Things Japanese or Jerry’s Nihonjiron

1 min readDec 11, 2019

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“Japan” for American writers, Zen & kids’ books, my Tokyo interview with Marcia Brown, Miyazaki, Banana Yoshimoto, Zen lit crit, more

The “Japan” of Recent American Writers

Dharma Bums, Then and Now (from the Los Angeles Times Book Review)

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Zen & Kids’ Books

Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki repeatedly encouraged his students to acquire “Beginner’s Mind”

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Marcia Brown: The Tokyo Interview

“We need the stranger to understand ourselves”

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Smallness: Miyazaki’s “Arrietty” & Norton’s “The Borrowers”

The childhood fascination with smallness and the appeal of the microcosm (from the Los Angeles Times)

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“Weetzie Bat” & Banana Yoshimoto

Love in the 90’s in Pop Y.A. novels

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2 Ways of Viewing Children’s Stories:

A Modest Manifesto, Zen and Literary Criticism

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Explaining Present-Day America to Japan

Margaret Mead, the End of Trends, & “Stupid Cross-dressing Killer Werewolves”

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Childrens Books

Literary Criticism

Written by Jerry Griswold

Writer/critic/professor/journalist: children’s literature, culture, film, travel. Seven books, 100's of essays in NY&LA Times.

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