Author Spotlight Event!

AN EVENING CHAT WITH AUTHOR TOMOKA SHIBASAKI

Date & Time:
Wednesday, December 4, 7:00PM

Venue:
The Japan Foundation, Los Angeles
(5700 Wilshire Blvd, Ste 100)
 
Free Admission, Registration Required
Click HERE to Register

Join an intimate conversation with Japanese author Tomoka Shibasaki as she discusses her literary works, including the award-winning Spring Garden (Haru no niwa). She will also be reading from her forthcoming collection (in early 2025) A Hundred Years and a Day. The event will be moderated by Professor Michael Emmerich (UCLA).

Spring Garden was translated by Polly Barton and has been published by several presses, most recently by Pushkin Press in 2024: "Taro is divorced, unhappy in his job, and living in a half-empty building that is about to be torn down. One summer morning, he sees a fellow resident climbing over the wall to the next-door house. She says she is called Nishi, and invites herself inside. It emerges that Nishi’s fascination with this pale blue house began in her student days twenty years before, and came from a book of photos called “Spring Garden” from decades earlier. As the summer draws to a close, Nishi, Taro and the new family that has moved into the old house come together and drift apart, leaving the reader with a sense of their whole life in just a few vivid snapshots." 

Copies of Spring Garden may be purchased during the event from on-site vendor Chevalier's Books. Publications bought on site or brought from home can be signed by the author. 

This author meet-and-greet is part of a series of events in Seattle highlighting Shibasaki's contributions to Japanese literature. A movie screening of Asako I & II, based on Shibasaki's Netemo Sametemo, will be held on November 24 at the Acropolis Theater, for which details can be found on Acropolis Cinema's event page. 

This event is offered through a partnership with the Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

 About the Author:
Tomoka Shibasaki was born in 1973 in Osaka and began writing fiction while still in high school. After graduating from university, she took an office job but continued writing, and was shortlisted for the Bungei Prize in 1998. Her first book, A Day on the Planet, was turned into a hit movie, and Spring Garden won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 2014.
 

About the Moderator:
Michael Emmerich received a BA from Princeton University. After completing research in Japanese literature studies at Ritsumeikan University in Tokyo, he went on to earn a Ph.D. in Japanese literature from Columbia University. He was a member of East Asian Languages & Cultural Studies department at UC Santa Barbara before joining UCLA in 2013. In addition to his many publications in English and Japanese on early modern, modern, and contemporary Japanese literature, Emmerich is the author of more than a dozen book-length translations of works by Japanese writers.