Factbook

A Dynamic Compendium of Interesting Japanese Literary and Publishing Facts
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    Tokyo’s oldest western-style bar, Kamiya, was the favourite watering hole of several of Japan’s literary greats[UPDATED: 9-3-2026]

    Opened in the 1880s, Kamiya Bar in Tokyo, a survivor of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 that killed more than 100,000 people and the devastating firebombs of the Second World War, is said to be the oldest western-style bar in Japan.

    Located in the heart of Asakusa, it is something of a legend among publishers and bookworms because some of Japan’s most famous authors drank there. Among them were Yasunari Kawabata (1899-19723), winner of the 1968 Nobel Prize in Literature, Junichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965), Kafu Nagai (1879-1959) and Yukio Mishima (1925-1970). 

    The bar is also famous for its retro cafeteria–like feel; and its all-important original cocktail Denki Bran, electric brandy – a brandy based cocktail that is served nowhere else in Japan. Due to Denki Bran’s unusual flavour and strength, connoisseurs recommend drinking it with a beer chaser.

    The bar, which consists of three floors, is still in its original location, but has been rebuilt several times since the 1880s. 

    Another of Tokyo’s famous literary watering holes is Lupin, founded in 1928, where a more conventional cocktail, the Moscow Mule, is the recommended beverage.  It is served in a copper mug.

    Located in Ginza, Lupin is close to the former office of an important Japanese publisher, andis said to have been a popular location for Osamu Dazai (1909-1948), who has been dubbed Japan’s ultimate bad boy novelist, and his friends; as well as other authors like Ango Sakaguchi (1906-1955), and artists. 

    Several other bars including one at the Hill Top Hotel, a popular Tokyo hotel amongst publishers and authors, are often mentioned in the same breath by Japan’s drinking literati. However, none serve electric brandy.

     

    Tokyo’s oldest western-style bar, Kamiya, was the favourite watering hole of several of Japan’s literary greats Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Futabatei Shimei, a Russian speaker who actually wanted to be a diplomat not a writer, left a major literary legacy in Japan[UPDATED: 9-3-2026]

    Futabatei Shimei (1864-1909) learnt Russian with the aim of becoming a diplomat or international businessman, but a lack of employment options forced him to turn to writing and translation instead.

    He was the first Japanese writer to use colloquial language in his writing, avoiding established writing styles, thereby writing what has been called, by academics and experts in Japanese literature, ‘Japan’s first modern novel’, Ukigumo, The Drifting Cloud, a hugely important milestone in the development of the canon of Japanese literature.

    Translating Western novels forced many translators, including Shimei, to render the works they were translating in colloquial Japanese, which led to this new realistic style. And many considered traditional literary Japanese inefficient and old fashioned.

    In the late 19th century this new style, known as Write it Like It Is, Genbun Itchi, was widely adopted by translators, as it added flexibility and allowed for creative expression.

    There were, however, ‘dissidents and rebels’ who bucked this emerging new trend, but its supporters wanted to try to fuse written and spoken Japanese together in a manner that would generate new European-style novels written in Japanese, such as The Drifting Cloud, the first of its type. 

    Japanese women were said to have an advantage, according to some academics, as they had been trained to write letters, dairies and journals in spoken language, while men were historically always encouraged to write in a more formal style. 

    Shimei, born Tatsunosuke Hasegawa, wrote in a colloquial style about the society around him in addition to translating Russian authors into Japanese, including Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818-1883).

    The Drifting Cloud was published in three volumes between 1887 and 1888 and was in fact never completed. Nevertheless, its realism, style and critique of growing materialism in Japan were highly influential. 

    Shimei died in 1909 at the age of 45 from tuberculosis, on his return from Russia where he had been working as a special correspondent for the Asahi Shimbun, a major Japanese national newspaper.

