Travels in Sri Lanka, the Holy Land of BuddhismAfter visiting the site of Yukio Mishima's suicide at the Ichigaya Memorial Museum, I headed directly to the Tokyo Metropolitan Tama Cemetery.
The purpose is, of course, to visit the grave of Yukio Mishima.
Yukio Mishima has become a huge presence in my life. I wanted to leave for India after greeting Yukio Mishima, who had died a spectacular death.
Travels in Sri Lanka, the Holy Land of BuddhismSri Lanka's world-renowned author Martin Wickramasinghe. Here was a tremendous writer!
The psychological descriptions are reminiscent of Dostoevsky, the storytelling is like Chekhov's, and the social observations are thorough, Zola-like. This is amazing.
Wickramasinghe's novels will be your best guide to the picture of Sri Lanka. I highly recommend this author.
Diary of a MonkNice to meet you. My name is Takahiro Ueda, the administrator of this blog. This blog started as my attempt to look at various things in my daily life and write words with the motto of asking myself questions, as you can see in the title of the blog.
This article will give you a general guide within our blog. If you are new to our blog or wondering what to read, please read this article first.
Yukio Mishima and Japanese LiteratureWhen I read this work, I find myself surrounded by tension as if I am watching a suspenseful movie. It is not so bad until the genius painter Yoshihide chains up his apprentice or sparks an owl. It's just like, "Here we go again with Yoshihide's eccentricities. But from there, a strange feeling of foreboding gradually emerges in our minds, and it becomes more and more eerie. We start to get nervous, thinking, "No way, what is Yoshihide trying to do? This style of storytelling, which gradually and progressively builds up fear and anxiety, is a model of vivid storytelling that can be said to be a model of mystery. This is indeed Ryunosuke Akutagawa.
This work even shows Akutagawa's ambition: "An artist of words can perfectly portray a mad painter who is trying to create a perfect picture.
It is easy to see why this work is regarded as a masterpiece among Akutagawa's literature.
French Literature, History and CultureAccording to Kashima, "department stores are not only a purely capitalistic institution, they are its ultimate expression.
Why is this, he says, because "the inherent capitalist process of buying things not by necessity but by desire is precisely the one triggered by department stores.
In other words, the birth of the department store was so significant that the capitalist system we live under today began here. Why do we "want things"? In this book, we can learn the origin of the desire capitalism that stimulates it.
This book is a very valuable work as a business bible. It is a very stimulating and interesting work of cultural and world history, but it is also an extravagant book in which you can learn about the mechanics of business.
Buddhism in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Southeast AsiaThis novel is truly an excellent resource for learning about Sri Lanka in the first half of the 20th century. For those of us living far away in Japan, there is no other picture scroll of Sri Lanka that we appreciate so much.
In "The Age of Change," we see Sri Lankan society from various perspectives, including the world of falsehoods in which the newly emerging merchants are drowned in money and status, the feelings of the son's generation that rebel against them, and the gap between them and the village people who cannot abandon the traditions of the old society.
This is a brilliant piece of work. As in the previous work, Wickramasinghe's fearsome descriptive power is felt in this work as well.
Other Recommended BooksIn this article I will share with you some of my most influential novels to date.
As the name "10 novels as my calling card" suggests, these books have had a powerful influence on the formation of my thinking. I am a little embarrassed to admit that I thought it would be better if I did not introduce these books, but I decided to write about them.
Other Recommended BooksIn this article, we will introduce novels that we highly recommend for each level of readers, from beginners to advanced readers.
Basically, the books introduced here are all great books that I recommend with confidence. All of them are extremely interesting works, so please take a look at the linked pages for the books that interest you, regardless of whether they are categorized as introductory or advanced.
Impressions of the Summer Recounted in Autumn - Trip to Paris and GeorgiaFor approximately one month, from mid-August to mid-September 2022, I have been traveling around Europe, mainly in Georgia.
This trip visited France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Georgia-Armenia.
Its main purpose was to see the Caucasus Mountains of northern Georgia to study Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
This article will list all 31 articles. We hope you will use it as a table of contents for "Impressions of Summer in Autumn.
Impressions of the Summer Recounted in Autumn - Trip to Paris and GeorgiaThis article introduces Zola's house in Medan, a suburb of Paris.
Zola, which had amassed assets thanks to the blockbuster success of "Nana" and other films, spent many years to complete this mansion.
A quiet residential area on the banks of the Seine loved by the great writers of France.
This article will also introduce the atmosphere of the beautiful Parisian suburbs where people are said to have spent time floating small boats.
Welcome to our website. For those of you who are visiting our blog for the first time. First of all, please click here.
The best of our blog! The "Dostoevsky's Journey" trilogy - my full-length European travelogue!
Travels to Buddhist Sacred Sites in India and Sri Lanka: What I felt there when I was called to India
(1) The birth of Prince Siddhartha in Lumbini, Nepal!
10 novels instead of business cards - I'm ashamed to say I'm such a person.
Why am I, a monk, reading Dostoevsky and world literature?" Articles - The Surprising Similarities Between Shinran and Dostoevsky
(93) Varanasi, early morning on the Ganges River - Like an impressionist painting! The Ganges at sunrise from the boat
(92) Enjoy the Saharnath Museum's supreme treasure, the Ashoka Lion Pillar Head, and the "First Turning Wheel," the greatest masterpiece of Indian Buddhist sculpture!
(91) To the Dhamek Stupa at Sarnath (Kanoen) - The holy place of Buddha's first turning of the wheel! This is where the Buddhist Order began!
(90) Am I a disqualified monk if I am not impressed by the Buddhist holy places in India? Sinking in Bodh Gaya...
(89) Who owns Bodhgaya? History of the Movement to Retake Bodhgaya and Dharmapala's Maha Bodhi Society
(88) Visiting Mahabodhi Temple in Bodh Gaya, the Holy Land of Buddha's Enlightenment
(87) Experience the fervor of Hinduism at the Vishnu Temple in Gaya, a major sacred site for ancestral offerings!
(86) To the place associated with Sujata and the Neelanjara River - The place of the milk porridge offering that saved the dying Buddha
