Category Archives: Japanese Literature

Another Kind of Paradise by Trevor Carolan, Ed.

Posted on by
Reply

Synopsis:
Short Stories from the New Asia-Pacific.

Review:
Another Kind of Paradise is a collection of stories from Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma, Thailand, Viet Nam, Cambodia, and more. My favorite was “Their Son” by Hong Ying from China, which takes expectations about parents and children and totally upends them. It was sad, sweet, funny, and provocative. “Third Meeting” by Mi-na Choi from Korea had a narrator that really grabbed me, even though the story was heartbreaking beyond words.

Charanavi by Masahiro Tsuromoto

Posted on by
1

Synopsis:
How your birthday tells you who you are.

Review:
Charanavi is a Japanese book in translation and offers a fortune-telling system that relates your birthday to a type of animal. Based on my birthday, 11/4/1973, I am a “potential tanuki.” A tanuki is a sort of raccoon indigenous to Japan. Being a potential tanuki means that I am “genial and rather passive in nature, with a warm and gentle personality that is loved by everyone.”

Um, anyone who knows me in real life is LAUGHING at reading that. I am friendly enough, but I’m not passive about anything, and gentleness is a fruit of the Spirit that doesn’t often manifest in me. (Of course, my enneagram is 4, The Individualist, so I hate to be pigeonholed and if you say I’m one way, I’ll come up with ten reasons why you’re wrong.)

The book is adorably designed and a lot of fun to flip through. I think I’ll actually get a lot of use out of it as I’m crafting characters for my fiction writing. I’m very interested in human behavior and psychology and enjoy reading personality stuff.

Posted in Japanese Literature | Tagged , , | 1 Reply