First posted October 24, 2011 According to Murakami, “1Q84” is just an amplification of one of his most popular short stories, which (in its English version) is five pages long. “Basically, it’s the same,” he told me. “A boy meets a girl. They have separated and are looking for each other. It’s a simple story. I… Read More Haruki Murakami: On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning
Justin McCurry “It is broadly about what’s going on in the world … about the climate crisis and what we should do about it,” Saito said in an interview with the Guardian. “I advocate for degrowth and going beyond capitalism.” Kohei Saito’s book Capital in the Anthropocene has become an unlikely hit among young people… Read More Karl Marx in the Anthropocene: the post-capitalist, green manifesto captivating Japan
As a child, Wishma Rathnayake was fascinated with “Oshin,” a popular 1980s’ television drama about a young girl who rises from poverty to head a Japanese supermarket chain. Urged by her father to emulate her hero, Rathnayake started learning Japanese with a dream of one day moving to Japan from the small Sri Lankan town of Gampaha,… Read More Her dream to teach English in Japan ended with a lesson for the country. By Emiko Jozuka
Jacques Pauwels: Mythmaking and the Atomic Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Truman and his advisors thus fell under the spell of what the renowned American historian William Appleman Williams has called a “vision of omnipotence”. They convinced themselves that the new weapon would enable them to force their will on the Soviet Union. The… Read More August 6 & 9, Hiroshima & Nagasaki: Mythmaking and Atomic Destruction / Blinded by the Light: Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Leave Truth to the police and us; we know the Good; We build the Perfect City time shall never alter; Our Law shall guard you always like a cirque of mountains… (p 266) But ideas can be true although men die, And we can watch a thousand faces Made active by… Read More Journey To A War by W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood (1939) // W. H. Auden 'In Time of War' (1939)
After the truth-shower 