Start Date
29 April, 2025
There will be 10 meetings on Tuesday 11am-1pm, starting from 29 April.
Overview
On this course we shall read Japanese fiction in translation and consider themes of work, conformity, love and friendship.
Yoko Ogawa’s 'The Housekeeper and the Professor' charts the development of a relationship between a woman employed to care and the object of her care: a brain damaged mathematician.
In Mieko Kawakami’s 'All the Lovers in the Night', Fuyuko, a proof-reader who barely leaves home, is gradually drawn out of her isolation.
In 'Breasts and Eggs', poverty, femininity and patriarchy are key to Kawakami’s focus on the limited life options of a family of working-class women.
In Sayaka Murata’s 'Convenience Store Woman', Keiko, who’s happy in her ’dead-end’ job takes up the challenge to become more like everyone else, and in 'Earthlings', ideas of what it is to be ‘normal’ result in drastic actions.
Contemporary urban life and an unlikely romance is the subject of Hiromi Kawakami’s 'Strange Weather in Tokyo'.
There’s a great range in tone and voice across these novels as they variously present and explore diverse ways of living and finding human connection.
This course aims to provide participants with the opportunity to discuss new writing from Japan.
Syllabus
Week 1 - 29/4/25, Introduction
Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen, 1988/1994*
Week 2 - 6/5/25, Hiromi Kawakami, Strange Weather in Tokyo, 2001/2013*
Week 3 - 13/5/25, Hiromi Kawakami, Strange Weather in Tokyo
Week 4 - 20/5/25, Yoko Ogawa, The Housekeeper and the Professor, 2003/2008*
Week 5 - 27/5/25, Yoko Ogawa, The Housekeeper and the Professor
Week 6 - 3/6/25, Sayaka Murata, Convenience Store Woman, 2016/2018*
Week 7 - 10/6/25, Mieko Kawakami, All the Lovers in the Night, 2011/2022*
Week 8 - 17/6/25, Mieko Kawakami, All the Lovers in the Night
Week 9 - 24/6/25, Mieko Kawakami, Breasts and Eggs, 2020
Week 10 - 1/7/25, Mieko Kawakami, Breasts and Eggs
*(First date after each title refers to date of original publication in Japan; second date is date of English translation.)
Please note that the ‘last date available to book’ date is only a guide. We reserve the right to close bookings earlier if courses are over- or under-subscribed. In order to avoid disappointment, please be sure enrol as soon as possible. Registrations will not be processed until the following day if received after 3pm.
Course Lecturer: Dr Shirley Jones
At Continuing Education, I currently run courses on contemporary women's writing, nineteenth-century writing, and the thematic strand, The Monthly Novel. Previously I have also taught courses on classic authors, such as Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and Dorothy Wordsworth. My Ph.D was a study of the Victorian writer, Margaret Oliphant.
Outside of Continuing Education, I am a member of a writers' group and I run community writing workshops at the V G & M and the Lowlands centre in West Derby.
Courses fees: Full fee £155/Concession £80
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