Tag: books
November 8, 2020 · 0 comments
Books: The Japanese
By Shelley Pallis. I am, above all, envious of Christopher Harding for coming with the idea for his new book in the first place – writers struggle to find ways to make history palatable and digestible for the general reader, and the very idea for The Japanese: A History in Twenty Lives, is deceptively simple. […]
November 2, 2020 · 0 comments
Books: Men in Metal
By Jonathan Clements. Surely nothing could be less animated than a statue? But if there is anything notable in 2020 beyond pandemic and politics, it must be the power that statues have in daily life: to be ignored, to be toppled, to be replaced with images more fitting of who we want ourselves to be? […]
October 17, 2020 · 0 comments
Books: Popular Music in Japan
By Jonathan Clements. In his new book Popular Music in Japan: Transformation Inspired by the West, Toru Mitsui repeatedly returns to the idea that multiple evolutions in Japanese tunes and songs have spurred directly from foreign influences. The examples he cites are from an impressively broad range of categories, spanning everything from leitmotifs, to subject […]
September 23, 2020 · 0 comments
Books: Spirited Away
By Jonathan Clements. The BFI Film Classics list has had a number of ups and downs in its lifespan. I remember the original releases in 1992, which attracted real heavy-hitters like Salman Rushdie writing about The Wizard of Oz, and then a series of seemingly random and often contradictory directives, as it bounced from the […]
September 11, 2020 · 0 comments
Books: Chinese Movie Mags
By Jasper Sharp. In these days of cosplay conventions and K-drama and Chinese sci-fi blockbusters on Netflix, it is easy to forget how little access to – and, let’s face it, interest in – Asian popular culture the West had for the vast bulk of the twentieth century. Not so in the other direction, however, […]