Souseki’s international essay contest

On the 100th anniversary of the death of Natsume Soseki (1867-1916), The Asahi Shimbun and three other organizations will jointly hold an international essay contest on the influential Japanese author Natume Souseki.

He is best known for his novels Kokoro, Botchan, I Am a Cat and his unfinished work Light and Darkness. He was also a scholar of British literature and composer of haiku, kanshi, and fairy tales. From 1984 until 2004, his portrait appeared on the front of the Japanese 1000 yen note. In Japan, he is often considered the greatest writer in modern Japanese history. Continue reading “Souseki’s international essay contest”


Japanese writing system is vibrant

Japanese writing system is difficult, no one would disagree with that. There is a lot of aspects that make it difficult other than having a couple of thousand characters and various different readings for each one. I want to shed some light on another aspect here, Kanji as we know now has a long history before it was established in Japan, Continue reading “Japanese writing system is vibrant”