Hideki Matsui, nicknamed "Godzilla", is a Japanese former professional baseball outfielder and designated hitter who played baseball in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) and Major League Baseball (MLB). He batted left-handed and threw right-handed.
Sophia University is a private research university in Japan. Sophia is one of the three Sōkeijōchi (早慶上智) private universities, a group of the top three private universities in Japan with the other two being Keio University and Waseda University, according to the Times Higher Education. It is also ranked number 18 in the 2021 Times Japan University Rankings. Founded by the Roman Catholic religious order of the Society of Jesus in 1913, the university has grown from its three original academic departments of Philosophy, German Literature, and Commerce to 9 undergraduate Faculties and 10 Graduate Schools, with over 13,900 students in total at the moment.
The 2020 Summer Olympics, officially the Games of the XXXII Olympiad and also known as Tokyo 2020, was an international multi-sport event held from 23 July to 8 August 2021 in Tokyo, Japan, with some preliminary events that began on 21 July.
Baseball was introduced to Japan in 1872 and is Japan's most popular participatory and spectator sport. The first professional competitions emerged in the 1920s. The highest level of baseball in Japan is Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), which consists of two leagues, the Central League and the Pacific League, with six teams in each league. High school baseball enjoys a particularly strong public profile and fan base, much like college football and college basketball in the United States; the Japanese High School Baseball Championship, which takes place each August, is nationally televised and includes regional champions from each of Japan's 47 prefectures.
Yoshihide Suga is a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from 2020 to 2021. He had served as Chief Cabinet Secretary during the second administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe from 2012 to 2020. During Abe's first administration, Suga served as Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications from 2006 to 2007.
You Bright and Risen Angels is a 1987 novel by William T. Vollmann, detailing a fictional war between insects and the forces of modern civilization. Vollmann described the book, his first, as "an allegory in part", inspired by his experiences with the mujahedeen in Afghanistan. The novel is subtitled "A Cartoon." It is illustrated by the author.
The Icarus Girl is the debut novel written by British author Helen Oyeyemi and published by Bloomsbury in 2005. The story follows Jessamy "Jess" Harrison, an eight-year-old girl born to an English father and a Nigerian mother.
Robert Whiting is a best-selling author and journalist who has written several books on contemporary Japanese culture - which include topics such as baseball and American gangsters operating in Japan. He was born in New Jersey, grew up in Eureka, California and graduated from Sophia University in Tokyo. He has lived in Japan for more than three decades since he first arrived there in 1962, while serving in the U.S. Air Force. He divides his time between homes in Tokyo and California.
John Shelley (ジョン・シェリー) is a British illustrator, particularly noted for his work in Japan.
Joshua Lawrence “Jake” Adelstein is an American journalist, crime writer, and blogger who has spent most of his career in Japan. He is the author of Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan.
The Fault in Our Stars is a novel by John Green. It is his fourth solo novel, and sixth novel overall. It was published on January 10, 2012. The title is inspired by Act 1, Scene 2 of Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, in which the nobleman Cassius says to Brutus: "Men at some time were masters of their fates, / The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings." The story is narrated by Hazel Grace Lancaster, a 16-year-old girl with thyroid cancer that has affected her lungs. Hazel is forced by her parents to attend a support group where she subsequently meets and falls in love with 17-year-old Augustus Waters, an ex-basketball player, amputee, and survivor of osteosarcoma.
Gyosei International School UK was a Japanese international school in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England. The school, a Catholic institution, was one of several Japanese private schools in the UK with a Japanese curriculum. This school was an overseas branch of a Japanese private school, or a Shiritsu zaigai kyōiku shisetsu.
The Japanese in Latin America is a 2004 book published by the University of Illinois Press about Japanese Latin Americans. The author is Daniel Masterson, while Sayaka Funada-Classen gave research assistance related to the Japanese language. The book discusses all of the major Japanese populations in Latin America and some other groups of Japanese diaspora who are not as well known. The Japanese populations of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay in South America, Cuba and the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean, Central America, and Mexico are all discussed in this book.
New Worlds, New Lives: Globalization and People of Japanese Descent in the Americas and from Latin America in Japan (ISBN 978-0804744621) is a 2002 academic book edited by Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, James A. Hirabayashi, and Akemi Kikumura-Yano and published by the Stanford University Press. The volume, edited by three Japanese American anthropologists, was produced by the Japanese American National Museum's International Nikkei Research Project. The same project produced the Encyclopedia of Japanese Descendants in the Americas: An Illustrated History of the Nikkei, and the two books are companion volumes.
Lesley Nneka Arimah is a Nigerian writer. She has been described as "a skillful storyteller who can render entire relationships with just a few lines of dialogue" and "a new voice with certain staying power." She is the winner of the 2015 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for Africa, the 2017 O. Henry Prize, the 2017 Kirkus Prize, and the 2019 Caine Prize for African Writing.
Red Circle Authors is a British publishing house based in London that specialises in Japanese fiction.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 2020.
Kaitlyn Greenidge is an American writer. She received a 2017 Whiting Award for Fiction for her debut novel, We Love You, Charlie Freeman. Her second book is a historical novel called Libertie (2021).
First Person Singular is a collection of eight stories by Haruki Murakami. It was first published on 18 July 2020 by Bungeishunjū. As its title suggests, all eight stories in the book are told in a first-person singular narrative.
Tokyo Ueno Station is a 2014 novel by Zainichi Korean author Yū Miri.
