Tsuneyoshi Tsuzumi – Japan das Götterland (The Land of Deities) Insel Verlag Leipzig 1936

The book was edited by the Japan-Institut Berlin and published in 1936. The author, an art historian, wrote the book in German while working, lecturing and studying in Berlin. The book has never been published in another language. He aimed to raise the Germans interest into Japanese culture.

The book is structured by the following chapters:

Natürliche Kultur (natural culture)

Shintoistische Weltanschauung (Shintoist philosophy/ideology)

Bedeutung des Shinto-Schreines (significance of the Shinto shrine)

Bedeutung des Shinto-Festes (significance of the Shinto festival)

Japanische Buddhismus (Japanese Buddhism)

Die japanische Rittermoral „Bushido“ (the Japanese knight ethics „Bushido“)

Modernes Japan (modern Japan)

The book was published in Nazi-Germany while the National Socialists controlled the Japan-Institut. However, the author tries to provide information about Japanese culture and religion. He doesn't give any political stance in general or about the Axis powers specifically.

Japanistitut Berlin

The Institut was established in 1926, in the rooms of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft. Even it officially had a scientific approach, there were clearly political ideas behind he institute. After World War One, Germany was looking for partners in peace and cultural exchange. So it's no wonder its financial backing primarily came from the German ministry of foreign affairs.

After the National Socialist took over, the institute changed. It became a part of the Nazi propaganda machine and was of course used to establish relationships among the Axis powers. Besides that the institute kept parts of its independence and could publish works like „Japan das Götterland“.

 More information on Tsuneyoshi Tsuzumi:

Tanehisa Otabe: Tsuneyhosh Tsuzumi, a Pioneer in Comparative Aesthetics, and his theory of "Framlesness of Japanese Artistic Style"

in

International Yearbook of Aesthetics, Volume 11 2007

Henry Green - Loving

Green's 1945 published novel is placed during World War Two. It sets of by describing the old butler Eldon lying on his death bed, being nursed by the household's first maid.

They both serve the widow of an British gentleman with her daughter in law and her grandchildren who reside in an Irish country castle. While the war has already reached southern England, they stay in neutral Ireland, waiting for the war to pass, the lady's son the only family member to serve in the British forces.

Mostly, the novel is constructed around two characters: the old butler's successor Chaley Raunce and Edith, a housemaid. They take liking in each other but don't call themselves a couple in love yet. Before the ultimately leave the household to pursue their own happiness as a couple, the novels develops around the two, their colleagues and their masters, progressing slowly and providing for a careful and slow read, or a number of reads. It is a book of small and beautiful details that are knit into a story of love, war and intrigues. Green creates a big picture out of small moments he describes beautifully.

After the Banquet by Yukio Mishima

After the banquet by Yukio Mishima

Kazu is a single woman in her fiftees who runs a restaurant in 1960s Tokyo. She fears that after death she will buried alone in her grave and that everybody she knows in her life will forget her. Her restaurant is not only popular for the food, but also for herself
One day Kazu met an older man after an banquet. He is the reform politician Noguchi, who also is a widower.   Noguchi is sometimes calm and severe. This combination is attractive to her and she falls in love with him.

They get married.One reason to mary him is the love she feels for him. The other reason is, that he is a member of a famous and powerful family. Which means that she will not be forgotten after death and that she will never be alone.
Both are pigheaded and impulsive, other than that they are quite opposed in character. He wants a calm life but his friends urge him to get back into politics, an idea she loves. After being pressured to so by his friends and wife he runs for a seat in the city parliament but loses. After his loss he wants Kazu to sell her restaurant to refund his campaign. She had closed the restaurant when getting married but never thought about selling is as she had started with it from scratch as a young woman. So she refuses to sell and their struggle leads to their divorce. After the divorce she reopens her restaurant, after the banquet becomes before the banquet.

Mishima builds an picture of Japan between tradition and modernity. The novels shows how politics work in 1960s Tokyo and how power and struggle can affect a love relationship.

Benito Perez Galdos - Miau

Don Ramón Villaamil is kind of an 19th century Don Quijote, facing the unbeatable windmills of bureaucracy, family life, corruption and shortage of money.With only two months to go for achieving his entitlement to as pension he loses his job as a tax officer. From then on he battles on, trying to save his dignity, to get back his job and to keep his family going. His wife, Doña Pura, is merely interested in visiting the opera and showing off her assumed wealth. Whenever she has money, she spends it on trumpery and clothing, at most times relying on debt running up bills.
With the couple live the wife's sister, their daughter and their grandson, the child of their deceased older daughter. A school mate of the boy christened the family "Miau", due to the cat-like facial features of the family's women.
Villaamil keeps on trying, always staying righteous. But in the end he has to learn that doing the right thing might mean being stupid, when one is up against a corrupt system. Especially as corruption goes as far as into his own family life. Perez' novel is an early example of European literature on man against the machine, of a loner up against corruption and bureaucracy.

