Events, Food & Drink Susan McCormac Events, Food & Drink Susan McCormac

Meet Cookbook Author Sonoko Sakai

Cookbook author Sonoko Sakai. Photo by Rick Poon.

Book Talk and Signing: Sonoko Sakai and Wafu Cooking

Wednesday, December 11 at 7:00 p.m.

Japan Society – 333 E. 47th Street (between 1st and 2nd Avenues)

Admission: $25 | $20 Japan Society members | $23 Seniors, Students, and Persons with Disabilities

Japan Society is hosting a special talk and signing with bestselling author Sonoko Sakai on December 11 to celebrate the release of her newest book, Wafu Cooking: Everyday Recipes with Japanese Style. This event will be moderated by novelist and cookbook writer Sanaë Lemoine.

Thanks to our friends at Japan Society, JapanCulture•NYC readers have access to complimentary tickets to attend! Please visit Japan Society’s website and enter code SONOKOFRIEND at checkout.

About Wafu Cooking

Wafu (literally “Japanese style”) food combines flavors, ingredients, and techniques from around the planet with a distinctly Japanese personality, and this new cookbook presents 120-plus original globally influenced Japanese recipes. Sakai’s book captures the cultural exchange between Japan and the world in dishes that have come to Japan from abroad and have been “wafu-ed” to suit local tastes and in Japanese dishes that are reimagined through an American lens, reflecting the interconnected way we eat today.

Sonoko Sakai. Photo by Rick Poon.

About Sonoko Sakai

Author Sonoko Sakai was born in New York to Japanese parents and grew up in San Francisco, Kamakura, Mexico City, and Tokyo. Her books include Japanese Home Cooking, Rice Craft, and The Poetical Pursuit of Food. She has worked as a recipe developer, producer, creative director, cooking teacher, and lecturer. She lives in California with her sculptor husband, Katsuhisa Sakai.

From Wafu Cooking by Sonoko Sakai. Photos by Rick Poon.


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Events, Arts & Entertainment Susan McCormac Events, Arts & Entertainment Susan McCormac

BOOK TALK AT DONALD KEENE CENTER

Navigating Narratives: Tsurayuki's Tosa Diary as History and Fiction

Friday, September 27 at 6:00 p.m.

Columbia University – Kent Hall, Room 403

Admission: Free

The Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia University kicks off the 2024–2025 academic year with a book talk by Gustav Heldt, professor of Japanese literature at the University of Virginia.

This talk will outline several unique insights into Heian Japan provided by Ki no Tsurayuki's Tosa nikki (Tosa Diary), which is ostensibly the record of an ex-governor's voyage back to the capital kept by an anonymous woman in his entourage. The resulting split between fictional female narrator and historical male author has usually led Tosa nikki to be viewed as either the first Heian woman's memoir or the last aesthetic manifesto of one of the Japanese poetic tradition's foremost figures. In lieu of these narratives, it will be argued that the diary merits attention for the discursive practices, representational conventions, and non-elite social contexts it illuminates.

Preregistration is required by noon on Thursday, September 26. Click here for the Google Form.

About Gustav Heldt

Gustav Heldt specializes in the language, literature, and cultural history of Japan prior to contact with the West, with related interests in gender, poetics, narratology, ritual practices, comparative historiography, and myth. At the University of Virginia, he regularly teaches courses such as Survey of Japanese Literature and Introduction to Literary Japanese, as well as seminars on more specialized topics such as Japanese myth, the Tale of Genji, Japanese court women's literature, and medieval warrior tales.

Copyright © 2024 Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture. All rights reserved.


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