Let’s take a break from folklore this week: Senbazuru: One Thousand Steps to Happiness takes a different perspective than most books I’ve read about mindfulness. It uses the practice of folding 1,000 paper cranes to explain how to slow down and find joy in everyday life. Wong breaks the crane into 12 steps, using each…
Category: Book Reviews
Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata
The book Snow Country offers cold prose and interactions appropriate to its name. The story follows Shimamura’s love affair with the hot spring geisha Komako and his developing interest with a young woman named Yoko. The book can be a little difficult to follow if you don’t read carefully. Kawabata writes with spareness and suggestion…
Wabi Sabi by Beth Kempton
The other day I was at a library for a teen mental health conference. As I usually do, I took the lunch break for some alone time. Conferences have far too much group work and socialness! After wandering around town, I returned to the library and found the book Wabi Sabi by Beth Kempton. I’ve…
African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke
Thomas Lockley and Geoffrey Girard’s book African Samurai tries to mesh nonfiction with historical fiction. The result is a patchwork that felt more fiction than historical. The seams quickly appear when they switch from the narrative of Yasuke’s life to a more objective historical tone. Their sources are solid, but their experiment made the book feel…
The Courage to be Disliked – A Book Review
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…
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….