Search: “ichigensan”

David Zoppetti’s novel Ichigensan was first published in Japanese and won the Subaru Prize for Literature in 1996.  Later it was made into a film starring Edward Atterton, and in 2011 the English translation by Takuma Sminkey was published.  Set in Kyoto, it concerns an affair between a foreign student of Japanese literature and a …Read More

Suzanne Kamata has written a paper ‘Sister Cities: Border Crossings and Barriers’, comparing David Zoppetti’s Kyoto-based Ichigensan with John Warley’s A Southern Girl set in Charleston, South Carolina.  In the extracts below, which appear with her permission, she outlines Kyoto’s literary tradition before considering the border-crossing implications in the romance between a Japanese-speaking foreigner and …Read More