The Spirit of Shizen: The Nature of Japan through 72 Seasons, with Robert Weis

Author and travel-writer Angus Waycott talks about his  8-day walk around Sado Island off Niigata Prefecture in the Japan Sea. He gives us in-depth accounts of: a mujina (tanuki-worshipping) cult, funa-ema (literally "ship horse pictures"), exile (including those of Zeami and Buddhist priest Nichiren), and the controversy behind the Kinzan gold mine and its "slave labor," all topics that he recorded in his book Sado: Japan's Island in Exile, originally published by Stone Bridge Press in 1996 and re-issued as an e-book by the author 2012 and 2023.

Book Description: "Given the choice, no-one ever went to Sado. For more than a thousand years, this island in the Sea of Japan was a place of exile for the deposed, disgraced or just plain distrusted — ex-emperors, aristocrats, poets, priests and convicted criminals alike. This book rediscovers the exiles’ island, explores the truth about its notorious gold mine, tracks down a vanishing badger cult, and drops in on the home of super-drummer band Kodo. Along the way, it paints a vivid picture of one of Japan’s most intriguing backwaters, now emerging from a long exile of its own."

About the Author

Angus Waycott is an author and travel writer whose books have been published in the UK, USA, Japan and the Netherlands. He has been the voice of TV news broadcasts, commercials, and award-winning documentaries, voiced "character" parts in game software and anime productions, and worked as a copywriter, publisher, teacher, translator, lighting designer, and staircase builder. His books are Sado: Japan's Isand in Exile, Paper Doors: Japan from Scratch (2012), The Winterborne Journey: along a small crack in the planet (2023), and National Parks of Western Europe (2012). Check out his short video on Sado Island.

The Books on Asia Podcast is sponsored by Stone Bridge Press. Check out their books on Japan at the publisher's website. Amy Chavez, podcast host, is author of Amy's Guide to Best Behavior in Japan and The Widow, the Priest, and the Octopus Hunter: Discovering a Lost Way of Life on a Secluded Japanese Island.

Subscribe to the Books on Asia podcast.

We talk with publisher Peter Goodman and author/translator Frederik L. Schodt about artificial intelligence as it relates to writing and publishing books.

Frederik L. Schodt's book The Astro Boy Essays: Osamu Tezuka, Mighty Atom, and the Manga/Anime Revolution was recently listed as one of the books used to train generative AI. Peter Goodman is publisher of Stone Bridge Press (our podcast sponsor), publishing books about Asia for over 30 years. Both of these guests offer their views on AI, the use of published books to train artificial intelligence, the issues of copyright, fair use, and plagiarism, the different ways writers and publishers can use AI as a tool, and what the AI industry should be doing to move forward and make AI trustworthy and beneficial for everyone involved.

Check out the article in the Atlantic discussing the nearly 200,000 books used to train generative-AI systems, with a searchable database.
 

In this episode of the Books on Asia podcast, host Amy Chavez talks with author and translator Frederik L. Schodt, who has written/translated many books on Japan including The Osamu Tezuka Story, Manga, Manga!: The The World of Japanese Comics, The Astro Boy Essays, and My Heart Sutra: The World in 260 Characters (read our review).

But the two books we're going to talk about today are his historical non-fiction books Professor Risley and the Imperial Japanese Troupe: How an American Acrobat Introduced Circus to Japan and Japan to the West, and Native American in the Land of the Shogun: Ranald MacDonald and the Opening of Japan. Both books, published by our sponsor Stone Bridge Press, are accounts of American men who pioneered US-Japan relations.

 Schodt talks about "Professor" Risley, an early acrobat of the mid-nineteenth century who starts his own circus that he takes to Japan. His trademark move involved juggling his two small sons with his feet. See an example of what is now known as the Risley Act in this video we found on Youtube:

https://youtu.be/VkFIkXXyDVc?si=zXfmUyeW9QBrwM_o

Risley later starts a Japanese circus that he takes touring around the world. 

The other book we discuss is Schodt's biography of Native American Ranald MacDonald, who makes his way to Japan during the Edo period and ends up not just teaching English but having a hand in negotiations with Commodore Perry and the opening of Japan.

