Yanagi Sōetsu (1889–1961) was a Japanese philosopher who pioneered the influential aesthetic concept and artistic movement known as Mingei, “folk craft.” Beginning in the 1920s, Yanagi began to champion the beauty of common, utilitarian art. The Mingei style stands in contrast to both fine art—art for art’s sake, where the artist’s reputation inheres in the work—and the mass-produced commodities of industrial production that increasingly predominated.

In her new collection, A Hundred Years and a Day: 34 Stories, Tomoka Shibasaki—acclaimed author of the novel Spring Garden—offers a masterful selection of stories that redefine the boundaries of the short story. Fluidly translated by award-winning translator Polly Barton, A Hundred Years and a Day will join the roster alongside Hiromi Kawakami, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, and Hiromi Ito as the fourth publication from our MONKEY imprint in partnership with MONKEY: New Writing from Ja

In Allen Weiss’s forthcoming book on Kyoto’s artistic landscape, Illusory Dwellings, he writes about the unease with which modern Western art categories contain Japanese aesthetics. There is, on the one hand, a question of what constitutes the avant-garde and the traditional in a particular national canon.

Recently, writer and translator Frederik L. Schodt was inducted into the Manga Publishing Hall of Fame at this year’s American Manga Awards. His contributions as a translator are numerous and legendary—Astro Boy, Ghost in the Shell, Rose of Versaillesto name a few—but his book Manga! Manga!, which introduced the English-speaking world to manga in the early 1980s, may be more influential.

Maybe you’ve heard that travel to Japan is booming. This is thanks in no small part to the advantageous exchange rate of the US dollar to the yen, reaching exchange rates not seen since the 1980s. The result: unusually affordable travel in a country as affluent as Japan. How has this happened?

Tokyo Swindlers, the best-selling novel by Ko Shinjo and the basis for Netflix Japan’s newest crime series of the same name, will make its..

Recently I had the great pleasure of seeing Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s latest film Evil Does Not Exist. It confirmed my feeling that Hamaguchi is one of the greatest directors working today. I, like many others, was introduced to his films with Drive my Car (2021), which premiered at Cannes to much acclaim and went on to win the Academy Award for international film, that portrayed Japan's pandemic experience.

Steve Beimel, a long-time resident of Kyoto, is the driving force behind JapanCraft21, whose goal is to preserve and nourish Japanese crafts. Here he discusses the variety and significance of crafts in Japan and what makes them so special.

Stone Bridge Press is pleased to announce Off the Beaten Tracks in Japan: A Journey by Train from Hokkaido to Kyushu by John Dougill has been named a winner in the 26th annual Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards. Foreword Reviews, a book review journal focusing on independently published books, announced the winners of its INDIES Book of the Year Awards today.

This is a follow up to my last post describing the content and context of Journey to the West. Frederik H. Green is professor of Chinese at San Francisco State University and the translator of Bird Talk and Other Stories, a collection of stories by the Chinese author Xu Xu. We sat down to talk about the historical background of the Journey and how readers can approach the novel in translation today.

When it comes to exploring the rich tapestry of Japanese culture, Kyoto stands as a beacon of tradition, art, and philosophy. In his latest book, Illusory Dwellings: Aesthetic Meditations in Kyoto, Allen S. Weiss takes readers on a captivating journey through the essence of Kyoto's artistic landscape.

Takaoka's Travels by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa is a beloved gem in Japanese literature that has captivated readers for decades. Winner of the Yomiuri Prize and recipient of the 2022-23 William F. Sibley Memorial Subvention Award for Japanese Translation, the novel continues to enthrall readers, earning its status as a cult classic in Japan.

Translator Mark Gibeau and publisher Peter Goodman discuss Mark’s translation of Osamu Dazai’s novel Ningen Shikkaku, which Stone Bridge published as A Shameful Life. Why is this mid-20th-century Japanese author's portrait of an alienated (and alienating) personality still so attractive to contemporary audiences, especially teens and young adults? Topics include: Teaching Japanese in Australia The original Donald Keene translation and why Mark decided to translate it again Ho

Over the past month a coincidence of events has occasioned me to think about Journey to the West: reading our new translation of...

Part 2: From Japanese to English This is a follow up to our previous post on the history of literary exchange between Japanese and English. There we discussed the first novels to be translated from English as well as the various attempts to render Hamlet into Japanese. This time we explore the reverse, how and when Japanese literature made its way to the Anglophone world. Writing in the New Yorker Roland Kelts recalls this remark from the popular Japanese novelist Haruki Mura

Part 1: From English to Japanese It’s easy to take for granted today the porousness of national boundaries and the effortless transmission of culture between languages. If this year you have occasion to read a work of Japanese literature in translation, you might be confirmed in this thought with such a huge variety to choose from. Of course, a century ago the lay reader would have quite the opposite experience, half a century on from Japan’s “opening,” despite the effervesce

Takaoka's Travels by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa is a beloved gem in Japanese literature that has captivated readers for decades. Winner of the...

The Heron Catchers by David Joiner Escape to Japan's fabled Kanazawa in a tale of love, loss, and redemption in The Heron Catchers by David Joiner. After Nozomi abandons Sedge and their whatmarriage, taking all their money and leaving him with a ceramics shop he can’t manage alone, her brother and his wife offer him a lifeline at their Japanese hot spring inn until he can get back on his feet. As he proceeds forward from this devastation in his life, he becomes involved with

Off the Beaten Tracks in Japan by John Dougill Eager to know what it's like traveling Japan by train? What lies beyond the well-trodden tourist paths of Japan? Embark on a captivating journey through the lesser-known landscapes and cultural treasures of Japan's western coastline in Off the Beaten Tracks in Japan: A Journey by Train from Hokkaido to Kyushu. Join author John Dougill, a seasoned resident of Japan with three decades of experience, as he traverses from the norther

From the bestselling author of Strange Weather in Tokyo comes this otherworldly collection of eight stories, each a masterpiece of...