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Leza Lowitz
Leza Lowitz (born December 29, 1962, San Francisco) is an American expatriate writer residing in Tokyo, Japan and in the American Southwest. She has written, edited and co-translated over twenty books, many about Japan, its relationship with the US, on the changing role of Japanese women in literature, art and society, and about the lasting effect of the Second World War and the desire for reconciliation in contemporary Japanese society. She is also an internationally renown yoga and mindfulness teacher recognized for her work bridging poetry and the spiritual path through disciplines like yoga and mindfulness. Biography Lowitz grew up in San Francisco and Berkeley, and attended Berkeley High School, from which she graduated in 1980. She was accepted into the first year of NYU's School of Dramatic Writing at age 18, and attended NYU for two years before transferring to U.C. Berkeley. She received her B.A. in English literature from the University of California at Berkeley in 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of California cities by population, fourth most populous in California and List of United States cities by population, 17th most populous in the United States, with 815,201 residents as of 2021. It covers a land area of , at the end of the San Francisco Peninsula, making it the second most densely populated large U.S. city after New York City, and the County statistics of the United States, fifth most densely populated U.S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. Among the 91 U.S. cities proper with over 250,000 residents, San Francisco was ranked first by per capita income (at $160,749) and sixth by aggregate income as of 2021. Colloquial nicknames for San Francisco include ''SF'', ''San Fran'', ''The '', ''Frisco'', and '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shakuhachi
A is a Japanese and ancient Chinese longitudinal, end-blown flute that is made of bamboo. The bamboo end-blown flute now known as the was developed in Japan in the 16th century and is called the .Kotobank, Fuke shakuhachi. The Asahi ShimbunKotobank, Shakuhachi. The Asahi Shimbun A bamboo flute known as the , which is quite different from the current style of , was introduced to Japan from China in the 7th century and died out in the 10th century. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Keiji Nakazawa
was a Japanese manga artist and writer. Biography Nakazawa was born March 14, 1939 Naka-ku, Hiroshima, Japan and was in the city when it was Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, destroyed by an atomic bomb in August 1945. Most of his family members who had not evacuated died as a result of the explosion after they became trapped under the debris of their house, except for his mother and an infant sister (who died several weeks later whether from malnutrition or radiation from her mother afterward). In 1961, Nakazawa moved to Tokyo to become a full-time cartoonist and produced short pieces for manga Anthology, anthologies such as ''Shōnen Gaho'', ''Shōnen King'', and ''Bokura''. Following the death of his mother in 1966, Nakazawa returned to his memories of the destruction of Hiroshima and began to express them in his stories. ''Kuroi Ame ni Utarete'' (''Struck by Black Rain''), the first of a series of five books, was a fictional story of Hibakusha, Hiroshima survivors ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barefoot Gen
is a Japanese historical manga series by Keiji Nakazawa. Loosely based on Nakazawa's own experiences as a Hiroshima survivor, the series begins in 1945 in and around Hiroshima, Japan, where the six-year-old boy Gen Nakaoka lives with his family. After Hiroshima is destroyed by atomic bombing, Gen and other survivors are left to deal with the aftermath. It ran in several magazines, including ''Weekly Shōnen Jump'', from 1973 to 1987. It was subsequently adapted into three live action film adaptations directed by Tengo Yamada, which were released between 1976 and 1980. Madhouse released two anime films, one in 1983 and one in 1986. In 2007, a live action television drama series adaptation aired in Japan on Fuji TV over two nights, August 10 and 11. Publication history Cartoonist Keiji Nakazawa created the feature ''Ore wa Mita'' (translated into English as ''I Saw It''), an eyewitness account of the atomic-bomb devastation in Japan, in the monthly manga ''Monthly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manga
Manga (Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is used in Japan to refer to both comics and cartooning. Outside of Japan, the word is typically used to refer to comics originally published in the country. In Japan, people of all ages and walks of life read manga. The medium includes works in a broad range of genres: action, adventure, business and commerce, comedy, detective, drama, historical, horror, mystery, romance, science fiction and fantasy, erotica ('' hentai'' and ''ecchi''), sports and games, and suspense, among others. Many manga are translated into other languages. Since the 1950s, manga has become an increasingly major part of the Japanese publishing industry. By 1995, the manga market in Japan was valued at (), with annual sales of 1.9billion manga books and manga magazi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yōko Ogawa
is a Japanese writer. Her work has won every major Japanese literary award, including the Akutagawa Prize and the Yomiuri Prize. Internationally, she has been the recipient of the Shirley Jackson Award and the American Book Award. ''The Memory Police'' was also shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2020. Some of her most well known works include '' The Housekeeper and the Professor, The Diving Pool'' and ''Hotel Iris''. Background and education Ogawa was born in Okayama, Okayama Prefecture, and attended Waseda University, Tokyo. When she married her husband, a steel company engineer, she quit her job as a medical university secretary and wrote while her husband was at work. Initially, she wrote only as a hobby, and her husband didn't realise she was a writer until her debut novel, ''The Breaking of the Butterfly'', received a literary prize. Her novella ''Pregnancy Diary,'' written in brief intervals when her son was a toddler, won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dazai Osamu
