Talk: Joso's Japan: Nature, Blood and Dust

Novelist Jayne Joso will discuss Japan’s deep affinity with nature, how this permeates traditional everyday life and culture, and how it pulses through the country’s art and literature. She will talk us through the insights she gained into Japan’s relationship with nature as one of a cycle of transmigration, as one that places the human in equal relation, and as one that is for forever fluid, dynamic and ultimately humbling. She will also describe how her experiences of living in rural Japan, pressed up hard against the elements, ultimately bled into her own fiction – most notably her recent critically acclaimed novel – My Falling Down House – longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2017 and recipient of the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Award. A work described by Sho Konishi, Professor of Japanese Studies, Oxford as ‘a remarkable achievement’, and by Richard Lloyd-Parry, The Times, Asia Correspondent as ‘a novel I’ve been waiting for all my life.’

‘What a simple being I am. An injection of nutrients or the warmth of the sun…

I am just like leaves.

I close my heavy eyes hoping to return to the dreams of a cat.’

Contributors: Jayne Joso

This event is free but booking is essential.