Welcome! Or as they say in Japanese: yōkoso! Welcome! Or as they say in Japanese: yōkoso! You have arrived at my ever-growing collections of articles. Here you'll find various topics that have each in their own way contributed to my story and served as inspiration for the world building. In addition to educative articles, you'll find Blog posts about more personal topics, interviews and even a movie review. Please enjoy! 😉 [Side note: the articles were originally written in Dutch, so it'll take some time to translate them all. Please bear with me until they're all available in English 🙏]
Educative articles
Bushidō: the Way of the Warrior [Dutch]
The Hongwu Emperor: the Paranoia of Zhu Yuanzhang and King Tora [Dutch]
Zen Buddhism and the Eleventh Lily [Dutch]
Japanese Poetry: Haiku [Dutch]
Tomoe Gozen: the Japanese Power Woman [Dutch]
The General: inspired by the Japanese hero Minamoto no Yoshitsune [Dutch]
Yomi: the Japanese Myth of the Underworld [Dutch]
The Kabuki Theater: Fangirls and Merchandise [Dutch]
Education in Premodern Japan [Dutch]
Social Classes in Early Modern Japan [Dutch]
Five Phases (Wuxing) and the Japanese Lunar Calendar
Pranks & Shapeshifters: Kitsune in Japanese Folklore
Papers
December 2017 – Couple Eloping: the appeal of parodies on classical literature in the Edo Period
December 2017 – Chūshingura and the 47 rōnin: Asano and Kira in the ningyō jōruri play and the Hollywood live action film [in Dutch]
June 2018 (I wrote this paper in Japanese while I was in Okayama, so I'm sharing it for those who happen to be able to read it) – 「心中天の網島」と「ロミオとジュリエット」の共通点についての論文
December 2018 – Isao Takahata’s “The Tale of the Princess Kaguya”: why Taketori Monogatari’s final scene was omitted
January 2020 – The Japanese Fox: sustaining or subverting the negative view of women?
May 2020 – Inanimate Actors: animating puppets for melodrama
January 2022 – The narcissism of Light Yagami (Please note: This paper is written in Dutch and contains spoilers for Death Note! It can be read by those who haven't read/watched the manga/anime, though)
Blog Posts
#1. Mount Koya: Where the Monk Meditates Forever [Dutch]
#2. What's the Deal with Book 2? [Dutch]
#3. Asia as the Center [Dutch]
#5. Editing Shirareta Sekai 2 [Dutch]
#6. The Fresh Air: Life During Lockdown [Dutch}
#7. The Choice of Amar: Preorder + Give-Away! [Dutch]
#8. For the Egypt Lovers [Dutch]
#9. Emotional Whiplash: Dealing with the Aftermath of COVID-19 [Dutch]
Blog Series: Creating Characters with MBTI – Part 1 – Introduction [Dutch]
Blog Series: Creating Characters with MBTI – Part 2 – The Theory [Dutch]
Blog Series: Creating Characters with MBTI – Part 3 – The Case Study [Dutch]
Blog Series: Creating Characters with MBTI – Part 4 – The Application [Dutch]
Guest Blog Fantasywereld: Edo Japan as a Source of Inspiration [Dutch]
Movie Review
Social Criticism in The Joker (2019)
Interviews
Bookstamel "Auteurs van eigen bodem": interview [Dutch] and favorites [Dutch]
12 Fun Facts about the World of Shirareta Sekai
Theses
As stated in my bio, I've studied Japanese and East Asian Studies at Leiden University. Both my Bachelor's and Master's theses revolve around the premodern Japanese puppet theater. I haven't written any Blog articles about that yet, but if you're interested in the theses, you can find them on the student repository of the university:
The Love Suicide at Amijima as a Performance: the construction of Chikamatsu’s characters.
By the way, these are not the only theses I have written. In 2022, I completed my Master's in Western Literature at KU Leuven. Against my expectations, I was allowed to use a fantasy novel for my thesis! To send a little love to the Dutch fantasy landscape, I graduated with an analysis of Tales of the Downfall, the latest series by none other than Kim ten Tusscher ⭐
Lilith and Nealyn: Free Will, Determinism and Identity in Tales of the Downfall. [Dutch]
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