I keep finding this trope of the alien hive mind in recent SF novels by A. Tchaikovsky, A. Martine, E. Ashton, etc. If you have observed this as well, I'd be very interested to know why you think that might be or, at least, what other recent cultural developments you think it might be connected to.

A question for academics: what academic non-fiction book would you hold up as exceptionally written? Content matters in this to an extent, but I'm particularly trying to identify style here, and setting trade titles written by academics into a different category.

Since we are once again dealing with "the only silent era comedians of note were men" I feel I need to stand up for the ladies. Marion Davies!

Excellent essay from historian Steven Mintz on why he’ll only evaluate writing he can witness firsthand open.substack.com/pub/stevenmi...

日本初、国際ゲイ小説賞を受賞した作家、安堂ホセさんから受賞スピーチ動画をいただきました🎥🥳 フランスの出版社、翻訳家だけでなく、エージェントや河出にまでメッセージを😭　この視野の広さも安堂作品の魅力です。 【速報】芥川賞作家・安堂ホセ『迷彩色の男』が、フランス🇫🇷発の文学賞・国際ゲイ小説賞（外国小説部門）を受賞！【日本初】｜Web河出 スピーチ全文、テキストではこちらで読めます▼ web.kawade.co.jp/information/...

Spanish-speaking Japanologists take note: networks.h-net.org/group/announ...

The call for papers and panels to the 18th International EAJS conference is now open! The conference will be a hybrid event hosted in Poznań, Poland from 27-30 August 2026. Please read the rules and instructions below before you submit your panel or paper. #EAJS2026 eajs.eu/2026-call-fo...

第1戦、勝った！ youtu.be/L6qOAOwFhvI?...

Nueva colección en Satori: CLÁSICOS DEL TEATRO NOH ❤️🧡💚 Por primera vez en español y en traducción directa del japonés, una colección exclusiva dedicada a los clásicos del teatro Noh. Imprescindible. Traducidos y prologados por Hidehito Higashitani, David Almazán y José Pazó.

Muy pronto en Satori... Toshiko Tamura. La escritora rebelde y olvidada del Japón moderno. LA VIDA DE ELLAS Historias de mujeres que rompen moldes en una sociedad que las quiere en silencio, mujeres que se atreven a desear contra corriente, a decidir por sí mismas y a actuar sin miedo.

Japan, ostensibly one of the least religious countries in the world, had its political order upended by the lay Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai. That is THE story about Friday's epochal shift in Japanese politics (thread follows):

A look back on translating Strange Houses, with a bit of a spoiler discussion of one big issue. #Uketsu #StrangeHouses #JapaneseLit #StrangePictures #Books

Llegint una antologia de contes de terror de Kadokawa m’he trobat amb aquesta petita joia que Inoue Masahiko (1960) va escriure el 1983 per al premi de micro-ficció Hoshi Shin’ichi, organitzat per Kōdansha. No m’he pogut estar de traduir-la per compartir-la amb vosaltres.

Dear friends, As have become a habit, I mark each #autumnequinox by sharing a small poem by Xin Qiji. I also start my translation cycle of Chinese and Japanese poems and prose that mark the twenty-four lunisolar micro-seasons. Translation notes blogged here: #everynightapoem

this exists it is called thinking

Carolina Negri (ed.) - Storia della letteratura giapponese Dalle origini all'Ottocento À paraître chez Einaudi

Qué buena pinta tiene la nueva colección de Clásicos del Teatro Noh en Satori. Empiezan con _Matsukaze_, _Ataka_ y _Dōjōji_. Con traducciones y prólogos de Hidehito Higashitani, David Almazán y José Pazó. satoriediciones.com/catalogo/col...

At EAJS in Sendai this weekend, and thanks to Prof. Till Weingärtner (Cork), I found out about シルバー川柳, a yearly prize given by the 全国有料老人ホーム協会 for senryū about the everyday lives of senior citizens. My favorite so far (mostly because of the 本歌取り from 金子みすゞ): 「パスワード みんな違って みんなダメ」

Mary Isbell's book Searching for Wonder: Teaching Literature with Student-Selected Texts is free and available for digital download now! unewhaven.pressbooks.pub/searchingfor...

New episode! As you compile your syllabus, learn how Mary Isbell (University of New Haven) structures her classroom when students don't read assigned readings. soundcloud.com/c19podcast/s...

Just listened to/watched @newsfromnihon.bsky.social talk about jhorror on the Cinema Scope podcast and it's always a pleasure to hear/see pure expertise on display. So good! #Jhorror

A l'Escola ens hem fet un Substack! substack.com/inbox/post/1...

優勝の瞬間は8:55。

阪神優勝！NPB史上最速V！ www.daily.co.jp/tigers/2025/...

Giving this one a shot. Maybe it'll work as the last reading in my upcoming MA seminar on Horror.

Gran (com sempre) tertúlia sobre la fantasia a Esperant el Cometa. I molt a favor de reivindicar sempre William Morris!

