<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[danielwarriner.com]]></title><description><![CDATA[Stories from Japan: Fiction, Education, and Inspiration]]></description><link>https://www.danielwarriner.com/blog</link><generator>RSS for Node</generator><lastBuildDate>Sun, 12 Apr 2026 00:16:17 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://www.danielwarriner.com/blog-feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><item><title><![CDATA[Sisters in Yellow]]></title><description><![CDATA[Mieko Kawakami’s Sisters in Yellow  captures 1990s Tokyo from the perspective of a young woman trying to eke out a living in nightlife and shady businesses. It’s narrated about twenty years later, around the time of the pandemic, as she looks back on her late teens working at a bar called Yellow and then withdrawing money from cloned bank cards. It seems there were a lot of writers, both Japanese and gaijin, writing during Covid about 90s Japan, and Tokyo in particular. Reading Kawakami’s...]]></description><link>https://www.danielwarriner.com/ja/post/sisters-in-yellow-2</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69d3641cc897562089db0908</guid><pubDate>Mon, 06 Apr 2026 07:43:50 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/618baf_6627995b25834ce5a095360768ecc7fb~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_637,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Daniel Warriner</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Sisters in Yellow]]></title><description><![CDATA[Mieko Kawakami’s Sisters in Yellow  captures 1990s Tokyo from the perspective of a young woman trying to eke out a living in nightlife and shady businesses. It’s narrated about twenty years later, around the time of the pandemic, as she looks back on her late teens working at a bar called Yellow and then withdrawing money from cloned bank cards. It seems there were a lot of writers, both Japanese and gaijin, writing during Covid about 90s Japan, and Tokyo in particular. Reading Kawakami’s...]]></description><link>https://www.danielwarriner.com/post/sisters-in-yellow</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69d36269c2180fa03a178a5a</guid><category><![CDATA[Japanese Authors]]></category><pubDate>Mon, 06 Apr 2026 07:37:43 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/618baf_6627995b25834ce5a095360768ecc7fb~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_637,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Daniel Warriner</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Tokyo Junkie]]></title><description><![CDATA[Robert Whiting’s Tokyo Junkie  traces his connection to Japan’s megacity over more than half a century, covering his relationships, notable encounters, and work on a number of influential books and articles about Japanese culture, sport, and politics since the 1960s. Whiting doesn’t pull punches. He offers an unvarnished look at many layers of Tokyo, along with key figures and events, from the construction boom leading up to the 1964 Summer Olympics to the activities of yakuza syndicates, the...]]></description><link>https://www.danielwarriner.com/ja/post/tokyo-junkie-1</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69cb22b66e7ac3d80d4c04d5</guid><pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:26:21 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/618baf_f59c284a2e454a5fbfc186fc39ffa10b~mv2.jpeg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Daniel Warriner</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Runaway Horses]]></title><description><![CDATA[Mishima’s second novel in the Sea of Fertility  tetralogy is set in the early 1930s and follows Isao Iinuma, the son of Shigeyuki Iinuma, who had served as a tutor to Kiyoaki Matsugae, the protagonist of Spring Snow  (published serially in the mid-1960s). Kiyoaki dies in the first book, and Honda, his childhood friend who plays a central role in both novels, comes to believe that Isao is his reincarnation. Both characters are, in their own ways, difficult to like. Kiyoaki is petulant and...]]></description><link>https://www.danielwarriner.com/ja/post/runaway-horses-1</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69cb22a4069d78a66dabcf30</guid><pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:26:02 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/618baf_a716799212c64b1f8f90ff83585f46a8~mv2.jpeg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Daniel Warriner</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Samurai]]></title><description><![CDATA[Shusaku Endo’s The Samurai  (1980) is a fictional account of a 17th-century diplomatic mission from Japan to “Nueva España,” or present-day Mexico, and then on to Spain and Rome. There’s a lot to this novel as it shifts between first- and third-person narration, and moves from historical adventure to travel narrative, political drama, and a meditation on certain interpretations of faith and Christ. It came as a surprise to me that Endo based the characters on actual historical figures. As Van...]]