Session 26—Th, April 19: Heisei comments • Yoshimoto Banana and her Lizards (1993) • Murakami Haruki and his After the Quake (2002)

Topics for this session

❖ General comments on the Heisei period
❖ Yoshimoto Banana and her short story collection Lizards (1993)
❖ Yoshimoto's short story "Newlywed"
❖ Murakami Haruki and his short story collection After the Quake (2002)
❖ Murakami's short story "ufo in kushiro"
❖ Murakami's short story "super frog saves tokyo"

Thoughts*

nothing yet ...

Required—to be completed for today's session

✓ Read Yoshimoto Newlywed. [bSpace, pdf]

✓ Read Murakami SuperFrog [bSpace, pdf]

✓ Read Murakami ufo in kushiro [bSpace, pdf]

EXTRA CREDIT: Additional stories in Yoshimoto's short story collection from which the reading is derived, titled Lizard, can be read for extra credit. OR (not "and/or") additional stories in Murakami's short story collection from which the reading is derived, titled After the Quake, can be read for extra credit. Please write a strong, one page statement about one story (but you can do this for more than one story, but one page for each story) and submit it (as an email, not an attached document) using the assignment tag RP11 and the keyword yoshimotoex (deadline is one week from today). If your submission is very good or excellent, you will receive extra credit but this will be reported to you only if time permits which is highly unlikely at this time of the semester.

Texts, multimedia notes, links*

❖ Yoshimoto Banana graphics [bSpace, PPT]
❖ Heisei brief comments [bSpace, PPT]

Other*

◇ Yoshimoto Banana and Murakami Haruki both run Web sites: Yoshimotobanana.com and murakami.ch

◇ The Kobe earthquake doesn't have a single fixed name among Americans but here are some of its widely used names in Japan, if you want to do web searches:

• "The South Hyogo Prefecture Earthquake of 1995" (平成7年兵庫県南部地震 Heisei-shichinen-Hyōgoken-nambu-jishin)
• "Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Disaster" (阪神・淡路大震災; Hanshin-Awaji-daishinsai)
• "Great Kansai Earthquake" (関西大地震 Kansai-daijishin)

By the way, the March 11, 2011 earthquake is usually "Great Disaster of Eastern Japan" (東日本大震災; Higashi Nihon daishinsai) and the September 1, 1923 earthquake is called "Great Kanto Disaster" (関東大震災; Kantō daishinsai)

*THOUGHTS: Reading before class probably helps follow session content, reading afterwards might help consolidate notes, revisiting for tests is recommended. Content might be added before class or anytime up until about 24 hours ahead of a midterm.

*TEXTS, MULTIMEDIA NOTES, LINKS: If I have read from something, shown something or presented audio, I usually include that information here. If I consider it testable material, it will definitely be listed here. Miscellaneous material that I show may or may not be listed. I often add material at the last minute and hope to have time later to note it, but often cannot.

*OTHER: When possible I note here names, places, and other details that I have mentioned in a lecture that would otherwise not be accessible in the assigned materials or easily located on your own. As with "TEXTS ..." this is usually sometime after class and, again, I might not be able to get around to doing it.