We tend to think of diaries as private records written for our own personal reflection or amusement. But journals are sometimes kept for publication with a wider audience in mind. And while Anglo-Saxon bards were still bellowing about the deeds of Beowulf, the noblewomen of Japan had already perfected this literary form into an instrumentContinue reading “Dreams in a Mirror: The Sarashina Diary“
Tag Archives: Japanese Literature
How to Talk to Cats: Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore
Searching for a way to describe a new style of painting in the 1920s, Franz Roh invented the term “magic realism.” However, like the fictions that would later bear this name, the designation showed little regard for neat distinctions between the various arts. With a wink, it quickly slipped away the frames of pictures andContinue reading “How to Talk to Cats: Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore“
Worlds Imagined 