was a Japanese author. A number of his most popular works, such as ''The Setting Sun'' (''Shayō'') and ''No Longer Human'' (''Ningen Shikkaku''), are considered modern-day classics. His influences include Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Murasaki Shikibu and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. While Dazai continues to be widely celebrated in Japan, he remains relatively unknown elsewhere, with only a handful of his works available in English. His last book, ''No Longer Human'', is his most popular work outside of Japan. Early life , who was later known as Osamu Dazai, was born on June 19, 1909, the eighth surviving child of a wealthy landowner in Kanagi, a remote corner of Japan at the northern tip of Tōhoku in Aomori Prefecture. At the time of his birth, the huge, newly-completed Tsushima mansion where he would spend his early years was home to some thirty family members. The Tsushima family was of obscure peasant origins, with Dazai's great-grandfather building up the family's wealth as a moneyle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mishima Yukio
, born , was a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, model, Shintoist, Nationalism, nationalist, and founder of the , an unarmed civilian militia. Mishima is considered one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century. He was considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968, but the award went to his countryman and benefactor Yasunari Kawabata. His works include the novels and , and the autobiographical essay . Mishima's work is characterized by "its luxurious vocabulary and decadent metaphors, its fusion of Japanese literature, traditional Japanese and modern Western literature, Western literary styles, and its obsessive assertions of the unity of beauty, eroticism and death", according to author Andrew Rankin. Mishima's political activities made him a controversial figure, which he remains in modern Japan. From his mid-30s, Mishima's Right-wing politics, right-wing ideology was increasingly revealed. He was proud of the traditional culture and spirit of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Comfort Women
Comfort women or comfort girls were women and girls forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army in occupied countries and territories before and during World War II. The term "comfort women" is a translation of the Japanese '' ianfu'' (慰安婦), which literally means "comforting, consoling woman." Estimates vary as to how many women were involved, with most historians settling somewhere in the range of 50,000–200,000; the exact numbers are still being researched and debated. Most of the women were from occupied countries, including Korea, China, and the Philippines. Women who were used for military "comfort stations" also came from Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaya, Manchukuo, Taiwan (then a Japanese dependency), the Dutch East Indies, Portuguese Timor, New Guinea and other Japanese-occupied territories. Stations were located in Japan, China, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaya, Thailand, Burma, New Guinea, Hong Kong, Macau, and French Indochina. A smaller nu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kamikaze
, officially , were a part of the Japanese Special Attack Units of military aviators who flew suicide attacks for the Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II, intending to destroy warships more effectively than with conventional air attacks. About 3,800 ''kamikaze'' pilots died during the war, and more than 7,000 naval personnel were killed by ''kamikaze'' attacks. ''Kamikaze'' aircraft were essentially pilot-guided explosive missiles, purpose-built or converted from conventional aircraft. Pilots would attempt to crash their aircraft into enemy ships in what was called a "body attack" (''tai-atari'') in aircraft loaded with bombs, torpedoes and or other explosives. About 19% of ''kamikaze'' attacks were successful. The Japanese considered the goal of damaging or sinking large numbers of Allied ships to be a just reason for suicide attacks; ''kamikaze'' was more accurate than conventional attacks and often cau ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Donald Richie
Donald Richie (17 April 1924 – 19 February 2013) was an American-born author who wrote about the Japanese people, the culture of Japan, and especially Japanese cinema. Although he considered himself primarily a film historian, Richie also directed a number of experimental films, the first when he was seventeen. Biography Richie was born in Lima, Ohio. During World War II, he joined the United States Merchant Marine and served aboard Liberty ships as a purser and medical officer. By then he had already published his first work, "Tumblebugs" (1942), a short story.''Introduction'' by Leza Lowitz, in ''Botandoro'' by Donald Richie In 1947, Richie first visited Japan with the American occupation force, a job he saw as an opportunity to escape from Lima, Ohio. He first worked as a typist, and then as a civilian staff writer for the ''Pacific Stars and Stripes''. While in Tokyo, he became fascinated with Japanese culture, particularly Japanese cinema. He was soon writing movie rev ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ango Sakaguchi
was a Japanese writer of short stories and novels and an essayist. His real name was . Biography Born in Niigata, Sakaguchi was one of a group of young Japanese writers to rise to prominence in the years immediately following Japan's defeat in World War II. As such, Ango Sakaguchi was associated with the Buraiha or "Decadent School" (無頼派 buraiha, the school of irresponsibility and decadence), which designated a group of dissolute writers who expressed their perceived aimlessness and identity crisis of post-World War II Japan. In 1946 he wrote his most famous essay, titled "Darakuron" ("Discourse on Decadence"), which examined the role of bushido during the war. It is widely argued that he saw postwar Japan as decadent, yet more truthful than a wartime Japan built on illusions like bushido. (The work itself does not make any claims about the meaning of decadence.) Ango was born in 1906 and was the 12th child of 13. He was born in the middle of a Japan perpetually at war. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
