Gave a lecture called 'War, Women and Censorship' at the Camera Japan Film Festival in Rotterdam on Saturday.
This preceded the screening of the film 'A Woman and War' (directed by Inoue Jun'ichi), which is based on 'Senso to hitori no onna' and 'Zoku senso to hitori no onna' (both 1946), the notorious short stories by Sakaguchi Ango, the latter of which I translated into Dutch for my upcoming short story anthology (Moderne Japanse verhalen, Atlas-Contact, February 2014). This translation was made available in a booklet, especially for the festival.
In the lecture I talked about the censorship Sakaguchi faced during the American occupation after the war and also mentioned a similar case concerning Tamura Taijiro's story 'Shunpuden' (Story of a Prostitute, 1947).
Earlier that night I also introduced the film 'The Millennial Rapture' (Sennen no yuraku), directed by Wakamatsu Koji and based on the novel with the same title by Nakagami Kenji. Here I talked mostly about Nakagani's background as burakumin and his fascination with the legends of his home ground, the region of Kumano.