></description><link>https://www.danielwarriner.com/ja/post/the-samurai-1</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69cb22926e7ac3d80d4c04b9</guid><pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:25:43 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/618baf_05932f36a87445409335460483908d0c~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Daniel Warriner</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Confessions of a Mask]]></title><description><![CDATA[Yukio Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask  ( 仮面の告白, Kamen no Kokuhaku ) was first published in 1949, following the 1948 release of his first novel, Thieves  ( 盗賊, Tōzoku ). Written while Mishima was in his twenties, it reads in many respects like a young man’s autobiography. Kochan, the protagonist, examines his passions and violent fantasies as an introvert of fragile constitution. His “mask” conceals from society his true self as a homosexual, while also shielding him from himself, a kind of...]]></description><link>https://www.danielwarriner.com/ja/post/confessions-of-a-mask-1</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69cb227d6e7ac3d80d4c04a5</guid><pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:25:22 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/618baf_6c7a9b66e4304bcc8e15d490736ae0da~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_950,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Daniel Warriner</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Snow Country]]></title><description><![CDATA[“The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country.” The famous opening line of Yasunari Kawabata’s short novel Snow Country  (1948) captures an experience I know well, having traveled many times through that seemingly endless passage on the way from Tokyo to Naoetsu in Niigata. I remember the first time, twenty years ago, the blinding daylight as the train emerged, and the snow outside the windows piled higher than a person’s height. In the novel, written in 1935 and later reworked...]]></description><link>https://www.danielwarriner.com/ja/post/snow-country-1</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69cb226582c9c34c39db162b</guid><pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:24:58 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/618baf_4f674b000c92451bb2772349ccf86c79~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Daniel Warriner</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Onibaba]]></title><description><![CDATA[Onibaba  (鬼婆, 1964) is a Japanese horror film directed by Kaneto Shindo. Set in the aftermath of a fourteenth-century civil war near Kyoto, the story focuses on two (nameless) women who kill soldiers for their weapons and gear. They live in a hut surrounded by a seemingly boundless, inescapable sea of tall grass. There’s a deep hole there too, where they drop their stripped victims before trading the booty for millet and the occasional fowl. When the slovenly Hachi returns from the war, he’s...]]></description><link>https://www.danielwarriner.com/ja/post/onibaba-1</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69cb2252be507c41c01d8380</guid><pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:24:39 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/618baf_3f5b298e6879451ea4360b13a98e5af9~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Daniel Warriner</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Human Chair]]></title><description><![CDATA[The Human Chair  (人間椅子, 1925) by Edogawa Rampo isn’t so much a scary tale as it is a deviant’s disturbing fantasy brought to life. An ugly furniture maker crafts a chair into which he can slip, sitting unnoticed beneath those—mostly women—who take a seat atop it. You can almost hear the wheels turning in Rampo’s head as you read; everything you might (or might not) want to know about hiding inside a chair is explored here. It’s a fun story, told in a straight-faced, serious tone. It also...]]></description><link>https://www.danielwarriner.com/ja/post/the-human-chair-1</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69cb2241d6c3f5ea17761b43</guid><pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:24:23 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/618baf_aec99b41fc2f450390cb94421138cd88~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_318,h_433,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Daniel Warriner</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Scandal]]></title><description><![CDATA[This 1986 novel by Shusaku Endo marks something of a departure from much of his earlier work, which leans toward historical fiction. The protagonist, Suguro—a modern-day novelist resembling Endo in several respects—receives a literary award at age 65. As he leaves the ceremony, he’s accosted by a drunken woman who blurts out that the revered Catholic author frequents a brothel in Kabukicho. Convinced that a doppelganger is out there bent on sullying his reputation, Suguro sets out to find...]]