Ieyasu Tokugawa (1543-1616), who founded a military state and a dynasty of shoguns that lasted 265 years, would not look out of place in one of Shakespeare’s Machiavellian plays. Most of Shakespeare’s works were produced between 1589-1613 when Tokugawa was busy building alliances and fighting historically… Read more »

Osamu Dazai  (1909-1948) famous for his novel No Longer Human, Ningen Shikaku, killing himself at the age of 38, womanising, and being expelled from Tokyo Imperial University, has been dubbed The Bad Boy of Japanese literature.Many of Japan’s most interesting creative writers, such as Fuminori… Read more »

Mary Shelley (1797-1851) published her novella Frankenstein in 1818 during a period of revolutions – both industrial and political, thanks to the French Revolution (1789-1799) and new sciences such as galvanism. By contrast, Japan at this time was still enjoying a relatively tranquil period, its Edo Period (1603-1868),… Read more »

Kitazawa Rakuten (1876-1955) created Japan’s ‘first serialised comic’ in the 1890s for Box of Curios, a paper set up by the Australian political cartoonist and printer Frank Arthur Nankivell (1869-1956).Rakuten joined the Tokyo-based English language publication, Box of Curios, in 1895, and is said to… Read more »