About the Author

Frederik L. Schodt is a writer, translator, and conference interpreter based in the San Francisco Bay area. He has written widely on Japanese history, popular culture, and technology. His writings on manga, and his translations of them, helped trigger the current popularity of Japanese comics in the English-speaking world. He was awarded the Special Category of the Asahi Shimbun's prestigious Osamu Tezuka Culture Award, and in 2009, he was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, for his work helping to promote Japan's popular culture overseas.

You can find him at his Website, on Twitter(X) @fschodt  and on Facebook.

The Books on Asia Podcast is sponsored by Stone Bridge Press. Check out their books on Japan at the publisher's website. Amy Chavez, podcast host, is author of Amy's Guide to Best Behavior in Japan and The Widow, the Priest, and the Octopus Hunter: Discovering a Lost Way of Life on a Secluded Japanese Island.

Subscribe to the Books on Asia podcast.

In this episode of the BOA podcast, host Amy Chavez talks with John Ross, a New Zealand writer based in Taiwan. Ross has spent three decades in Asia, starting as a freelance photojournalist then becoming an English teacher and author. His works include Formosan Odyssey: Taiwan, Past and Present, You Don’t Know China: Twenty-Two Enduring Myths Debunked, and Taiwan in 100 Books. He co-founded  Camphor Press, a publishing house focused on East Asia called and co-hosts Formosa Files, a weekly podcast on the history of Taiwan.

John Ross lives in a small town in Taiwan, known as the birthplace of the inventor of instant noodles: Momofuku Ando. Ross explains why he moved to Taiwan in 1994 and how his plans for writing a book about the Mongolian manbeast was waylaid as he instead embarked on an epic journey in 1999 that became Formosan Odyssey: Taiwan, Past and Present. This first book is about travel, history, and small-town life in Taiwan.

Amy and John talk about Japan’s occupation of Taiwan and the legacies the Japanese left behind such as education, infrastructure, and railroads. Ross talks about Taiwan’s long history of attempted colonization by the Dutch, French, and Ming Loyalists.

Next, Ross talks about Taiwan in 100 Books, how he chose the volumes that tell the story of Taiwan through their interesting backstories, controversial texts, and fabulist authors who brought the first information about Taiwan to readers around the world.

In You Don’t Know China: Twenty-Two Enduring Myths Debunked Ross explicates common misunderstood facts about various topics, including the Great Wall, Chinese medicine, fortune cookies, eating dogs, and Lord Macartney’s mission to China in 1793.

Lastly, Amy and John talk about other authors, their books, and what led John Ross, Michael Cannings, and Mark Swofford to form Camphor Press in February 2014. Ross, in charge of acquisitions, talks about filling the void between academic and big box presses. He gives kudos to other small presses such as Earnshaw Books, Stone Bridge Press, and Blacksmith Books, who are all invested in bringing quality books to readers.

Amy introduces some Camphor Press books based on her own library. John adds some more titles to her list, including two by winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature Pearl S. Buck: The Exile: Portrait of an American Mother, and Fighting Angel: Portrait of a Soul.

John talks about the lost art of the travelogue and how the 1990s and the internet destroyed what should be an enduring genre.

They discuss great travel writers such as Heinrich Harrer, Bill Bryson, and Ernest Hemingway.

John and Amy talk about how the travel genre is changing and where it is headed. Amy also mentions Alex Kerr’s upcoming book Hidden Japan: An Astonishing World of Thatched Villages, Ancient Shrines and Primeval Forests (Sept. 2023, but you can pre-order here) and how the author advises people to not go to these places, but rather be happy reading about them instead.