Kamo no Chamo - Hojoki

Hojoko, ("An Account of My Hut" or "The Ten Foot Square Hut") was written in 1212. It shows the diversity of Japanese medieval life. For a book that old it appears very up to date as many of its topics sound all too familiar to modern man: politics, social problems and natural disasters. People faced problems similar to ours today and so we have to ask ourselves: has mankind learned at all?

Hojoki (An Account of My Hut) is one of the most important works of Japanese literature. Its new sino-japanese style became the basis for modern literature in Japan. It is especially well known for his opening:

The current of the flowing river does not cease, and yet the water is not the same water as before. The foam that floats on stagnant pools, now vanishing, now forming, never stays the same for long. So, too, it is with the people and dwellings of the world

Kamo no Chamo was born as Kamo no Nagaakira in 1153 or 1155. His father was head of Shimogamo Jinja, one of the most important Shinto shrines in Kyoto. Therefore the family had a good relationship with the Tenno which brought forward the father's career. Even the boy received a rank at court at the age of seven.
After the 12th century change of regimes the father lost his position in 1170. Soon after that the father died and Kama no Chamo's hope to succeed his father at the shrine vanished.

For the following thirteen years he lived at his family's estate, probably the hut mentioned in the book was placed here. During this period, he focused on music and poetry solely, which was quite typical for the Heian time). In his late twenties he became a student of the famous poet and Buddhist priest Shun'e. He released a collection of 106 poems and established himself among the poets of his time.
After being pretermitted of becoming the head of the Tadasu shrine he was able to become the head of a marginal shrine which provided him with a save income and rank.

From 1204 to 1209 he lived in Ohara, north of Kyoto in an established refuge for lords who were tired of their lives. Here they could rest for a while or step out of their official lives and become monks of the Tendai sect. But Chamo left Ohara in 1209 and retreated to a small hut in the mountains that a friend of the family offered him. Only in 1211 he was ready to leave his life in solitude behind, when he had the possibility to become the poetry teacher of the young Shogun. But negotiations weren't successful and he returned to the mountains where he wrote the following works:

mountains. There in Hino, he wrote his marginal writings.

- 1211 Mumyosho

- 1212 Hojoki

- 1214-1215 Hosshinshu - Collection about religious awaking.

Zoya Pirzad " Things We Left Unsaid"

The novel is placed in Abadan, a town near the Persian Gulf in southwestern Iran. Abadan is home to the world's biggest refinery which the town is town is built around. "Things we left unsaid" is set in 1962.

Clarisse, the novel's protagonist lives with her family in the town's Armenian community. She is the mother of two twin girls and an older teenage son. Her leftist husband works as an engineer and therby provides for a life in safety and moderate wealth.

She has no time time to think about her life, the life she'd like to lead or love. Her days are filled by cleaning the house, preparing meals and looking after the children. But this changes when a new family moves into the neighbourhood: a young widower moves to the house across the street with his daughter and his mother. She gets to know him as man that helps out, listens to her and even likes poetry as much as she does. For the first time she begins questioning the life she lives, her marriage and her own dreams. With her neighbor she actually starts to feel happy for the first time ever. But this happiness is not to last as her neighbor falls in love with a woman his age.
Beyond the personal development of Clarisse the book also is a wonderful introduction to the life and culture of the 60's Persia, a country more colorful and diverse than today's Iran. It shows a past that's almost forgotten, being a totalitarian monarchs but still not as reglemented as today's religious tyranny.

Los Enamoramientos

Javier Marias Los Enamoramientos  (The Infatuations) 2011 

In his latest novel, Los Enamoramientos, Javier Marias chooses a woman's perspective for the first time. The novel focuses on the blindness of love and how it can lead into a moral dilemma. The protagonist, a woman in her mid thirties, visits a coffee shop on a daily basis. And each day, she notices a couple who seem to be in a perfect relationship full of love. One day she learns from the newspaper, that the man has been murdered.

When she meets the woman again, she condoles with her on the tragic loss. She's invited to the woman's home where she meets a friend of the family who soon becomes her lover. Slowly it is revealed that this man could be connected to the murder. The man states that is was a case of assisted suicide as the dead suffered from disease. It remains unclear if this is the truth or if the protagonist's new lover committed a cold blooded murder due to his romantic interest in the deceased's spouse.
Upon realising the possible connection of her love to the killing, the protagonist distance herself from him, emotionally and physically. Even he tries to explain himself to her they end up seperating. In the aftermath, the suspect finally gains his presumed goal and forms a new couple with the dead's former partner.

Los Enamoramientos has been released originally in 2011. The German version has been released in 2012 as "Die sterblich Verliebten". An English released is planned for 2013 as "The Infatuations."