></description><link>https://www.danielwarriner.com/ja/post/scandal-1</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69cb222f82c9c34c39db15eb</guid><pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:24:04 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/618baf_617b41a47b4747a98c81077ac8db6eb2~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_971,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Daniel Warriner</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Burmese Harp]]></title><description><![CDATA[The Burmese Harp  (ビルマの竪琴, 1956) is a Japanese anti-war film directed by Kon Ichikawa and based on a children’s novel of the same name by Michio Takeyama. It opens at the end of World War II, with a group of weary Japanese soldiers traversing the Burmese landscape. One plays a harp (saung), to which the others sing. They arrive at a village where the locals welcome them with food and shelter, but after the meal the villagers quietly slip away, and the soldiers realize that British and Indian...]]></description><link>https://www.danielwarriner.com/ja/post/the-burmese-harp-1</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69cb22091b6ed4eaf3354fc1</guid><pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:23:27 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/618baf_9250badcda954236b7c158d1b7e35b81~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Daniel Warriner</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Pachinko]]></title><description><![CDATA[This multigenerational family saga by Min Jin Lee is very good, and quite a feat given the breadth and complexity of its narrative. Published in 2017, Pachinko  begins in 1910 in the Yeongdo district of Busan. Sunja, the novel’s central character, later moves to the Ikaino district of Osaka in 1933. As the story unfolds, spanning the years up to 1989, we come to know her family well. We witness the hardships they endure, shaped by poverty, racism and stereotyping, aging, gender inequality,...]]></description><link>https://www.danielwarriner.com/ja/post/pachinko-1</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69cb21f6ad0b5f161437e6ee</guid><pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:23:08 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/618baf_dc95dba91b4b4a6291d1f152e849b77d~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Daniel Warriner</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Kiku's Prayer]]></title><description><![CDATA[Kiku's Prayer  first appeared as a newspaper serial in Asahi Shimbun  between November 1980 and July 1981. An English translation was published in 2012, and the second novel, Sachiko , was released in English in August 2020. Both are set mainly in Nagasaki: the first in the final years of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the early Meiji era (around 1868), and the latter in the years leading up to the atomic bombing of the city. Often called Japan’s Graham Greene, Shusaku Endo was also a Catholic...]]></description><link>https://www.danielwarriner.com/ja/post/kiku-s-prayer-1</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69cb21e3069d78a66dabce6a</guid><pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:22:49 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/618baf_e2b4a54b8f744b0699f9c143792a4497~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Daniel Warriner</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Yojimbo]]></title><description><![CDATA[Yojimbo  (用心棒, 1961) is an Akira Kurosawa classic starring Toshiro Mifune as a rōnin who wanders into a desolate backwater village in the turbulent years leading up to the end of the Tokugawa shogunate in the 1860s. The film opens with the hero drifting along dusty country roads and, in a gesture left to chance, tossing a stick into the air to decide which direction to take when it lands. Two rival gangs are fighting for control of the village when the rōnin arrives. He befriends a saké...]]></description><link>https://www.danielwarriner.com/ja/post/yojimbo-1</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69cb21d0d09a1db27a2af4b9</guid><pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:22:30 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/618baf_ae30c567fa7248858591d36f0fbefa42~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_888,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Daniel Warriner</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Tokyo Vice]]></title><description><![CDATA[Journalist Jake Adelstein’s Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan  is a remarkable achievement on several fronts. Adelstein arrives in Tokyo in the early 1990s to study at Sophia University, then lands a job reporting in Japanese for the Yomiuri Shimbun . He works relentlessly to build connections and extract information from police departments and various layers of the underworld, all while navigating media red tape and the threat of reprisals against himself and his...]]