Book launchTuesday 18 January 2022
6:00pm – 7:00pm
Japan Stories
Drinks reception: 7:00pm – 8:00pm
13/14 Cornwall Terrace, Outer Circle (entrance facing Regent's Park), London NW1 4QP
Organised by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
Fully bookedJapan Stories is an absolutely spellbinding collection of short fiction and poetry. Meet the sinister museum curator, a son caring for his dementia- struck father, a young woman who returns to haunt her killer, and a curious homeless man intent on cleaning your home with lemons. This captivating work also includes Joso’s stories ‘I’m not David Bowie’ and ‘Maru-chan’, an homage to Yayoi Kusama. The book is illustrated by Manga artist, NAMIKO.
‘Stripped to the bone by the depredations of dementia, Joso’s prose falls from eloquence to hand-wringing and the bitterness of uncontained grief, to create another kind of desperate lucidity. That most of us will recognise the son’s plight is a fitting tribute to Joso’s profoundly moving recreation of pain and consolation… exquisite and transformative’ – Steve Whittaker, Yorkshire Times
‘The short fictions in this serene collection are written in pellucidly clear prose and wrought like pieces of fine porcelain.’ – Jon Gower
At this book launch, Joso introduced Japan Stories, discussing the inspirations behind it. She also read from the book and took questions from the audience.
Japan Stories is published by SEREN (2021), and can be purchased via this link.
A video of the event can be watched here:
Praise for My Falling Down House:
‘Set in contemporary Japan and interspersed with intimate details taken from Joso’s own experiences living in Japan, it simultaneously speaks to contemporary globalizing society at large. A remarkable achievement.’ – Professor Sho Konishi, University of Oxford
‘My Falling Down House is a masterpiece.’ – Anne Janowitz, Emerita Professor, Dep’t of English, Queen Mary University of London
‘It feels like a novel I’ve been waiting for all my life.’ – Richard Lloyd Parry, Asia Editor, The Times
About the contributors
Jayne Joso
Jayne Joso is a writer and artist who has lived and worked in Japan, China, Kenya, and the UK. She is the author of four novels – the most recent of these, My Falling Down House, is set in Japan and draws on her years living in the snowy mountains of Niigata, and later in Tokyo. Her journalism has been published in various Japanese architectural magazines and in the UK’s Architecture Today magazine. She has also ghost written on Japanese architects for the German publisher, Prestel Art. Her literary works are largely concerned with matters of human empathy, issues surrounding home, homelessness, and cultural identity. Joso’s new work on Japan, Japan Stories, is a collection of short fiction and poetry based on research with the support both of a Daiwa Foundation Small Grant and an Arts Council England Award. Joso’s previous work on Japan includes the celebrated novel My Falling Down House which received a Great Britain-Sasakawa Foundation Award and was longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Award 2017.