Recommended reading: Yukio Mishima

Have you read Yukio Mishima? He's certainly an interesting figure in Japanese literature. Rabid right-winger after the War, in contrast with the popular liberal attitudes of the 1960s. There's Hemingway comparisons, but I think such a likening is lazy. Their writing styles and philosophies aren't remotely similar. People link them because they're both "masculine" writers, who viewed their childhood selves as contemptibly weak, and who killed themselves. Mishima was amazingly prolific. Maybe check out with Acts of Worship (Mikumano Moude) a 1965 short story collection. John Bester did an English translation."

This recommendation comes from Jon Maniscalco a contributing editor to Clarion magazine, and contributor to New England Review of Books (both of which are published by Pen & Anvil). He has spent the last year teaching English in Japan.