Litteraturhuset: Smaken av kultur – en matreise i japansk kultur

Join us when three of Norway's foremost communicators of Japanese literature invite you on a culinary journey to one of the world's most exciting food and literature destinations. Litteraturhuset in Skien invites you to a multi-course buffet of short lectures, talks, readings, recipes and movie snacks. By talking about the food in Japanese literature, we hope to whet your appetite for both!

The world has long since realized that Japanese food is more than sushi, and that Japanese literature is more than Murakami - but how are the two connected? Why can descriptions of a few simple pub snacks convey emotion far better than the words "I love you"? And how can disagreements over what to call Chinese cabbage cause marital problems? What does it say about a person what kind of food they eat? And how do you translate food that is completely unknown to Norwegian readers?

Magne Tørring has worked as a translator and communicator of Japanese literature since 2006 and has translated a number of contemporary novels and modern classics, including Hiromi
Kawakami's Strange Weather in Tokyo, Mieko Kawakami's Natsu Summers (for which he received the Bastian Prize in 2023), Takiji Kobayashi's The Crab Ship and Sayaka
Murata's Open Day and Earthlings.

IkaKaminka is an art historian and translator who has been translating Japanese literature since around 2000. She has translated around 15 books by Haruki Murakami, some of them in collaboration with Magne, and was awarded the Bastian Prize in 2012 for the translation of 1Q84. She has translated several poetry collections, including by Ito Hiromi, as well as the non-fiction book Hyllest til halvmørket by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki.

Reiko Abe Auestad is a professor of Japanese literature at the University of Oslo. She has published a number of books and articles on Japanese writers such as Sôseki Natsume, Kenzaburô Ôe and Mieko Kawakami. Her latest book, Affect, Emotion and Sensibility in Modern Japanese Literature, will be published by Routledge this fall.

These three have been discussing Japanese literature and eating Japanese food together since 2007, and are behind the anthology Knakketiknakk: Short Stories from Japan 1895-2012.

Book sale at Arkaden Norli.

Ticket prices:
Regular: 215
LiS members: 165
Students: 100
Meals (see information below): 298

Want to get closer to literature? Eat it! Here you can order a Bento box with five traditional dishes with flavors from the evening's program that will whet your appetite for Japanese culture.

The price of the box is NOK 298 and is ordered in the ticket purchase process.


What will you find in the Bento box and which allergens:

Shiozake
Sake and salt marinated salmon
Allergens: Fish, sulphite

Karaage
Marinated and fried chicken pieces
Allergens: Soy, sesame, sulphite

No goma-ae
Asparagus beans with sesame
Allergens: Sesame seeds

Daikon no tsukemono
Vinegar marinated winter radish
Allergens: Sulfite, soy, sesame, fish

Tamagoyaki
Egg roll
Allergens: Egg, soy, sulphite

Kinpira
Carrot sautéed in soy
Allergens: Soy

Rice