John Ross’s favorite travelogues are:

• Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer
• Land of Jade: A journey through India Through Northern Burma to China (1996), by Bertil Lintner
• In the Footsteps of Genghis Khan, by John DeFrancis

Ross’s three Favorite Books on Japan are:

• On the Narrow Road to the Deep North: Journey into a Lost Japan by Leslie Downer
• In Search of Japan’s Hidden Christians, by John Dougill
• Charinko by Tom Gibb (an upcoming Camphor Press title)

Be sure to check out John Ross’s books at the Camphor Press website or via Amazon. You can also visit him on social media at the following links:

• Taiwan in 100 Books
• Camphor Press (Sign up for the Camphor Press Newsletter by scrolling to the bottom of that page)
• Formosa Files Podcast

The Books on Asia Podcast is sponsored by Stone Bridge Press, publisher of fine books on Asia for over 30 years. Subscribe to the Books on Asia Podcast. Subscribe to the BOA podcast at https://linktr.ee/booksonasia

In 2021 John Rucynski--who has been living in Japan on and off since 1994--self-published A Passion for Japan through Blue Sky Publishing. In this anthology, which includes 31 writers, he asks not why the writers came to Japan but why they stayed. Here is a list of the essays and writers included, from the Table of Contents

1. Shodō: Finding My Way in The Way of Writing
   Karen Hill Anton
2. One Year with the Guardians of the Phoenix
   Carmen Săpunaru Tămaș
3. Matsuri Madness
   David M. Weber
4. Wadaiko: Drumming to Our Own Beat
   Daniel Lilley
5. Follow the Sound of the Drums: My Passion for Eisa
   Judy Kambara
6. A Love of Indie Music and a Seat behind the Goal
   Adrianne Verla Uchida
7. Sumo and Me
   Tim Craig
8. A Pushover for Sumo
   Katrina Watts
9. Baseball, Blogging, and Belonging
   Trevor Raichura
10. Coming Home: The Search for Belonging in Rural Japan
    Victoria Yoshimura
11. Looking for the Good Life: Living as a Local In a Zero Waste Village
    Linda Mengxi Ding
12. Gaijin in the Garden: Where Ganbaru is Golden
    Robert McLaughlin
13. From Bruce Lee to The Way of Tea
    Randy Channell Soei
14. From the Land of the Indomitable Lions to the Land of the Blue Samurai: A Personal Story
    Samuel Nfor
15. The Long Road from Clay to Pot, and What I Learned along the Way
    Irina Holca
16. The Man Who Stepped into Yesterday
    Edward J. Taylor
17. Kumano Leap – Local Heritage Adopts a Wandering Soul: Q & A with Mike Rhodes
    Mike Rhodes
18. Life Lessons Learned in Japan’s Mountains
    Wes Lang
19. “Banzai!” on a Spanish Island: Playing Chess in Japan’s Colors
    Simon Bibby
20. Who, Me?! Volleyball Refereeing in Japan
    Greg Rouault
21. Passion in a Community: Finding My Japan through JALT
    Wayne Malcolm
22. Come Sail Away: Finding My Passion on the Ship for World Youth
    John Rucynski
23. The Inner Game of the Japanese: Going Back Home with Tennis
    Haru Yamada
24. Who Am I? In Search of My Identity
    Margaret C. Kim
25. My Love for Traditional Rituals and Customs of Japan
    Hiya Mukherjee
26. Discovering Japanese Fusion of Religions on the Pilgrimage Island of Shikoku
    Steve McCarty
27. Feeling at Home with the Great Literary Masters
    Vicky Ann Richings
28. Too Many Novels I Want to Translate: Q & A With Emily Balistrieri
    Emily Balistrieri
29. Literature and Legacy: Stories of Hansen’s Disease in Japan
    Kathryn M. Tanaka
30. Roof Spotting in Japan
    Wendy Bigler
31. A Passion for the Place: Swept Off My Feet by a Japanese Farmhouse
    Rebecca Otowa

The book is available exclusively on
Amazon USA / Amazon Japan

Follow the book on Instagram, Facebook, and Goodreads.

At the end of the podcast, Amy asks John what his top 3 books on Japan are and why. He gives 4:

• You Gotta Have Wa, by Robert Whiting
• The Roads to Sata, by Alan Booth
• Cool Japan, by Tim Craig
• Pure Invention, by Matt Alt

John Rucynski, editor of A Passion for Japan: A Collection of Personal Narratives, is originally from upstate New York and has been living in Japan on and off since 1994. He is currently associate professor in the Center for Language Education at Okayama University. His main research interest is the role of humor in language acquisition and intercultural communicative competence, and he has edited two volumes on this topic.

