just liked the photo.

Japanese Shift Cash Out of U.S. Investments, reports the New York Times. This doesn’t have much to do with fiction, but it is alarming sign that U.S. currency is no longer the world’s reserve currency.  The U.S. is now the world’s bargain basement. NBC nightly news had a segment recently about how Europeans are taking special three-day trips to the U.S. to go shopping for bargains. Great news for local retailers, I guess, but why do I find it disheartening?

Manga Conquers America, Wired. For anyone over 30, Manga is probably a new concept. This Wired cover story is a nice introduction into what I think is a really energetic art form. I wonder if there’s any Manga out on the dollar’s decline?

Comparison shopping: Ordering Japanese books and media online. This is a great post at just hungry. Links, advice and recommendations that I found very helpful.

The book has not been widely reviewed but the initial reports indicate it’s a departure from his other works. I’ll get a copy this weekend and post my review.

Here are two reviews that I enjoyed.

Lee Makela, associate professor emeritus of East Asian history at Cleveland State University, has written a review for the Cleveland Plain Dealer: ” … we learn a lot, not only about Tokyo’s denizens of the night, but about the larger metaphysical world each inhabits …”

Sanaphay Rattanavong, writing for the Asian American Press, describes Murakami’s style before examining the work. The author, “writes the way he speaks, spinning what he calls “a ‘neutral’ Japanese.” In Murakami’s most recent novel, After Dark (Knopf, 2007, trans. Jay Rubin), this neutrality is taken to an extreme.”

The New York Times has a favorable review here. An excerpt:

A well-produced and elegant little book, “Seven Touches” is a set of stories in which music plays a transformative, often mystical role in the lives of the characters: an organ grinder’s abrasive melodies cause a woman to see visions of others’ deaths; an antique music box summons up ghosts in the apartment of an old widower.

Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the US, by Roland Kelts. A review in The Australian.

Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino. I just bought this one. A New York Times review.

In other activites, I plan to join the Japan-America Society in Washington DC. I live near it and I will enroll in its language school. I’m very excited about this. This blog will help focus me on something that I have had a lifelong interest in, Japanese writers and writing, especially its post-war fiction, ever since being exposed to some translations of Japanese books on Guam, while in the Navy, that weren’t widely available in the U.S. (The is pre-Internet, before you could order anything you ever wanted online.)

My list of links, writers and otherwise, isn’t very long yet but my goal is to build this out gradually. Rushed enthusiasm dissipates quickly. 

By the way, Haruki Murakami’s Web site has been nominated for a Webby Award. It is a very good site that opens with this pulsating, deep bass, theme that sets the mood. The site has very interesting graphics, photography.