Editing Michael Ende (section)

===Japan===
Michael Ende had been fascinated by [[Japan]] since his childhood. He loved [[Lafcadio Hearn]]'s Japanese legends and ghost stories, and in 1959 he wrote a play inspired by Hearn's material. ''Die Päonienlaterne'' (The Peony Lantern) was written for radio, but never broadcast. Ende was primarily interested in Japan because of its radical otherness. The Japanese language and script were so different from Ende's native German that it seemed they were grounded in a different kind of consciousness—an alternative way of seeing the world.{{fact|date=July 2020}} He was particularly intrigued by the way in which everyday circumstances were shaped into intricate rituals, such as the tea ceremony.{{fact|date=July 2020}} There was, he realized, a sharp contrast between the traditions of ancient Japan and its industry-oriented modern-day society.{{fact|date=July 2020}}

Ende won a devoted following in Japan, and by 1993 over two million copies of ''Momo'' and ''The Neverending Story'' had been sold in Japan. 

In 1986 Michael Ende was invited to attend the annual congress of the JBBY (Japanese Committee for International Children's Literature) in Tokyo. He gave a lecture on "Eternal Child-likeness"—the first detailed explanation of his artistic vision. 1989 marked the opening of the exhibition ''Michael and Edgar Ende'' in Tokyo. The exhibition was subsequently shown in [[Otsu]], [[Miyazaki (city)|Miyazaki]], [[Nagasaki]], [[Osaka]], [[Nagoya]] and [[Fukuyama, Hiroshima|Fukuyama]]. At the invitation of ''Shimbun'', a Japanese newspaper, Michael Ende attended the opening and spent two months touring Japan. It was his third trip accompanied by the Japanese-born Mariko Sato, whom he married in September 1989. The following year an archive devoted to Michael Ende was established at Kurohime Dowakan, a museum in the Japanese city of Shinano-machi. Ende donated letters and other personal items to the collection. On 23 October 1992 Michael Ende made his final trip to Japan. In the course of their three-week visit Michael Ende and Mariko Sato-Ende visited the Dowakan museum, joined Ende's Japanese publishers, Iwanami, in celebrating the millionth sale of Momo, and travelled to Kanazawa and Hamamatsu and a number of other cities that were new to Ende.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.michaelende.de/en/author/biography/mariko-sato-and-japan|title = Mariko Sato and Japan|date = 30 March 2011}}</ref>