Myths and legends about cats in Japan range from the demonic killer tiger to the sweet little Hello Kitty. Cats also play a ...

(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 ...

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

In the 1960s, Japanese books became immensely popular in South Korea. Interestingly, Korean newspapers often wrote about this ...

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 ...

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 ...

"I'm holding an illustrated book of cheeses," says a delighted Tomoyo Ozumi, a customer at a growing kind of bookshop in Japan where anyone wanting to sell their tomes can rent a shelf. Rokurou Yui, ...

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 ...