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The Twilight Years
''The Twilight Years'', a 1972 Japanese novel by Sawako Ariyoshi, sold over a million copies in her home country and was praised by the Japan-studies community in foreign countries as a singular novel, "the closest representation of modern Japanese life" according to Donald Keene and a forthright, insightful work into the experience of modern Japanese women. The work, which begins with the married protagonist's father-in-law seemingly doddering around in senility on a winter street underdressed, deals with the twin issues of Aging of Japan and role of women in Japan, who were/are de facto expected to be caretakers of elderly parents or grandparents in a household. Although the novel at times digresses into what may be characterized as a mere extended complaint about the subservient role women experience in Japan (most poignantly, as the protagonist realizes that her husband may very well forget her name as he grows dodderingly old), the work was prescient in that it foreshadowed t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sawako Ariyoshi
Sawako Ariyoshi (有吉 佐和子 ''Ariyoshi Sawako'', 20 January 1931 – 30 August 1984) was a Japanese writer, known for such works as '' The Doctor's Wife'' and '' The River Ki.'' She was known for her advocacy of social issues, such as the elderly in Japanese society, and environmental issues. Several of her novels describe the relationships between mothers and their daughters. She also had a fascination with traditional Japanese arts, such as ''kabuki'' and ''bunraku''. She also described racial discrimination in the United States, something she experienced firsthand during her time at Sarah Lawrence, and the depopulation of remote Japanese islands during the 1970s economic boom. Biography Personal life Sawako Ariyoshi was born on January 20, 1931, in Wakayama City, Japan, and spent part of her childhood in Indonesia. The family returned to Japan in 1941, and quickly moved from Tokyo to Wakayama to live with her grandmother to escape the bombings. After the war, the famil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Donald Keene
Donald Lawrence Keene (June 18, 1922 – February 24, 2019) was an American-born Japanese scholar, historian, teacher, writer and translator of Japanese literature. Keene was University Professor emeritus and Shincho Professor Emeritus of Japanese Literature at Columbia University, where he taught for over fifty years. Soon after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, he retired from Columbia, moved to Japan permanently, and acquired citizenship under the name Kīn Donarudo (キーン ドナルド) which is essentially his birth name in the Japanese name order. This was also his poetic and occasional nickname, spelled in the ''ateji'' form . Early life and education Donald Lawrence Keene was born on June 18, 1922, in Flatbush, Brooklyn. His father was an international trade businessman while his stay-at-home mother raised both Keene and his elder sister. In July 1931, amid the economic crisis of the Great Depression, a 9-year-old Keene begged his father to allow him to accomp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aging Of Japan
Japan has the highest proportion of elderly citizens of any country in the world. 2014 estimates showed that about 38% of the Japanese population was above the age of 60, and 25.9% was above the age of 65, a figure that increased to 29.1% by 2022. By 2050, an estimated one-third of the population in Japan is expected to be 65 and older. Population aging in Japan preceded similar trends in other countries, such as South Korea and China. The ageing of Japanese society, characterized by sub-replacement fertility rates and high life expectancy, is expected to continue. Japan had a post-war baby boom between 1947 and 1949, followed by a prolonged period of low fertility. These trends resulted in the decline of Japan's population after reaching a peak of 128.1 million in October 2008. In 2014, Japan's population was estimated to be 127 million. This figure is expected to shrink to 107 million (by 16%) by 2040 and to 97 million (by 24%) by 2050 if this current demographic trend ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Demographic Crisis
Population decline, also known as depopulation, is a reduction in a human population size. Throughout history, Earth's total human population has continued to grow but projections suggest this long-term trend may be coming to an end. From antiquity until the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the global population grew very slowly, at about 0.04% per year. After about 1800, the growth rate accelerated to a peak of 2.1% annually during the 1962–1968 period, but since then, due to the worldwide collapse of the total fertility rate, it has slowed to 0.9% as of 2023. The global growth rate in absolute numbers accelerated to a peak of 92.8 million in 1990, but has since slowed to 70.4 million in 2023. Long-term projections indicate that the growth rate of the human population of the planet will continue to slow and that before the end of the 21st century, it will reach zero. Examples of this emerging trend are Japan, whose population is currently (2023) declining at the ra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Twilight Years (film)
is a 1973 Japanese drama film by Shirō Toyoda based on the novel of the same name by Sawako Ariyoshi. Cast * Hisaya Morishige as Shigezo Tachibana * Hideko Takamine as Akiko Tachibana * Takahiro Tamura as Nobutshi Tachibana * Hiroko Shino as Emi * Takashi Itō as Yamagishi * Kumeko Urabe as Old lady * Hideko Yoshida as Kuniko Segawa * Akiko Nomura as Chi Oikawa * Nobuko Otowa as Kyoko * Nobuo Nakamura was a Japanese stage and film actor, who appeared in many films by Akira Kurosawa, Yasujirō Ozu and Mikio Naruse. Biography A graduate from Tokyo Kaisei Junior High School, Nakamura studied at the Kawabata School of Painting. After the rejecti ... as Fujieda References 1973 films 1973 drama films Japanese drama films Films based on Japanese novels 1970s Japanese films {{Japan-film-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shirō Toyoda
was a Japanese film director and screenwriter who directed over 60 films during his career which spanned 50 years. He was denoted for his high-quality adaptations of works of many important twentieth-century Japanese writers. Career Born in Kyoto, Toyoda moved to Tokyo after finishing high school. Intent on becoming a theatre playwright at first, he studied scriptwriting under the pioneering film director Eizō Tanaka. He joined the Kamata section of the Shōchiku film studios in 1925 and worked as an assistant director under Yasujirō Shimazu, before giving his directorial debut in 1929. Forced to continue to work as an assistant director, and dissatisfied with the material he was given at Shochiku, he moved to the independent Tokyo Hassei Eiga Shisaku studio (later Toho). There he directed the successful '' Young People'' (1937) and gained a reputation for directing literary adaptations with a humanistic touch, in particular ''Uguisu'' (1938) and '' Spring on Leper's Island ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1972 Novels
Year 197 ( CXCVII) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Magius and Rufinus (or, less frequently, year 950 ''Ab urbe condita''). The denomination 197 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years. Events By place Roman Empire * February 19 – Battle of Lugdunum: Emperor Septimius Severus defeats the self-proclaimed emperor Clodius Albinus at Lugdunum (modern Lyon). Albinus commits suicide; legionaries sack the town. * Septimius Severus returns to Rome and has about 30 of Albinus's supporters in the Senate executed. After his victory he declares himself the adopted son of the late Marcus Aurelius. * Septimius Severus forms new naval units, manning all the triremes in Italy with heavily armed troops for war in the East. His soldiers embark on an artificial canal between the Tigris a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novels Set In Japan
A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The word derives from the for 'new', 'news', or 'short story (of something new)', itself from the , a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning 'new'. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, Medieval Chivalric romance, and the tradition of the Italian Renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, in the historical romances of Walter Scott and the Gothic novel. Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, and John Cowper Powys, preferred the term ''romance''. Such romances should not be confused with th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
