Tag: books

July 1, 2017 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. Japanese Notebooks: A Journey to the Empire of Signs is somewhere between a comic strip and a picture book. Either way, this 180-page hardback, published by Chronicle Books, is a thing of beauty. It’s not a manga, being originally published in Italy, but its author Igort Tuveri has a rare distinction; he’s […]

May 15, 2017 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. Kaori Chiba’s recently published Japanese-language book The Day Heidi was Born is a long-overdue account of one of Japanese animation’s landmark works. Made in 1974 in an attempt to cash in on the children’s literature niche suggested by the Japanese success of The Moomins, Heidi: Girl of the Alps brought together a […]

April 30, 2017 · 3 comments

By Jonathan Clements. In Stockholm, Hayao Miyazaki had been awake since before dawn, watching the carpenters heading to their studios with their tin lunchboxes, and young mothers in the morning, strolling proudly with their babies. In Visby, he stared in mute amazement at the gingerbread houses and medieval stone walls, as if a fairy tale […]

April 27, 2017 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. “Who will make anime now?” asks Tadashi Sudo in his new book, just published in Japan. His subtitle, “The quiet revolution in Chinese capital and Net distribution”, plays most of his hand before the book is even open, citing these two factors as the most disruptive and, potentially, lucrative elements to strike […]

April 5, 2017 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. “When you love film,” writes Jon Spira in his Kickstarted book Videosyncratic, “it doesn’t just transport you to another world. It transports you back to where you were, who you were, when you first saw it. Hours sat with friends now missing or lost. Sunday afternoons on the sofa with your family. […]