Japan
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Protecting Murakami’s Library Card
Fifty years ago, a kid named Haruki Murakami borrowed books from his school library in Kobe, Japan. This week, the Kobe Shimbun, a local paper, published a list of the books he checked out, as compiled on book checkout slips—and Japanese…
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The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Kevin Oderman
Traveling abroad, of course, the world insists, asks, Where are you from?
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The Japanese Toilet Takes a Bow: A Personal History
I’ve long been afraid of toilets in Japan, beginning with the one in the temple we visited every summer starting in 1975, when my mother and I began to regularly go to her homeland in a bid to make sure…
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This Week in Indie Bookstores
Japanese bookseller Kinokuniya Co. plans on increasing the number of direct purchases made from publishers to avoid wholesalers’ markups. The store previously bought most of the stock of Murakami’s latest essay collection to compete against online sales. Burlesque dancers danced…
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Wild Things
Statistics make us feel safe, but most of the time, they can’t predict what’s really going to happen in our life. We believe in them anyway, though.
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The Rumpus Interview with Yumi Sakugawa
Yumi Sakugawa discusses her latest book, Ikebana, discovering meditation, exploring blank spaces, and drawing a world of sentient oranges and one-eyed monsters.
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Japanese Bookstore Beats Amazon to the Punch
In what can aptly be described as a preemptive strike against online retailers like Amazon, major Japanese bookstore chain Kinokuniya bought up to 90% of the first print run of Haruki Murakami’s latest book of essays, Novelist as a Vocation. A…
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Deep Pain and Deep Beauty
Deep pain and deep beauty oscillate throughout Sagawa’s work, often triggered in the same image. “Insects pierce green through the orchard,” she writes in “Like a Cloud.” “The sky has countless scars. The skin of the earth emerges there, burning…
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Murakami Plays Dear Abby
“There’s no use of me singing ‘I can’t stop loooooooving you’ to you, I suppose.” We beg to differ, Haruki: The Rumpus would love to hear your crooning Ray Charles rendition. Alas, author Haruki Murakami hasn’t serenaded us yet, but…
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Mendokusai (I Can’t Be Bothered)
Young people who aren’t interested in marriage or children, sure, but young people who aren’t interested in sex? According to this article in the Guardian, that’s increasingly the case in Japan, where a government survey “found that 45% of women aged…
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The Rumpus Interview with Nina Schuyler
Nina Schuyler discusses her latest novel, The Translator, and delves into its narrative of missed meanings, severed connections, and self-renewal.
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The Rumpus Interview with a Ginza Hostess
Mayumi, a hostess in the Ginza district of Japan, lends an intimate perspective of the country’s notorious Water Trade.