It features a biography of the author (including an interview), a full-length analysis of the novel, and a great deal more. If you're studying this novel, reading it for your book club, or if you simply want to know more about it, you'll find this guide informative and helpful. This is part of a new series of guides to contemporary novels. The aim of the series is to give readers accessible and informative introductions to some of the most popular, most acclaimed and most influential novels of recent years - from ‘The Remains of the Day' to ‘White Teeth'. A team of contemporary fiction scholars from both sides of the Atlantic has been assembled to provide a thorough and readable analysis of each of the novels in question.

    The only scion of a drunken interlude between a cowardly yakuza and an inebriated bar-hostess, Momoko's mom has since split the scene, and, after various ill-fated scams that involve imitation brand name merchandise, Momoko's dad relocates them to the boondocks of rural Ibaraki prefecture. To escape her humdrum existence, Momoko fanaticizes about French rococo, dreams of living in the palace of Versailles, and buys all her extremely lacy clothes from an expensive Tokyo boutique. Meet Ichiko, a tough-talking motorcycle grrrl (on a tricked-out moped) who leads a ladies-only biker gang known as the Ponytails. Together, this unlikeliest of duos strike out on a quest to find a legendary embroiderer, a journey on which they encounter conniving pachinko parlor managers, legendary street-punks, and anemic costumers. Who knows, they might just make it big...if only Ichiko would stop head butting Momoko in the forehead. Novala Takemoto's break-though novel KAMIKAZE GIRLS, already a cult-classic in Japan, is more than a wry coming-of-age picaresque, it's a new way of life.

    Flashbacks and multilayered stories reveal his life: an impoverished upbringing as an orphan, his eventual rise to wealth and success—despite racial and class prejudice—and an obsession with a girl from an affluent family that has haunted him all his life. A True Novel then widens into an examination of Japan’s westernization and the emergence of a middle class.   The winner of Japan’s prestigious Yomiuri Literature Prize, Mizumura has written a beautiful novel, with love at its core, that reveals, above all, the power of storytelling.

    In these haunting stories, two teenagers linked by an obsession with murder and torture explore the recesses of humanity's dark side.

    This anthology, which will be of vital interest to anyone involved in this era, includes not only fiction, poetry, and drama, but also essays, treatises, literary criticism, comic poetry, adaptations from Chinese, folk stories and other non-canonical works. Many of these texts have never been translated into English before, and several classics have been newly translated for this collection.Early Modern Japanese Literature introduces English readers to an unprecedented range of prose fiction genres, including dangibon (satiric sermons), kibyoshi (satiric and didactic picture books), sharebon (books of wit and fashion), yomihon (reading books), kokkeibon (books of humor), gokan (bound books), and ninjobon (books of romance and sentiment). The anthology also offers a rich array of poetry--waka, haiku, senryu, kyoka, kyoshi--and eleven plays, which range from contemporary domestic drama to historical plays and from early puppet theater to nineteenth century kabuki. Since much of early modern Japanese literature is highly allusive and often elliptical, this anthology features introductions and commentary that provide the critical context for appreciating this diverse and fascinating body of texts.One of the major characteristics of early modern Japanese literature is that almost all of the popular fiction was amply illustrated by wood-block prints, creating an extensive text-image phenomenon. In some genres such as kibyoshi and gokan the text in fact appeared inside the woodblock image. Woodblock prints of actors were also an important aspect of the culture of kabuki drama. A major feature of this anthology is the inclusion of over 200 woodblock prints that accompanied the original texts and drama.

    Then Coconut and Hazel learn that Magikarp whiskers have love-inducing properties. The romance race is on.

    

    

    In this long-awaited second edition, the editors have revised or retranslated most of the texts in the original 1958 edition, and added a great many selections not included or translated before. They have also restructured volume 1 to span the period from the early Japanese chronicles to the end of the sixteenth century. New additions include:* readings on early and medieval Shinto and on the tea ceremony,* readings on state Buddhism and Chinese political thought influential in Japan, and* sections on women's education, medieval innovations in the uses of history, and laws and precepts of the medieval warrior houses.Together, the selections shed light on the development of Japanese civilization in its own terms, without reference to Western parallels, and will continue to assist generations of students and lay readers in understanding Japanese culture.

    

    What does interest him, we soon discover, is the purpose of life. Naoto ponders the powers of love, attachment, and mutual care by examining closely his own friends and lovers, searching out how exactly his connection to them confers meaning on his life. Along the way, Naoto also draws on the thought of many writers and philosophers, including Tolstoy, Fromm, and Mishima.

    

    It presents the thinking of esteemed Western philosophers, aestheticians, and art and literary historians, and introduces to English-reading audiences some of Japan's most distinguished scholars, whose work has received limited or no exposure in the United States.In the first part, "Hermeneutics and Japan, " contributors examine the difficulties inherent in articulating "otherness" without falling into the trap of essentialization and while relying on Western epistemology for explanation and interpretation. In the second part, "Japan's Aesthetic Hermeneutics, " they explore the role of aesthetics in shaping discourses on art and nature in Japan. The essays in the final section of the book, "Japan's Literary Hermeneutics, " rethink the notion of "Japanese literature" in light of recent findings on the ideological implications of canon formations and transformations within Japan's prominent literary circles.