検索キーワード： ナレーター "David Shih" すべてのカテゴリー

Soseki Natsume's comic masterpiece, I Am a Cat, satirizes the foolishness of upper-middle class Japanese society during the Meiji era. With acerbic wit and sardonic perspective, it follows the whimsical adventures of a world-weary stray kitten who comments on the follies and foibles of the people around him. A classic of Japanese literature, I Am a Cat is one of Soseki's best-known novels. Considered by many as the greatest writer in modern Japanese history, Soseki's I Am a Cat is a classic novel sure to be enjoyed for years to come.

A popular young girl disappears without a trace, her skeletal remains discovered three years later in the ashes of a burned-out house. There's a suspect and compelling circumstantial evidence of his guilt, but no concrete proof. When he isn't indicted, he returns to mock the girl's family. And this isn't the first time he's been suspected of the murder of a young girl; nearly 20 years ago, he was tried and released due to lack of evidence. Chief Inspector Kusanagi of the Homicide Division of the Tokyo Police worked both cases.

Japan was a physical and psychological wasteland at the end of World War II. With over three million dead, 39 percent of city populations homeless, 40 percent of all urban areas flattened, 80 percent of all ships destroyed, and 33 percent of all industrial machine tools rendered inoperable, the country was devastated and demoralized. And yet, just 19 years later, Japan stood proud-modern, peace-loving, and open - welcoming the world as the host of the 1964 Olympics, the largest global event of its time.

In this gloriously over-the-top tale, Aoyama, a widower who has lived alone with his son ever since his wife died seven years before, finally decides it is time to remarry. Since Aoyama is a bit rusty when it comes to dating, a filmmaker friend proposes that, in order to attract the perfect wife, they do a casting call for a movie they don't intend to produce. As the resumes pile up, only one of the applicants catches Aoyama's attention - Yamasaki Asami - a striking young former ballerina with a mysterious past. But she is a far cry from the innocent young woman he imagines her to be.

Zero is just one of 20,000 people aboard a spaceship bound for a new planet set to be colonized. The journey is over a century long but luckily, everyone is in stasis, so they’ll be safe and sound asleep during the trip. Everyone that is, except for Zero, whose pod has malfunctioned, waking him up a hundred years early. His initial excitement in roaming the ship alone quickly turns to a heart-stopping interstellar adventure when a family of space pirates show up, trying to hijack the ship and take the colonizers hostage.

After working with the mafia to halt a rising drug problem in the city of Halian, Zig is back to protecting Siasha--but with a new wariness of Claritism, a doctrine that asserts demi-humans are subhuman. Aware that Claritists would persecute Siasha for her witch nature if it were discovered, Zig gathers intel while keeping the religion and its followers at arm's length. However, after sharing a meal with Urbas, a scalefolk demi-human, Zig is targeted directly.

In his 1992 best-selling book The End of History and the Last Man, American political scientist Francis Fukuyama argued that the dominance of liberal democracy marked the end of humanity's political and ideological development. Thirty years later, with populism on the rise and the number of liberal democracies decreasing worldwide, Fukuyama revisits his classic thesis. A series of in-depth interviews between Fukuyama and editor Mathilde Fasting, After the End of History offers a wide-ranging analysis of liberal democracy today.

Weijian Shan's Out of the Gobi is a powerful memoir and commentary that will be one of the most important books on China of our time, one with the potential to re-shape how Americans view China, and how the Chinese view life in America. Shan, a former hard laborer who is now one of Asia's best-known financiers, is thoughtful, observant, eloquent, and brutally honest, making him well-positioned to tell the story of a life that is a microcosm of modern China, and of how, improbably, that life became intertwined with America.

