It includes the famous novella Uta andon (A story by lantern light), the bizarre, antipsychological story Mayu kakushi no rei (A quiet obsession), and Ky�ka's hauntingly erotic final work, Ruk�shins� (The heartvine), as well as critical discussions of each of these three tales. Translator Charles Inouye places Ky�ka's literature of shadows (kage no bungaku) within a worldwide gothic tradition even as he refines its Japanese context. Underscoring Ky�ka's relevance for a contemporary international audience, Inouye adjusts Tanizaki Jun'ichir�'s evaluation of Ky�ka as the most Japanese of authors by demonstrating how the writer's paradigm of the suffering heroine can be linked to his exposure to Christianity, to a beautiful American woman, and to the aesthetic of blood sacrifice.In Light of Shadows masterfully conveys the magical allusiveness and elliptical style of this extraordinary writer, who Mishima Yukio called the only genius of modern Japanese letters.

    Containing Japanese–English and English–Japanese sections, it is an essential reference tool for serious students studying the Japanese language or for businesspeople and tourists wishing to learn Japanese before they travel.Special features include:Lists over 5,000 carefully selected characters with their 10,000+ current readings and almost 70,000 compounds in current use, al with concise English definitions.Scientifically arranged by a logical extension of the traditional radical system so as to make the finding of a given character almost fool–proof, saving hours of time.Makes provision for quickly finding characters either in their traditional or their modern and often greatly altered forms, thus serving for both prewar and postwar literature.Includes 14 valuable appendices giving (1) instructions for the most efficient use of the dictionary, (2) discussions of the written language in general and particularly of its recent and far–reaching official modifications, and (3) much helpful information that readers in East Asian fields have heretofore had to search for in many different places.Contains an on–kun index which makes it not only a reader's dictionary but also a writer's dictionary.

    It remains Takako Takahashi's most sustained and multifaceted fictional realization of her concept of "loneliness." Her fiction typically features a woman for whom dreams and fantasies, crime, madness, sexual deviance, or occult pursuits serve as a temporary release from her society's definitions of female identity. The combination of surrealist, feminist, and religious themes in Takahashi's work makes it unique among that of modern Japanese women writers.The five individually titled short stories that constitute "Lonely Woman" are linked by certain characters, themes, and plot elements. In the first story, "Lonely Woman," a series of arson incidents in her neighborhood causes a nihilistic young woman to become fascinated with the psychology of the person who perpetrated the crimes. Her fantasies of the euphoric pleasure of setting a fire heighten her awareness of her own violent tendencies. "The Oracle" portrays a young widow who becomes convinced, through several disturbing dreams, that her late husband was unfaithful to her. She devises a cruel, ritualistic act as a strategy for defusing her sense of helpless rage. In "Foxfire," a store clerk has a series of encounters with sly, seductive youngsters and is revitalized by her discovery of the criminal and sexual impulses that lurk beneath their innocent fa?ades. In "The Suspended Bridge," a bored housewife's passion is rekindled when a man with whom she once had a sadomasochistic relationship reenters her life. "Strange Affinities" recasts crime, madness, and "amour fou" as catalysts of a process of spiritual enlightenment: an old woman searches for an elusive man who seems to embody the bliss of self-renunciation.

    Now readers of modern Japanese poetry in translation have gained an impressive intellectual and linguistic companion in their enjoyment of modern Japanese verse. Modernism in Practice combines close readings of individual Japanese postwar poets and poetry with historical and critical analysis. Five of the seven chapters concentrate on the life and work of such outstanding poets as Soh Sakon, Ishigaki Rin, Ito Hiromi, Asabuki Ryoji, and Tanikawa Shuntaro. Several of these writers have only come into prominence in recent decades, so this work also serves to acquaint readers with contemporary Japanese verse.A significant dimension of this volume is the detailed and extensive treatment afforded two important areas of postwar Japanese verse: the poetry of women and of Okinawa. Modernism in Practice is noteworthy not only as an introduction to postwar Japanese poets and their times, but also for the numerous poems that appear in translation throughout the volume--many for the first time in book form.