    Futabatei Shimei, a Russian speaker who actually wanted to be a diplomat not a writer, left a major literary legacy in Japan Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Japan’s most notorious author Yukio Mishima translated and adapted children’s books including children’s editions of Shakespeare[UPDATED: 9-3-2026]

    Yukio Mishima (1925-1970), one of Japan’s most famous authors and probably the nation’s most notorious, wrote 40 novels, 18 plays, 20 books of short stories, books of essays, hundreds of poems, as well as plays and film scripts before he died at the age of 45.

    He also translated and adapted several children’s books that were published as illustrated books including Lewis Carroll’s (1832-1898) Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and several of William Shakespeare’s (1564-1616) plays including: Hamlet (1951) with illustrations by Goro Kurosawa; and A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream (1952) with illustrations by Kazuo Ikeda.

    Mishima’s translation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was published in 1952 with illustrations by Goro Kumada under the title Fushiginokuni Arisu. 

    Mishima also adapted and translated Don Quiote by Miguel de Cervantes (1605-1615), which was published in 1955, also as a children’s book by the Tokyo based children’s publisher Akane Shobo, which also published the other books mentioned above.

    Japan’s most notorious author Yukio Mishima translated and adapted children’s books including children’s editions of Shakespeare Posted by Richard Nathan
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    A book about an aquatic man by Kobo Abe written at the height of the Cold War is considered by some as one of the best works of science fiction written by a Japanese author[UPDATED: 3-31-2026]

    Kobo Abe (1924-1993) dubbed ‘The Kafka of Japan’ wrote about many things including for instance robots and the robotic existence of modern life in Japan, but his book Inter Ice Age 4, published at the height of the Cold War in 1959, is arguably one of the best works of science fiction ever written by a Japanese author.

    It tells the story of a submerged world in the near future in which the polar ice caps have melted, leading to the creation (through genetic engineering) of an ‘aquatic human’ capable of breathing underwater. 

    In terms of its scale and sheer imagination, its impact on the science fiction genre in Japan was significant. Nevertheless, today Abe is best known, inside and outside Japan, for his social commentary novel, The Woman in the Dunes, a jarringly dry novel about the futility and repetitiveness of modern Japanese existence. 

    A book about an aquatic man by Kobo Abe written at the height of the Cold War is considered by some as one of the best works of science fiction written by a Japanese author Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Japan’s most famous poet is a 17th century Zen Buddhist named Basho[UPDATED: 3-31-2026]

    Matsuo Kinsaku, the 17th-century Japanese haiku master, more commonly known as Basho, the son of a minor samurai born near Kyoto in 1644, is said to be Japan’s most famous poet, as well as one of the world’s most influential. 

    He is the undisputed master of haiku, short form traditional Japanese poetry, a form of poetry and creative writing that is now popular around the world with hundreds of thousands of haiku being written every year in many different languages, and not just in in Japan.

    Basho was a lay Zen Buddhist and in fact never took his vows to become a Buddhist monk despite his poetry reflecting many Zen Buddhist themes and his knowledge of the religion. Indeed, many believing him to be a Japanese Zen monk, referred to him as such.

    He established Japan’s best known poetry school of haikai no renga, the Shofu  (蕉風).  The school’s style was seen at the time as a return to traditional poetry, which retained important rules and humour but introduced new concepts in poetry such as linking poems, shiori.

    Basho wrote the most famous Japanese poem ever written, a simple poem about a frog that has been translated in myriad ways into English.

    Into the calm old lake A frog with flying leap goes plop! The peaceful hush to break. (William J. Porter)

    Old pond frog leaping splash (Cid Corman)

    Old pond – frogs jumped in – sound of water. (Lafcadio Hearn)

    A lonely pond in age-old stillness sleeps … A part, unstirred by sound or motion … till Suddenly into it a lithe frog leaps. (Curtis Hidden Page)

    The original Japanese is:

    古池や蛙飛び込む水の音

    Furu ike ya, kawazu tobikomu, mizu no oto

    Basho is also known for Oku no hosomichi, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, describing his visit to northern Japan, which is considered by critics and many experts in and outside Japan to be one of the most beautiful works of Japanese literature.

