Travel with our narrator, and discover Japan. She'll introduce us to her family, her home, and her city. We'll learn what she does in school, howshe celebrates holidays, and lots more!From a typical bedroom and bathroom (two different kinds of toilets!) to a typical day in school (the students are responsible for cleaning it!), these images of Japan are informative and interesting, discussing the questions and topics that kids are curious about.
Tsujimura Etsuko and the Copper Horses is intended as a primer to introduce the western world to Japanese culture, both ancient and modern. It is not a travel log or a documentary; rather, it is written as a fantasy novel. It reads like a blend of Harry Potter and The Last Samurai. Anyone who enjoys the Harry Potter series, The Last Samurai, Japanese culture, Anime, or Manga, will enjoy Tsujimura Etsuko and the Copper Horses.
From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize–winning novel The Remains of the Day Here is the story of Etsuko, a Japanese woman now living alone in England, dwelling on the recent suicide of her daughter. In a novel where past and present confuse, she relives scenes of Japan's devastation in the wake of World War II.
It is a major challenge for linguists to explore the relations between referential choice and the discourse structure in dialogues, because, unlike written modes of discourse, dialogue as an interactional mode of discourse needs careful treatment for linguistic analysis. This book investigates how discourse entities are linked with topic chaining and discourse coherence by showing that the choice and the distribution of referring expressions is correlated with center transition patterns in the centering framework. It provides original empirical research into the use of referring expressions in English and Japanese task-based dialogues, and applies and extends theoretical frameworks which attempt to account for local and global discourse coherence. Using a discourse-based integrated approach to anaphora resolution, Yoshida proposes a unified account on the patterns of use of referring expressions. The book will be of interest to discourse analysts, computational linguists, scholars of semantics and pragmatics, and cross-linguistics researchers.
In 2017 the Swedish Academy awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature to Kazuo Ishiguro, 'who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world'. Cynthia Wong's classic study first appeared in 2000 and is now updated in an expanded third edition that analyses all of Ishiguro's remarkable novels and one short story collection. From his eloquent trilogy - A Pale View of Hills, An Artist of the Floating World, and The Remains of the Day - to the astonishing speculative fiction, Never Let Me Go, and the ambitious fable-like story from pre-Mediaeval times, The Buried Giant, Wong appraises Ishiguro's persistently bold explorations and the narrative perspectives of his troubled characters. A compassionate author, Ishiguro examines the way that human beings reinterpret worlds from which they feel estranged. All of his works are eloquent expressions of people struggling with the silence of pain and the awkward stutters of confusion and loss. This book analyses his subtle and ironic portrayals of people in 'emotional bereavement' and it situates Ishiguro as an empathetic international writer.
On a Japanese beach, teenage sisters Hanako and Reiko are caught up in a storm. Reiko survives while Hanako is lost to the sea. Their mother, however, can't shake the feeling her missing daughter is still alive, and soon family tragedy takes on a global political dimension.
Japan, March 1700. Troops ambush and attack Lady Reiko, the wife of Sano Ichiro, the samurai detective who has risen to power and influence. The troops who have attacked Reiko appear to belong to Sano's enemy, Lord Matsudaira, who denies all responsibility. But if the rivals are not to blame, who is?
A comprehensive collection of newly commissioned essays from world-leading Kazuo Ishiguro scholars which offers chapters on each of the novels (including the first publication on Klara and the Sun (2021)), short fictions, and screenplays, Kazuo Ishiguro: Twenty First Century Fictions offers a critical reappraisal of the 2017 Nobel Laureate while also uncovering important new thematic and stylistic insights
In many ways, divorce is a quintessentially personal decision—the choice to leave a marriage that causes harm or feels unfulfilling to the two people involved. But anyone who has gone through a divorce knows the additional public dimensions of breaking up, from intense shame and societal criticism to friends’ and relatives’ unsolicited advice. In Intimate Disconnections, Allison Alexy tells the fascinating story of the changing norms surrounding divorce in Japan in the early 2000s, when sudden demographic and social changes made it a newly visible and viable option. Not only will one of three Japanese marriages today end in divorce, but divorces are suddenly much more likely to be initiated by women who cite new standards for intimacy as their motivation. As people across Japan now consider divorcing their spouses, or work to avoid separation, they face complicated questions about the risks and possibilities marriage brings: How can couples be intimate without becoming suffocatingly close? How should they build loving relationships when older models are no longer feasible? What do you do, both legally and socially, when you just can’t take it anymore? Relating the intensely personal stories from people experiencing different stages of divorce, Alexy provides a rich ethnography of Japan while also speaking more broadly to contemporary visions of love and marriage during an era in which neoliberal values are prompting wide-ranging transformations in homes across the globe.
Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the finest and most accomplished contemporary writers of his generation. The short story author, television writer and novelist, included twice in Granta's list of Best Young British Writers, has over the past twenty-five years produced a body of work which is just as critically-acclaimed as it is popular with the general public. Like the writings of Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro's work is concerned with creating discursive platforms for issues of class, ethics, ethnicity, nationhood, place, gender and the uses and problems surrounding artistic representation. As a Japanese immigrant who came to Great Britain in 1960, Ishiguro has used his unique position and fine intellectual abilities to contemplate what it means to be British in the contemporary era. This guide traces the main themes throughout Ishiguro's writing whilst it also pays attention to his short stories and writing for television. It includes a new interview with the author, a preface by Haruki Murakami and discussion of James Ivory's adaptation of The Remains of the Day.