The Books on Asia Podcast is sponsored by Stone Bridge Press, publisher of quality books on Japan and Asia for over 30 years. Go to their website at https://www.stonebridge.com/

Stephen Mansfield, author of Tokyo: A Biography (Tuttle, 2017), is a British writer and photo-journalist based in Japan. His photo-journalism work has appeared in over 60 magazines, newspapers, and journals worldwide including the Kyoto Journal, CNN Travel and Nikkei Asia. To date, he has had twenty books published, four of them on the culture and people of Laos and several on Japanese gardens. He also has a chapter and essay in the anthology Inaka: Portraits of Rural Life in Japan (Camphor Press, 2020). In today's podcast he talks about, of course, Tokyo. o us about Tokyo: A Biography.

In this episode of the Books on Asia Podcast, host Amy Chavez sits down with writer, translator, and professor of Japanese at Western Michigan University, Jeffrey Angles. He is the first non-native poet writing in Japanese to win the Yomiuri Prize for Literature, a highly coveted prize for poetry. His translation of the modernist classic The Book of the Dead by Shinobu Orikuchi won both the Miyoshi Award and the Scaglione Prize for translation. He is with us today to talk about his translation of the just-released book by Hiromi Ito, The Thorn Puller. 

Hiromi Ito, author of The Thorn Puller (Toge-nuki Jizo: Shin Sugamo Jizo engi) came to national attention in Japan in the 1980s for her groundbreaking poetry about pregnancy, childbirth, and female sexuality. After relocating to the U.S. in the 1990s, she began to write about the immigrant experience and biculturalism. In recent years, she has focused on the ways that dying and death shape human experience.

Sarah Coomber is the author of The Same Moon (Camphor Press, 2020), a memoir about what happened when she traded out her wrecked Minnesota life for two years in rural Japan. The Same Moon is possibly the only book about the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program (JET) experience written from a woman's point of view. Sarah joined the program in 1996, when the government-sponsored program was in its infancy.

In this episode of the Books on Asia Podcast, she talks about being a single woman in Japan at that time, expectations at work, and how things have changed, or not, since then. Finally she gives some advice on what women should consider before moving to Japan to teach English.

At the very end of the podcast, Sarah shares with us her top three books on Japan:

1. Shogun, by James Clavell

2. The Accidental Office Lady: An American Woman in Corporate Japan by Laura Kriska

3. A Half-Step Behind: Japanese Women Today, by Jane Condon

Author Bio: Sarah Coomber has  worked in public relations, journalism, science writing and advocacy, and has taught English at the college level. She has an MFA in creative writing from Eastern Washington University, a master’s in mass communication from the University of Minnesota, and level-four certification in the Seiha School of koto. A resident of Minnesota, she writes, manages communications projects, coaches other writers, and teaches yoga.

Find her online at her website or sign up for her newsletter. You'll also find her at the following social media links:

Twitter: @CoomberSarah
Instagram: @sarahcoomberwriter
Facebook: @sarahcoomberwriter
LinkedIn: @sarahcoomber

In this episode of the BOA podcast, host Amy Chavez talks with Azby Brown, a long-time resident of Japan and author of Just Enough: Lessons from Japan for Sustainable Living, Architecture, and Design. Some topics discussed are Edo Period sustainability measures, STG’s, architecture of old Japanese houses, the Kamikatsu Zero Waste town, and future measures Japan is taking to become more sustainable.

In this episode of the BOA podcast, host Amy Chavez talks with Maud Rowell about her new book Blind Spot: Exploring and Educating on Blindness (404 Ink, 2021). Maud is a freelance journalist and writer from London. She went blind at 19 while traveling in South Korea. Two months later, she went on to begin a four-year degree in Japanese Studies at University of Cambridge including one year at Doshisha University in Kyoto. She trained in journalism at City, University of London, and over the course of the pandemic, wrote her first book Blind Spot: Exploring and Educating on Blindness published by 404 Ink in November 2021. In the summer of 2021, she won the Holman Prize run by San Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired and received a grant to travel around Japan and write about her experiences.