Just got back from the Dubai International Film Festival, where I did Q&A's with the Japanese guests, director Lee Sang-Il and actor Yagira Yuya for ""Unforgiven"", director Matsubayashi Yoju for the award-winning documentary ""Horses of Fukushima"", and politician Yamauchi Kazuhiko (together with his wife and son), 'subject matter' of the documentary ""Campaign 2"".

My first visit there and all in all a fascinating experience...

Op 11 januari ben ik een van de gespreksleiders op het Murakami-festival in Amsterdam, naar aanleiding van het verschijnen van de Nederlandse vertaling van zijn nieuwste roman De kleurloze Tsukuru Tazaki en zijn pelgrimsjaren.

Enige feedback is te vinden op de site van de vpro.

Uitgeverij Lebowski geeft in november mijn vertaling van beide bundels van Toyo Shibata (Geef de moed niet op en Honderd jaar) opnieuw uit als één boek.

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Kore-Eda Hirokazu was at the Film Fest Gent, where his film ""Like Father Like Son"" (Soshite, chichi ni naru) was shown. Did interpreting during his busy day, press interviews in the daytime, screening with Q&A in the evening.

More pictures here (Day 7).

Gave a lecture called 'War, Women and Censorship' at the Camera Japan Film Festival in Rotterdam on Saturday.

In the presence of director Kurosawa Kiyoshi I did the introduction and the Q&A for two screenings of his nearly 5 hour long film Shokuzai, one starting at 13:30 at Vendome in Brussels and the other at 17:00 in Ghent, which required riding back and forth on a pretty tight schedule.

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Spent six days in Frankfurt at the Nippon Connection film festival (June 4-9). On Wednesday I took part in a panel discussion with Tom Mes and Ken Okubo, called: ""The 1990's: A Golden Age of Japanese Cinema"".

Op 28 mei 2013 verschenen bij De Geus: mijn vertaling van Keigo Higashino's Redding van een heilige (Seijo no kyuusai), het tweede boek in de Galileo-reeks, na De fatale toewijding van verdachte X.

Op Radio 1 interviewde Ruth Joos me over de betekenis van de Japanse militaire vlag, dit naar aanleiding van de controverse die ontstond toen de Britse band Muse een beeld ervan gebruikte in hun clip van het nummer 'Panic Station".

My essay 'Young and Politically Incorrect: Oe Kenzaburo's Early Marginal Heroes', originally published in Japan and Korea: Contemporary Studies (Edited by Bjarke Frellesvig and Roy Starrs (Aarhus University Press, 1997), has now been re-published in the Short Story Criticism-series of Gale (Volume 176, p204-209). Besides essays on Oe, this volume also contains criticism on the work by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Philip Roth.