    Japan’s most famous poet is a 17th century Zen Buddhist named Basho Posted by Richard Nathan
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    William Shakespeare and the first Tokugawa Shogun are linked by one very important fact[UPDATED: 3-11-2026]

    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 important battles in feudal Japan. 

    In 1603, when Tokugawa became the first Tokugawa Shogun, it is very unlikely that Shakespeare would have known anything about this samurai warlord who fought six major battles in his lifetime before initiating Japan’s longest period of peace and stability. 

    Had he known, he might have written a play about this warlord to complement such plays as The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, with a narrative that revolves around the themes of loyalty, patience and opportunistic cunning.

    The decisive battle involving 160,000 men that gave Tokugawa control of Japan was fought in 1600 at Sekigahara around the time that Shakespeare was writing Hamlet – and a few years before he penned Macbeth.  

    Tokugawa understood the importance of literature and was interested in the world outside Japan. King James I exchanged letters and gifts, including Japanese armour and a silver telescope, with him. And it is possible, but unlikely, that Tokugawa might have been made aware of Shakespeare through William Adams (1564-1620) the English navigator from Kent who become an important advisor to the Shogun on all things Western. 

    During his lifetime, Shakespeare did not enjoy the reputation he does today, and was considered by his contemporaries as one of many talented playwrights active at that time. Adams, whose life was fictionalized in the 1975 novel Shogun by James Clavell (1924-1994), arrived in Japan in 1600. The Bard of Avon’s popularity and reputation would have been growing but really only took off and became established after the publication in 1623 of Shakespeare‘s works in the First Folio, three years after Adams’s death. 

    Interestingly, when the Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) adapted Shakespeare’s plays into films set in Japan, he set them in feudal Japan during the Senkoku period (1467-1603), which ended when Tokugawa came to power and the Edo Period (1603-1868) commenced. 

    Kurosawa’s first adaptation was Macbeth in 1957, which became The Throne of Blood. He then went on to make other successful films based on Shakespeare’s plays including King Lear and Hamlet. 

    Aside from the links between the dramatic narratives that featured in both Shakespeare’s plays and the events in Tokugawa’s life, the one uncanny fact that unites the two men is the year of their death: 1616. 

    Despite Tokugawa’s much riskier lifestyle, the warlord died at the age of 74, while Shakespeare died at the age of 52. Both men, however, left remarkable legacies that still resonate with students and academics today.

    William Shakespeare and the first Tokugawa Shogun are linked by one very important fact Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Osamu Dazai, the so-called ‘Bad Boy’ of Japanese literature, was brought up in a room full of poetry in an opulent house belonging to a moneylender[UPDATED: 3-11-2026]

    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 Nakamura, cite his book No Longer Human as their favourite book, or one that had a huge influence on them, and the author still has a James Dean (1931-1955) cult-like status amongst many in Japan.

    Dazai, son of a rich landowner, moneylender and politician, grew up in a beautiful Western-style home, known as Shayokan, in Aomori, Northern Japan. His real name was Shuji Tsushima.

    His father commissioned Sakichi Horie (1845-1907) a local architect to design the house for him, which consists of 11 rooms on the ground floor, including a special room know as the Money Lending Shop, and 8 rooms on the first floor much of which is made from hiba wood, considered one of Japan’s best types of wood from a tree in the cypress family.

    The property, which spans a total of 2,250 square metres, was completed in 1907.

    Horie is also famous for designing and building the Renaissance-style 59th National Bank in Hirosaki, Aomori in 1904 – a regional bank set up in 1879.

    At this time modern banking in Japan was still emerging and the type of money lending conducted by Dazai’s father, Genemon Tsushima, who owned around 300 tenanted properties or farms, was an early form of modern banking when financing in Japan was still mostly based around crop and rice yields. 