></description><link>https://www.danielwarriner.com/ja/post/tokyo-vice-1</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69cb21bd1b6ed4eaf3354f87</guid><pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:22:11 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/618baf_aac7cbe9dd6445e08fd571675c17a840~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Daniel Warriner</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Inland Sea]]></title><description><![CDATA[The Inland Sea  is a 1991 documentary-style film by Lucille Carra, adapted from Donald Richie’s 1971 travelogue of the same name. Only fifty-six minutes long, it is premised on Richie’s notion that “one is meant to wander, turning at random along these straight and open corridors filled with the rustling of the forest, the whispering of the sea.” We are taken on a journey that mirrors his travels, rich observations, and roaming contemplation. The film remains faithful to the spirit of the...]]></description><link>https://www.danielwarriner.com/ja/post/the-inland-sea-3</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69cb21a9069d78a66dabce2c</guid><pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:21:51 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/618baf_65ec567d0b33436781bc110323ab4b7c~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Daniel Warriner</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Inland Sea]]></title><description><![CDATA[This is probably the pinnacle of Japan travel memoirs by non-Japanese writers. Donald Richie, well known for his books and essays on Japanese cinema and as a former film critic for The Japan Times , first came to Japan in the late 1940s. He returned in the 1950s and remained there until his death in 2013 in Tokyo at the age of 88. I had recently read A View from the Chuo Line and Other Stories  (2004) and The Image Factory  (2003), both interesting but not nearly as substantial, romantic, or...]]></description><link>https://www.danielwarriner.com/ja/post/the-inland-sea-2</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69cb21986e7ac3d80d4c03c1</guid><pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:21:33 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/618baf_61072e90f7bb4155b3770a8fad0a83c0~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Daniel Warriner</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[What Made Her Do It?]]></title><description><![CDATA[“ Life is a path of suffering that leads to death… ” So begins What Made Her Do It?  (1930, Japanese: 何が彼女をそうさせたか), a silent film based on a Shingeki play and directed by Shigeyoshi Suzuki. Sumiko, an innocent girl who dreams only of attending school, is sent by her father to Nitto to live with her uncle, whom she hasn’t met. On the way she becomes lost and, tears streaming down her face, eats her last shred of bread as a train of cheerful passengers passes. Desperate and alone, she...]]></description><link>https://www.danielwarriner.com/ja/post/what-made-her-do-it-1</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69cb2184d09a1db27a2af457</guid><pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:21:14 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/618baf_688087daed5242cf8e789f180217585c~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Daniel Warriner</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[I Was Born, But...]]></title><description><![CDATA[Yasujiro Ozu’s 1932 silent comedy I Was Born, But...  is still entertaining today. (Japanese: 大人の見る絵本生れてはみたけれど) One of Ozu’s earliest surviving films, it zeroes in on two brothers who, with their parents, have moved from Tokyo to a relatively backward neighborhood in the suburbs. Fearing a beating from a gang of bullies, the boys play hooky from school. The chief bully claims that eating sparrow eggs toughens you up, so there’s a kind of black market trade among the school kids for these...]]></description><link>https://www.danielwarriner.com/ja/post/i-was-born-but-1</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69cb2171f603c769b259a5e6</guid><pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:20:55 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/618baf_9acd9ac80ff74e8b864dd3407082e4dd~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_780,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Daniel Warriner</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Exotics and Retrospectives]]></title><description><![CDATA[Exotics and Retrospectives  (1898) is among Lafcadio Hearn’s earlier works on Japan. It opens with the author’s account of his arduous climb up Mount Fuji (3,776 meters). Because it’s more personal in nature, I preferred it to the dozen or so other essays in the collection, which, in Hearn’s oftentimes meandering yet lucid style, cover a wide range of subjects—from Japan’s singing insects and frogs, and reflections on death and Buddhism, to his notions and flights of fancy on memory,...]]></description><link>https://www.danielwarriner.com/ja/post/exotics-and-retrospectives-1</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69cb20d96e7ac3d80d4c02bf</guid><pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:18:27 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/618baf_0e124fb687604e15a50bca16f13c750c~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Daniel Warriner</dc:creator></item></channel></rss>