World Central Kitchen got fired on in Gaza by Israel, had members killed, and went back anyway because people shouldn't have to starve to death. This is an amazing humble bundle.

沖縄尚学が初優勝　3―1で日大三を破り沖縄勢2校目の頂点　甲子園

suggests that very little happens to us when we read something new. This tool reinforces the idea that instructors have some kind of narrow personal agenda that they will reward when in fact what we "want" is for our students to write about what matters to them and figure out what they think /6

Tried out Grammarly's AI grade predictor. Didn't want to use actual student work, so I had ChatGPT write a paper for one of my assignments and gave that to Grammarly. Grammarly promises to use publicly available info about your instructor to predict what they will say. The advice was *not* what I /1

I got the proofs today for my upcoming graphic novel about language, cognition, and visual communication and I cannot contain myself with how excited I am for this book to finally come out after working on it for 7 years 😱 visuallanguagelab.com/sip

Out in September 2025: _Triangle Republics: Cross-Border Literary Transits Between the Cold War Koreas and Japan_ I Jonathan Kief follows the triangular flow of texts linking North Korea, South Korea, and Japan from 1945 until the 1980s, revealing overlooked paths of interaction and exchange.

De que se queixam os galegos dos portugueses?

here's the MIT Press link where you can download the PDF or read online, directly from the publisher.

Sayaka Chatani et KumHee Cho - A Nation Within North Korean Zainichi in Postimperial Japan À paraître en mars aux Stanford UP

A video of the recent MJHA "Research Exchange Seminar" discussion of the book 『帝国大学の朝鮮人：大韓民国エリートの起源』("Koreans in the Imperial University: The Origin of South Korean Elites") is now available on the MJHA YouTube channel! youtu.be/SdJ_FkionpE

これ興味深く見た。自分が大学教員で各国の学生と関わっているので、まず「日本の学生の歴史意識の低さ」に対して、この問い自体から入っていっていいのかどうか、という危惧を先崎さんと共有した。ちなみに、「裕仁の戦争責任はどうなった」という問い自体は、アジア各国の歴史やってる大学生の方が、日本人同士よりも、高い確率で（日本人に）聞いてくる。アジア各国での戦争の記憶は国家の歴史の一幕として重要だ。例えば、今週末シンガポールは建国六十周年の祝典をやってるが、 www.youtube.com/watch?v=74d5...

Ariel Stilerman - Court Poetry and the Culture of Learning in Japan À paraître en mars aux Harvard UP

New this morning, a Comment I contributed to Nature Computational Science on the interaction between large language models and the humanities. 🧪 🤖 #MLSky rdcu.be/etk07 The link above will be open-access for a month — plus, I'll reply to this post with a link to a permanently open preprint. +

Here's my new book! Masculinity in Contemporary Science Fiction by Men: No Plans for the Future (Liverpool UP) www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10.... #BookSky 📚💙 #booksky #libros #llibres #AcademicSky With chapters on 17 authors and a lot of great 21st C SF novels! ¡Pronto en castellano!

On Monday! Pieter Van Lommel (Tokyo Keizai U) on his new book "The Age of the ‘Country Teacher’: Japanese Literature, Education and Media in the Second Half of the Meiji Period", in conversation with 鈴木貴宇 (Suzuki Takane, Waseda U). Register for Zoom here: www.mjha.org/event-6259090

This is not outright horrible, but it's not great either. It makes the same error a lot of these guidance documents do in that it puts the presence of AI at the center, rather than the foundations of the experiences of learning. There's a lot of examples to illustrate, but I'll stick with two...

セ・リーグ、2027年シーズンからDH制導入 npb.jp/news/detail/...

I've strayed into another language family, and made Finnish the subject of this month's post. Under the surface though, it's a piece about prehistoric languages, and how millennia-long linguistic contact can make foreign languages seem more familiar. dannybate.com/2025/08/03/y...

International Conference: Human Translators in Focus "Exploring the Human Aspects of Japanese Literary Translation through a Sociological Lens" 22-24 October 2025 at Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation (Dublin, Ireland) and online www.tcd.ie/literary-tra...

Here's a little quiz: In the commentary to his 1802 translation of Hager's Dissertation on the Newly Discovered Babylonian Inscriptions of 1801, Klaproth mentions a recently acquired "Chinese-Japanese dictionary" printed during the reign of the Japanese emperor "Kin-schang". Who is this? 🤔🧐 1/

阪神　マジック３９点灯！ まだ油断したらあかんけん。 2008年も7月にマジック点灯したし… www.daily.co.jp/tigers/2025/...

"Academic Editing in the Humanities" by Kate Wildman Nakai This is from 2009, but I just found it today. I'm definitely going to include it in my MA seminar materials from now on. www.swet.jp/articles/art...

Big #Egyptian news!! Book on Hieratic. Free to download for 2 weeks. www.cambridge.org/core/element...