    Japan’s first bank and first company structured as a joint-stock company was founded in 1873 with the right to issue banknotes. Later it became a commercial bank after the Bank of Japan took over this responsibility. And Japan started raising funds for the first time internationally in the London money markets in the same decade, changing the sector completely.

    Dazai lived in the house for 13 years, but his father, a member of the House of Peers, was mostly absent in Tokyo during this time. His mother and aunt brought him up.

    In his mother’s living room, known as The Library, Dazai and his siblings studied and played. This beautifully crafted room has poetry displayed on one of its sliding cupboard doors. One of these poems, close to where Dazai’s desk is said to have been located as a child, included the word shayo, setting sun, a phrase, which Dazai in later life would select as the title for one of his most famous novels.

    Dazai often drew on this family background in his works. His novels The Setting Sun and No Longer Human are still both considered modern-day classics in Japan.

    Osamu Dazai, the so-called ‘Bad Boy’ of Japanese literature, was brought up in a room full of poetry in an opulent house belonging to a moneylender Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein only became available in Japanese in 1953, 135 years after its publication[UPDATED: 3-11-2026]

    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), and had cut itself off from almost all Western influences including Dickensian fears of rapidly deteriorating social condition from increased productivity and the mechanisation of industry.

    Mary Shelley’s book did not become widely available or known in Japan until 1953 when Nippon Shuppan Kyodo published Giichi Shihido’s (1907-1954) translation and by then Japan had developed its own monsters and fearful threats, including the likes of Godzilla, who made his debut in Japan at about the same time, in a film in 1954.

    Authors such as Kobo Abe (1924-1993), who is often called Japan’s Kafka, have written their own brilliant robot and monster tales. Abe’s 1953, R62 go no hatsumei, The Invention of R62, highlights some of the fears of the time, and Japan also has its own long and rich local history of robot and monster literature.

    The Invention of R62 tells the tale of an engineer who loses his job after new technologies from an American firm are introduced at his workplace. Desperate about his predicament, he decides to kill himself. But before doing so, he is persuaded to enter into a financial arrangement with a university researcher who is trying to develop robots capable of replacing workers and making Japanese industry more efficient. As a last act he agrees to have his brain replaced with a controllable artificial one by the researcher. 

    The procedure is successful, but the consequences are unexpected and painful, especially for the engineer’s former employer.

    Abe’s other robot stories from the period including Eijyu undo, Perpetual Motion, have similar themes echoing the times.

    Nonetheless, the Japanese lived in blissful ignorance of Luddites, steam engines, Victor Frankenstein; as well as growing international angst over the seismic changes taking place in Western society during the period of Shelly’s life and after. And the word Frankenstein doesn’t have the same cultural legacy or impact as it does in some countries in the English reading world.

    Japanese engineers have noted, often proudly, that the nation’s love affair with robots is open and easy simply because Japan does not have a so-called Frankenstein Complex, a term that was coined by Isaac Asimov (1939-1992) while the West does, a concept that Western journalists often pick up on and write about after being informed of this.

    There are several reasons cited for this – both cultural and religious; but perhaps the most convincing arguments are simply that Japan’s development cycle has been out-of-sync with the West. So it was isolated from the negative side-effects of the industrial revolution, and perhaps additionally its early puppet designers and engineers understood the concept of the ‘Uncanny Valley’ earlier than others. And thus adopted and developed less human-like automaton preferring the cute or the industrial or a combination that elicits less fear and disgust when seen in action.

    In fact, Japan’s Frankenstein exposure came late in film format and toys, many of which were made in Japan after the Second World War for export to the United States for the American “festival” known as Halloween. Japan’s industrial revolution has had its own negative environmental and social side-effects, but Victor Frankenstein or his monster haven’t been part of their narratives.
    Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein only became available in Japanese in 1953, 135 years after its publication Posted by Richard Nathan