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The Twilight Years
''The Twilight Years'', a 1972 Japanese novel by Sawako Ariyoshi, sold over a million copies in her home country and was praised by the Japan-studies community in foreign countries as a singular novel, "the closest representation of modern Japanese life" according to Donald Keene and a forthright, insightful work into the experience of modern Japanese women. The work, which begins with the married protagonist's father-in-law seemingly doddering around in senility on a winter street underdressed, deals with the twin issues of Aging of Japan and role of women in Japan, who were/are de facto expected to be caretakers of elderly parents or grandparents in a household. Although the novel at times digresses into what may be characterized as a mere extended complaint about the subservient role women experience in Japan (most poignantly, as the protagonist realizes that her husband may very well forget her name as he grows dodderingly old), the work was prescient in that it foreshadowed th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sawako Ariyoshi
Sawako Ariyoshi (有吉 佐和子 ''Ariyoshi Sawako'', 20 January 1931 – 30 August 1984) was a Japanese writer, known for such works as ''The Doctor's Wife'' and ''The River Ki.'' She was known for her advocacy of social issues, such as the elderly in Japanese society, and environmental issues. Several of her novels describe the relationships between mothers and their daughters. She also had a fascination with traditional Japanese arts, such as ''kabuki'' and ''bunraku''. She also described racial discrimination in the United States, something she experienced firsthand during her time at Sarah Lawrence, and the depopulation of remote Japanese islands during the 1970s economic boom. Biography Personal life Sawako Ariyoshi was born on January 20, 1931, in Wakayama City, Japan, and spent part of her childhood in Indonesia. The family returned to Japan in 1941, and quickly moved from Tokyo to Wakayama to live with her grandmother to escape the bombings. After the war, the family r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Donald Keene
Donald Lawrence Keene (June 18, 1922 – February 24, 2019) was an American-born Japanese scholar, historian, teacher, writer and translator of Japanese literature. Keene was University Professor emeritus and Shincho Professor Emeritus of Japanese Literature at Columbia University, where he taught for over fifty years. Soon after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, he retired from Columbia, moved to Japan permanently, and acquired citizenship under the name . This was also his poetic and occasional nickname, spelled in the ''ateji'' form . Early life and education Keene was born in 1922 in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, New York City and attended James Madison High School. He received a Bachelor's degree from Columbia University in 1942 and studied under Mark Van Doren, Moses Hadas, Lionel Trilling, and Jacques Barzun. He then studied the Japanese language at the United States Navy Japanese Language School in Boulder, Colorado and in Berkeley, California, and serve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aging Of Japan
Japan has the highest proportion of elderly citizens of any country in the world. According to 2014 estimates, about 38% of the Japanese population is above the age of 60, 25.9% are age 65 or above, a figure that increased to 29.1% by 2022. People aged 65 and older in Japan make up a quarter of the total population, and are estimated to reach a third by 2050. The aging of Japanese society, characterized by sub-replacement fertility rates and high life expectancy, is expected to continue. Japan had a post-war baby boom between 1947 and 1949, followed by a prolonged period of low fertility. These trends resulted in the decline of Japan's population beginning in 2011. In 2014, Japan's population was estimated to be 127 million; this figure is expected to shrink to 107 million (16%) by 2040 and to 97 million (24%) by 2050, should the current demographic trend continue. A recent global analysis found that Japan was one of 23 countries which could see a total population decline ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Demographic Crisis
A population decline (also sometimes called underpopulation, depopulation, or population collapse) in humans is a reduction in a human population size. Over the long term, stretching from prehistory to the present, Earth's total human population has continued to grow; however, current projections suggest that this long-term trend of steady population growth may be coming to an end. Until the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, global population grew very slowly. After about 1800, the growth rate accelerated to a peak of 2.09% annually during the 1967–1969 period, but since then, due to the worldwide collapse of the total fertility rate, it has declined to 1.05% as of 2020. The global growth rate in absolute numbers accelerated to a peak of 92.9 million in 1988, but has declined to 81.3 million in 2020. Long-term projections indicate that the growth rate of the human population of this planet will continue to decline and that by the end of the 21st century, it will reach ze ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Twilight Years (film)
is a 1973 Japanese drama film by Shirō Toyoda based on the novel of the same name by Sawako Ariyoshi. Cast * Hisaya Morishige as Shigezo Tachibana * Hideko Takamine as Akiko Tachibana * Takahiro Tamura as Nobutshi Tachibana * Hiroko Shino as Emi * Takashi Itō as Yamagishi * Kumeko Urabe as Old lady * Hideko Yoshida as Kuniko Segawa * Akiko Nomura as Chi Oikawa * Nobuko Otowa as Kyoko * Nobuo Nakamura was a Japanese actor, who made notable appearances in the films of Akira Kurosawa and Yasujirō Ozu in the 1950s and 1960s. Perhaps his most famous roles in the West were those of the callous deputy mayor in Kurosawa's ''Ikiru'' (1952), and the h ... as Fujieda References 1973 films 1973 drama films Japanese drama films Films based on Japanese novels 1970s Japanese films {{Japan-film-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shirō Toyoda
was a Japanese film director and screenwriter who directed over 60 films during his career spanning 50 years. Career Born in Kyoto, Toyoda moved to Tokyo after finishing high school and studied scriptwriting under the pioneering film director Eizō Tanaka. He joined the Kamata section of the Shōchiku film studios and worked as an assistant director under Yasujirō Shimazu, before giving his directorial debut in 1929. After his move to the independent Tokyo Hassei Eiga Shisaku studio (later Toho), he directed the successful ''Young People'' (1937) and gained a reputation for directing literary adaptations with a humanistic touch, in particular ''Uguisu'' (1938) and '' Spring on Leper's Island'' (1940). After World War II, he achieved fame for his adaptations of writers like Yasunari Kawabata, Kafū Nagai, Naoya Shiga, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, Masuji Ibuse, and Ango Sakaguchi, distinguished by their visual imagination and superb acting. Noted works of this era include ''The Wild Gee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1972 Novels
Year 197 ( CXCVII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Magius and Rufinus (or, less frequently, year 950 ''Ab urbe condita''). The denomination 197 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years. Events By place Roman Empire * February 19 – Battle of Lugdunum: Emperor Septimius Severus defeats the self-proclaimed emperor Clodius Albinus at Lugdunum (modern Lyon). Albinus commits suicide; legionaries sack the town. * Septimius Severus returns to Rome and has about 30 of Albinus's supporters in the Senate executed. After his victory he declares himself the adopted son of the late Marcus Aurelius. * Septimius Severus forms new naval units, manning all the triremes in Italy with heavily armed troops for war in the East. His soldiers embark on an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novels Set In Japan
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the historica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
