Shakuhachi performer and researcher Gunnar Jinmei Linder has put his PhD thesis online: Deconstructing 'Tradition' in Japanese Music: A Study of Shakuhachi, Historical Authenticity and Transmission of Tradition. I'm still reading through it, but something on page 96 caught my eye:...

Bryan Lowe, Chris Mayo, and a bunch of other advisors and contributors have launched an online Guide to Shōsōin Research, hosted by Vanderbilt University:...

I suppose most people reading this also ready Language Log and are therefore aware that word aversion is the hip new topic these days. How timely then that a new cosmetics line recently launched in Japan is called "Moist, Diane."...

Here's another one from Nihon ongaku no nagare (previously on No-sword). This one is from Nihon ongaku no rizumu (日本音楽のリズム, "The rhythm of Japanese music"), by Koizumi Fumio 小泉文夫, and I offer it more as an example of applied Nihonjinron than a theory I take seriously. ...

From Kikkawa Eishi 吉川英史's "Katarimono" ni tsuite (＜語りもの＞について, "About 'katarimono'"), in Nihon ongaku no nagare (日本音楽の流れ, "The flow of Japanese music"), ed. Yamagawa Naoharu 山川直治), translation mine:...

It's been two weeks! Here's a quick translation of a poem called Gaitō 街頭 ("Street"), by Susukida Kyūkin 薄田泣菫. I like this for its almost sestina-ish cycling imagery, its unusual (for Kyūkin) device of ellipsis, and of course because it features a kokyū. The original is basically in 5/7 meter, but I haven't made any attempt to reproduce that here....