Spring in Central Park, New York. April 2023.
EPA-EFE/Sarah Yenesel
Haiku poems chart flowers appearing earlier and species retreating to the margins.
Woodblock print of Sei Shōnagon – Chōbunsai Eishi (1801).
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
A classic of the Heian period of Japanese literature, the sensual delight of The Pillow Book encourages writers to ‘follow their brush’.
Agencja Fotograficzna Caro/Alamy Stock Photo
Japanese and English readers have read Murakami in quite different contexts and chronologies.
We have always wondered what was up there.
Wikimedia
Humans have always been fascinated by the moon and before we could really get there we travelled to it in our stories.
Two people walking through the destruction from the August 6 detonation of the first atomic bomb in Hiroshima, Japan, September 8, 1945.
US Air Force/AP
A classic of modern Japanese literature, Black Rain has come to exemplify ‘atomic bomb literature’.
Album/Alamy
The late writer never shied away from hard topics, breaking down walls of silence around topics like disability and rurality in post-war Japan.
Auad/Alamy
An uncompromising writer who wrote about the dark and light of postwar Japan