(This is Part 18 of the "Learning from Japanese picture books" series, which introduces recommended Japanese picture books, ...

In the picture book, the lion tells Mr. Barbar that his mane is tangled and he is in trouble. Untangle is "hodoku" in Japanese. Chokichoki-- This is an onomatopoeia used when cutting something ...

However, books are no longer part of the norm for most people. More than 60 percent of Japanese do not read a single book over the course of a month, according to the “public opinion survey on ...

“I’m holding an illustrated book of cheeses,” says a delighted Tomoyo Ozumi, a customer at a growing kind of bookshop in ...

Mokumoku-- This is an onomatopoeic word mainly used with smoke ("kemuri" in Japanese) to describe rising smoke. In the picture book, when the tanuki transforms, smoke is emitted, and that is where ...

Yet Junichiro Tanizaki, 71, is one of Japan’s leading novelists, and this book, written a decade ago, is a neat compendium of what is best and worst in contemporary Japanese writing. Esoteric ...

Japanese-inspired books were among readers’ favourites at this year’s Books Are My Bag Readers Awards, with Abroad in Japan ...

Browse a rack of translated Japanese literature these days and you’re likely to spot a certain motif among the book covers: cats. Often recognized as an atmospheric trope or plot device in the ...

Barbara Mizoguchi is a Sansei (third generation Japanese American), a third generation Washingtonian, and a University of Washington graduate. She began in corporate work and then switched to working ...

The pig learns from the tanuki how to transform itself and tries to turn into a tanuki, but his face remains that of a pig. He is thus given the name Butanuki, a portmanteau of "buta" (pig) and tanuki ...