First published in 1956, No-No Boy was virtually ignored by a public eager to put World War II and the Japanese internment behind them. No-No Boy tells the story of Ichiro Yamada, a fictional version of the real-life "no-no boys". Yamada answered "no" twice in a compulsory government questionnaire as to whether he would serve in the armed forces and swear loyalty to the United States. Unwilling to pledge himself to the country that interned him and his family, Ichiro earns two years in prison and the hostility of his family and community when he returns home to Seattle.

Nothing in this world is more dangerous than a witch. The epitome of fear and terror, they can summon floods on a whim, conjure balls of fire out of the air, or even destroy entire countries overnight. Incur their wrath, and no one is safe. At least, that's what everyone thinks, and it's the very reason they all want Siasha dead. After yet another violent battle for her life, she teams up with Zig, a mercenary, and they depart for unknown lands to find somewhere she can live in peace. But is the pair any match for the lost magic and vicious monstrosities that lie ahead?

In The Five Ranks of Zen, American Zen teacher Shishin Wick offers an accessible entry point to each of the ranks, which Tozan created in two formulations: the first and better-known is the Five Ranks of the Relative and the Absolute; while the second set, called the Sequence of Merit, is an abbreviated form of the Ten Oxherding Pictures, a traditional formulation of the Zen spiritual journey.

As they do every year, a small group of acquaintances pay a visit to the remote castle-like Water Mill House, home to the reclusive Fujinuma Kiichi, son of a famous artist, who has lived his life behind a rubber mask ever since a disfiguring car accident. This year, however, the visit is disrupted by an impossible disappearance, the theft of a painting, and a series of baffling murders. The brilliant Kiyoshi Shimada arrives to investigate.

 The Art of Expressing the Human Body, a title coined by Bruce Lee himself to describe his approach to martial arts, documents the techniques he used so effectively to perfect his body for superior health and muscularity. 

When a monstrosity above her rank shows up, Siasha is seated with some undesired downtime. Making the best of a boring situation, she and Zig head to the morning market, only to bear witness to a scuffle between humans and demi-humans. But to the inhuman witch Siasha and mercenary Zig, these interspecies tensions are none of their concern—or so they think. They soon learn that these conflicts are far more deep-rooted than they could've ever imagined.

Shusaku Endo (1923-1996), widely considered one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, is known for his historical novels, which masterfully probe the encounters between the cultures and religions of East and West from a Japanese Catholic perspective. A salient and curious theme in his work is the unique image of a maternal God, and a concomitant sense of loss and longing for maternal love.

Call it "Zen and the Art of Farming" or a "Little Green Book", Masanobu Fukuoka's manifesto about farming, eating, and the limits of human knowledge presents a radical challenge to the global systems we rely on for our food. At the same time, it is a spiritual memoir of a man whose innovative system of cultivating the earth reflects a deep faith in the wholeness and balance of the natural world. As Wendell Berry writes in his preface, the book "is valuable to us because it is at once practical and philosophical."

Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai’s NO LONGER HUMAN narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. His attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a “clown” to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness.

When Siasha gets called away to help someone on a job, Zig finds himself with time to kill. He's quickly recruited by Katia, the daughter of a mafia boss, to help investigate the spread of a dangerous drug across the city. Tempted by the lure of a big payout, Zig accepts the request, and together they dig into the underbelly of society...only to discover the problem runs much deeper than they expected.

It was no walk in the park, but Zig and Siasha have finally gotten accustomed to their new surroundings and are enjoying their tranquil lives funded by their bloody battles with monstrosities. One day, Siasha decides to join a short-term adventuring party, and Zig, temporarily relieved of his bodyguard duties, finds himself with a bit of free time. But he's not idle for long. Isana—a second-class adventurer and acquaintance of Zig's—asks for his help investigating the recent kidnappings of children from her tribe.

From the unique standpoint of an American woman who married into a Japanese family and has lived in Japan for more than 30 years, Rebecca Otowa weaves enchanting tales of her adopted home that portray the perspective of both the Japanese and the foreigner on the universal issues that face us all - love, work, marriage, death, and family conflict.