Books 106
Book Review: Holy Ghosts
by Jonathan Clements. There are, famously, more Christians in Iraq than there are in Japan. That’s in spite of a flourishing of interest among the samurai lords after 1549, some of whom converted to Christianity, took Christian names like Francisco and Augustin, and welcomed the exotic foreign contacts of “barbarian” missionaries. For a time, Nagasaki […]
Chinese Animation: Book Review
By Jonathan Clements. In the 13 years since I curated a season of Chinese animation at the Udine Film Festival (the programme is reprinted in Schoolgirl Milky Crisis), I still occasionally get asked about it. Producers, who fret that the Japanese mother lode has been mined out, want to know if I am sitting on […]
Book Review: Sushi and Beyond
By Meghan Ellis. One man eats Japan. That’s the basic premise of Michael Booth’s book (and, now, anime series) Sushi & Beyond. In fact, it’s called British Family Eats Japan in translation; as far as travel/cookery literature goes, there are few better places to visit if you’re a veteran foodie with a knack for writing. […]
Running Through Beijing
By Jonathan Clements. Fresh out of prison after serving three months for a fake diploma scam, wide-boy Dunhuang falls in with the lonely, sex-starved Xiaorong, a girl who sells pirate DVDs. Unable to trace his old colleagues, off the radar among millions of illegal Beijing residents, he starts selling films on the streets, just another […]
Review: The Anime Encyclopedia
By Raz Greenberg When the first edition of Jonathan Clements and Helen McCarthy’s The Anime Encyclopedia came out in 2001 there was nothing like it, literally. The closest thing to a comprehensive source of information about the thousands of anime titles out there was the listings in the Internet Movie Database, which largely contained basic […]