Do Not Say We Have Nothing
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Things Remembered and Things Forgotten
Kyoko Nakajima
It was something Takashi remembered but Masaru had forgotten.
Final Fantasy III
Tao Lin
‘On the F train to Manhattan I emailed a friend in the UK. I said I couldn’t write my essay about Japan.’
Blue Moon
Hiromi Kawakami
‘Rather than death itself, it is the disappearance of traces that seems unbearable and sad. The disappearance of all signs that I existed.’
The Japanese Firefly Squid
Kimiko Hahn
‘nothing like an ancient corridor where a / woman is stripped of resistance.’
Spider Lilies
Hiroko Oyamada
‘The breeze smelled of many things: autumn and earth, the green of the countryside, face powder and old age.’
Out of Ark
Yumiko Utsu
‘How long has it been since Noah and his passengers set off in their vessel?’
The Beauty of the Package
Pico Iyer
‘You can throw yourself into any fantasy, she (and her country) might have been saying, so long as you don’t mistake it for real life.’
Printable
Toh EnJoe
‘Which is scarier: that the past could actually change or that you could just think it did?’
From Site
Daisuke Yokota
‘The photograph we are left with and the memory of that time do not progress along the same time axes.’
Scavengers
Adam Johnson
‘I was dying to buy something, anything that would help my wife and children understand the profound surrealism and warped reality I’d experienced on my research trip to North Korea.’
Arrival Gates
Rebecca Solnit
‘It was like trying to go back to before the earthquake, to before knowledge.’
Pink
Tomoyuki Hoshino
‘Spinning makes all that is illusory fall away.’ Translated from the Japanese by Brian Bergstrom.
Maruti 800
Rana Dasgupta
‘Like a tiny old woman surrounded by strapping grandsons, the Maruti 800 was in fact the progenitor of all that new, muscular, vehicular variety.’
O-bakanaru
Eric Ozawa
‘When your wife walks away from you, she does not disappear. When you turn your back, she does not vanish. She will be there when you open your eyes.’
Heart and Soul in Every Stitch
Tash Aw
‘Where wealth and technology go, culture quickly follows, and soon it became acceptable, even desirable, to express an interest in Japan beyond the mere practicality offered by its products.’
Hush . . . Hush Sweet Charlotte
Kazushige Abe
‘The crucial thing was to cool the baby off, bring the fever down.’
Two Poems
Kimiko Hahn
‘Certainly the tide or the dog striding along the sluff of seaweed, / this afternoon – brown, light green, black green, white and red.’
Japan Lights
Sarah Moss
‘She kneels and bows her head almost to the floor, as if pretending he’s one of her idols.’
Five Things Right Now: Jenny Offill
Jenny Offill
Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation, shares five things she’s reading, watching and thinking about.
Eight Trains
Alberto Olmos
‘To go is always to go somewhere; returning, you return to nowhere. That’s the way it is.’
Bakamonotako
Brenda Shaughnessy
‘Bakamonotako felt she didn’t need all eight of her appendages. Four would do.’
Ruth Ozeki | Podcast
Ruth Ozeki & Yuka Igarashi
‘And I never was quite sure who I was or who I was supposed to be.’
Granta Finland | Interview
Aleksi Pöyry & Francisco Vilhena
‘What is often particular to Finnish Weird is that it portrays a realistic, palpable setting which gradually starts to acquire elements of fantasy.’
In the Light of What We Know
Zia Haider Rahman
‘My wife and I were both the children of Pakistanis, immigrants, Muslims, and we had faith that our union was of things greater than ourselves.’
Brigitte Grignet | Interview
Brigitte Grignet & Daniela Silva
‘Places sitting at the edges of the world are often destroyed in the name of so-called development.’
Eyes That Have Seen the Sea
Tomás González
‘He had just finished unpacking his rucksack, new only ten days ago and now a sodden, salty, decomposing rag, when they called him.’
Mark Gevisser and Jonny Steinberg | Podcast
Mark Gevisser & Jonny Steinberg
Mark Gevisser and Jonny Steinberg discuss recent South African history, their personal relationship to Johannesburg, and their personal relationship to a divided city.
Lauren Holmes | Interview
Lauren Holmes & Louise Scothern
‘Even if you move to the other side of the world, and even if you don’t speak for years or decades, your family is always going to be a part of you.’
How Am I Supposed to Talk to You | New Voices
Lauren Holmes
‘Okay don’t sell yourself,’ said my mom, ‘sell the American dream.’
Paradise Lost
Yuri Kozyrev & Nathan Thornburgh
‘‘Abkhaz democracy reminds me a lot of America,’ an Abkhaz journalist tells me over coffee. ‘It’s a democracy of heavily armed people.’’
