The Courage to be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga combines Greek philosophy with German psychology in a distinctly Japanese package. Don’t let that put you off to it. The book uses the old Greek discussion format: a young man argues with an older philosopher about Alfred Adler’s psychological ideas. Adler was an opponent…
Category: Book Reviews
Considering Japanese Incest, Cultural Obsession, and the Book The Six-Foot Bonsai
Recently, I’ve read a memoir written by Stacy Gleiss that shares her experiences with an abusive Japanese husband and her immersion into Japanese culture. I’ve considered doing a standard book review, but it’s difficult to critique a memoir. By their nature, memoirs share intimate details about a person’s life that I don’t feel right critiquing….
Fanfiction Review: The Heart of the Ocean. Chapter 2.
Alex continues her review of Mystrade in this mashup of Titanic and BBC’s Sherlock. For those who are not familiar with Mystrade fanfiction, the story concerns a yaoi pairing between Mycroft Holmes and Gregory Lestrade. The original fanfiction is written by somebodyswatson. You can read it here. Starting off, you immediately share in Mycroft’s displeasure…
Fanfiction Review: The Heart of the Ocean. Chapter 1.
Fanfiction sits in an important fandom niche. Fanfiction can encompass anime or, as in this case, Western stories. Alex reviews a fanfiction based on BBC’s Sherlock. While you may wonder what this has to do with Japan, Japanese culture has inspired modern fanfiction of all types. This story, “The Heart of the Ocean,” involves a…
Dragon Ball–The Freeza Arc, Book 1
Dragon Ball Z is one of those series that I’ve evolved on over the years. It was big among the geek crowd in my middle and high school years, but at the time I was more into shows like Inuyasha and Full Metal Alchemist. Then, after Chris started this blog, we attempted to watch the…
School Judgment Review-First Impressions (Volume 1)
School Judgement is a new manga series being released stateside by VIZ Media. The series–created by author Obuaki Enoki and illustrator Takeshi Obata (Death Note, Bakuman)– tells the story of a world where, in order to curb crime, schools hold trials for students accused of crimes. The crimes can range from accusing someone of cheating on…