John Allyn’s version of Japan’s classic story shows some of its age. Originally published in 1970, Allyn’s writing has some jarring elements common to books published at that time. Modern readers are used to seeing through the eyes of a single character with chapters or scene breaks marking a change of viewpoint. 47 Ronin jumps…
Category: Book Reviews
Japanese Design: Art, Aesthetics & Culture
Japanese Design: Art, Aesthetics & Culture is an introduction to Japanese design concepts and the people who brought Japanese design to the West. Obviously, it would take at least several books the size of cinder blocks to thoroughly cover the ocean of Japanese design. Patricia Graham does a good job in summarizing the high points…
Japan Journeys: Famous Woodblock Prints of Cultural Sights in Japan
Japanese woodblock prints combine tourism with imagination. Woodblock prints ( called that from the use of carved wooden blocks used to press ink into paper) showed tourist spots popular in nineteenth century Japan and landscapes imagined by the artist. Andreas Marks’ book, Japan Journeys, takes you to various locales from this time period. Woodblock prints,…
Japanese Kanji Made Easy
I am terrible at rote memorization. In other Japanese language books (and when I took Spanish classes for that matter), rote memorization was the key to learning. I don’t know how many times I had to copy Spanish conjugate verb charts to remember even just a few of them. My memory is good, but not…
Spice and Wolf Light Novel Volume 1
I am a fan of Spice and Wolf. Yet, I haven’t read any of the light novels. I haven’t read any light novels for that matter. I grew up reading behemoth books like those found in the Wheel of Time series. I decided to fix this little problem. Light novels are an interesting format. The…
Drifters
On a whim, I started reading the manga Drifters from Kouta Hirano (author/artist of Hellsing). I rather enjoyed reading Hellsing, and I liked the anime version of it as well. So, I figured I would enjoy Drifters as well. As of now, there are 35 chapters released, and after all these chapters I am still…