Japanese Literature Night: Selected Shorts and Author Talk with Keiichiro Hirano

Japan Society presents a night focused on Japanese literature with three special events. One ticket provides access to our entire evening of activities.

The night begins with Selected Shorts performed live at Japan Society. Selected Shorts is a weekly public radio show broadcast on over 150 stations to over 300,000 listeners. Selected Shorts is produced by Symphony Space and distributed by Public Radio International. The series presents some of our greatest stage and screen actors reading some of today’s best literature, transporting us through the magic of fiction one short story at a time. At Japan Society, Selected Shorts will host a captivating evening of short stories by three contemporary Japanese writers read live onstage by Hugh Dancy, Maria Dizzia and Rita Wolf.

Following Selected Shorts, we are honored to welcome author Keiichiro Hirano for a conversation about his career. Keiichiro Hirano is an acclaimed Japanese novelist who has written more than 15 novels since his debut work Eclipse, for which he won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize at the young age of only 23. His psychological fiction deals with universal themes such as self-love, relationships and acceptance, and spans from short stories and historical novels to essays, love stories and literary science fiction.

Hirano was appointed by Japan’s Ministry of Cultural Affairs as a Cultural Envoy to Paris, he’s traveled all over the world giving lectures and many of his books have been translated into English, German, French, Italian, Chinese, Korean and more. His recent awards include the Kobayashi Hideo Prize (2023), the Yomiuri Prize for Literature (2019) and the Watanabe Junichi Literary Prize (2017). He is presented together with Columbia University Press in celebration of the release of his debut novel, Eclipse, for the first time in America. His other books translated into English include A Man (2020) and At the End of the Matinee (2021).

The night will then conclude with a reception where you’re welcome to mix and mingle with fellow book lovers.

About Eclipse
In the late fifteenth century, a young Dominican friar sets out on a journey from Paris to Florence in search of manuscripts of pre-Christian philosophy. Along the way, he encounters an ascetic alchemist in a small village. As the young man falls under the spell of the alchemist’s quest for enlightenment, a series of disasters—culminating in a total solar eclipse—strikes the village, with profound consequences. Keiichiro Hirano’s Eclipse was a meteoric literary sensation when it first appeared in 1998. Its author, still an undergraduate, was hailed as a prodigy, and the book received the Akutagawa Prize, Japan’s most prestigious literary award. Set on the eve of the Renaissance in Europe, Eclipse depicts a society that is on the surface vastly different from modern Japan. Yet its account of a challenge to dualistic binaries and ossified worldviews holds striking contemporary resonance and philosophical depth. Taking the form of a memoir, Eclipse brings together an evocative portrayal of its historical setting, including the lore of medieval alchemy, with a rich literary lexicon, lush imagery and psychological intricacy. This vivid translation offers Anglophone readers a vital work by one of Japan’s most distinctive voices. Translated by Brent de Chene and Charles De Wolf. Eclipse will be available in the U.S. beginning November 12 for $20.

Special Guests

Hugh Dancy played Will Graham in Hannibal, for which he earned a Saturn Award and two Critics’ Choice nominations. Additional film and television credits include Black Hawk Down, Ella Enchanted, King Arthur, Adam, the television mini-series Elizabeth I, for which he received an Emmy nomination, Blood and Chocolate, Martha Marcy May Marlene, The Big C, Deadline Gallipoli, The Path, Late Night, Homeland, The Good Figh, and Downton Abbey: A New Era. On stage, he starred off-Broadway in The Pride and Apologia, and on Broadway in Venus in Fur and the revival of Journey’s End. Dancy currently stars in the reboot of Law & Order and is the voice of Otto Octavius in the animated series Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.

Maria Dizzia is an actress known for her work on stage, television and film. Dizzia graduated from Cornell University with a degree in theater and then went on to earn an MFA from the University of California, San Diego. She began her career in theater, and her Broadway debut came in 2010 when she appeared in the Tony Award-winning play, In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) by Sarah Ruhl. Dizzia has also appeared in several off-Broadway productions, including Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl, The Hallway Trilogy by Adam Rapp and Belleville by Amy Herzog. She has appeared in many television series including Agatha All Along, New Amsterdam, The Leftovers, Prodigal Son, School Spirits and the Netflix series Orange is the New Black, playing the role of Polly Harper, best friend of main character Piper Chapman. In film Dizzia can be seen in The Other Woman, Captain Phillips, While We’re Young, My Old Ass and more.

Rita Wolf has been featured in Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance with the Transport Group and Out of Time at The Public Theater, both co-productions with The National Asian American Theatre Company; and The Michaels and What Happened? The Michaels Abroad, written and directed by Richard Nelson, at The Public Theater and Hunter College. Additional theater credits include An Ordinary Muslim at New York Theatre Workshop, The American Pilot at Manhattan Theatre Club, for which she was nominated for a Drama Desk Award, and the premiere of Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul at New York Theatre Workshop and BAM. This spring, Wolf was a Beinecke Fellow at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University while appearing in Caryl Churchill’s play Escaped Alone.

This event is part of University Press Week 2024, which this year celebrates the many ways university presses help authors share ideas that shape conversations around the world. Japan Society partners with Columbia University Press and other university presses to amplify voices like Keiichiro Hirano this week and year-round.

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Japanese Literature Night at Japan Society is generously supported by a grant from the Toshiba International Foundation and Yen Press.

Culture & Entertainment programs are generously supported by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, an anonymous donor, and the Sandy Heck Lecture Fund.