Reflective and often humorous, these tales reveal an enormous amount about Japanese culture, while the inner struggles of the characters always strike the universal.

    Two years ago he achieved brief notoriety for rescuing a local actress from a robbery attempt while making a delivery to her apartment. Now he is back in the spotlight - this time as the main suspect in the assassination of a newly elected prime minster who had come to Sendai for a hometown victory parade. Set in a near-future Japan modeled on the United States, Remote Control follows Aoyagi on a forty-eight-hour chase, in a dramatic retelling of the Kennedy killing with Aoyagi in the role of a framed Lee Harvey Oswald. A massive manhunt is underway. As Aoyagi runs, he must negotiate trigger-happy law enforcement and Security Pods set up throughout the city to monitor cell-phone and email transmissions and keep a photo record of street traffic. Can he discover why he has been set up and who is responsible? Can he find the real assassin and prove to the world his innocence - amidst media pronouncements of his guilt - before the conspirators take him out? Isaka's style and worldview are such that he is often compared to Haruki Murakami; but he defies an easy label as a writer, with a voice, a sense of humor, and an imagination that are truly unique. Now, with this excellent translation by Stephen Snyder, readers everywhere can enjoy one of Japan's finest literary talents. Winner of the Shugoro Yamamoto Prize and the Japan Booksellers' Prize No. 1 in Japan's 2009 "This Mystery is Amazing " rankings

    Miyazawa Kenji: Selections collects a wide range of his poetry and provides an excellent introduction to his life and work. Miyazawa was a teacher of agriculture by profession and largely unknown as a poet until after his death. Since then his work has increasingly attracted a devoted following, especially among ecologists, Buddhists, and the literary avant-garde. This volume includes poems translated by Gary Snyder, who was the first to translate a substantial body of Miyazawa’s work into English. Hiroaki Sato’s own superb translations, many never before published, demonstrate his deep familiarity with Miyazawa’s poetry. His remarkable introduction considers the poet’s significance and suggests ways for contemporary readers to approach his work. It further places developments in Japanese poetry into a global context during the first decades of the twentieth century. In addition the book features a Foreword by the poet Geoffrey O’Brien and essays by Tanikawa Shuntaro, Yoshimasu Gozo, and Michael O’Brien.

    It stands to reason that students of Japanese would long to read them in their original language. Exploring Japanese Literature enables them to do just that. Featuring one each of these writers most characteristic stories - plus linguistic support in the form of a built-in dictionary - the book picks up where the authors previous bestselling text, Breaking into Japanese Literature, left off. The poignancy of romance between a wealthy Tokyoite and a provincial geisha in Yasunari Kawabata's Snow Country; the ecstatic frenzy of a couple committing ritual suicide in Mishima's Patriotism; the amoral antics of a playboy aesthete trying to fire up his flagging zest for life in Tanizaki's The Secret-Exploring Japanese Literature is a reader's entr e into the uniquely rich and exotic world of modern Japanese fiction. On each two-page spread, the original Japanese is printed in large type on the left-hand page, with the corresponding English translation on the right and the dictionary running along the bottoms of both. Everything the student needs to read the stories and understand them is right there. To enrich students experience even further, Exploring Japanese Literature also features biographies of the three novelists, mini-prefaces that set the scene for the individual stories, and evocative illustrations. In addition, there is a dedicated website at www.speaking-japanese.com where learners have the chance to put forward their own interpretations of the Japanese and engage in debate with the author, the editor and, of course, other readers of the book. Exploring Japanese Literature is recommended for upper-intermediate and advanced level students.

    Enhancing their work are four seasonally-themed groups of verse, many written by Basho’s students and associates. The translation is thoroughly readable and contemporary, and the images evocative. An enlightening introduction offers biographical information on the featured poets, background on the nature of haiku and its development within the Japanese poetic tradition, and a short account of the Buddhist practice to which most of the writers were connected.

    Kiwako is an ordinary office worker, in love with a married man, until an unwanted abortion causes her to snap. She kidnaps her lover's six-month-old baby and runs away with her, eventually taking refuge in an all-female religious commune. Here, she attempts to raise the girl.Fifteen years later, the child, Elena, is an adult contending with the difficulties of returning to her "natural family," made up of a mother who doesn't come home, an alcoholic father, and siblings with whom she can't connect.Mitsuyo Kakuta's powerful second novel in English is a sympathetic portrait of two women brought together by tragedy, each struggling to determine her own destiny. Told in the voices of both the kidnapper and her victim, this compelling exploration of the nature of motherhood and family was a critical and popular success in Japan. Now, Margaret Mitsutani's top-notch translation will enable an even greater number of readers to enjoy the work of one of today's outstanding writers.

    "This marvelous book, so light on all its hands and feet, so assured in the delicacy of its unwavering precision...BELOVED INTEGER presents its visitors/voyagers with a complex adaptive system of memory and desire, a kind of visible city rich in 'variably negotiated moments of production, ' in 'oceanic felling, ' in 'dialogues in solitude, ' in easy energy and hard-earned matter, fearlessly held up to the light, which adumbrates the deepest territories of the heart"--Laird Hu

    Eddie dies. But Mai falls into the world of her great-grandmother on the island of Hamahiga somewhere between heaven and earth. Odori is a novel that navigates through the glorious Ryukyuan Kingdom and the Golden Era of the Sho Dynasty, through bloody World War II Okinawa, and over parched prairies of Southern Alberta

    Using high-speed photography, Dr. Emoto discovered that crystals formed in frozen water are affected by our thoughts, words, and feelings. Since humans and the earth are composed mostly of water, his findings have far-reaching ramifications for individuals, for human society, and for the global environment.In The Shape of Love, Dr. Emoto shares new images from his research and for the first time draws out the significant lessons of his work. In a clear, conversational style, he interprets the messages hidden in his extraordinary photographs and explains how his discoveries can help us find answers to these eternal questions: Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where will we go after we die? Providing a new way of looking at such important issues as how we treat others and the earth itself, Dr. Emoto’s findings encourage the positive actions that spell a better future for all.A magnificent follow-up to The Hidden Messages in Water, The Shape of Love is a fascinating investigation into the intersection of science and spirituality and its impact on our lives and our world.

    'Strong In the Rain', the title-poem of this collection, is now arguably the most memorised and quoted modern poem in Japan.

    The poems describe not just seasonal changes and the vagaries of love - which form the thematic core of traditional Japanese poetry - but also the devastations of war, childbirth, conflicts between child-rearing and work, experiences as refugees, experiences as non-Japanese residents in Japan, and more.Sections of poetry open with headnotes, and the editor has provided explanations of terms and references for those unfamiliar with the Japanese language. Other useful tools include a glossary of poetic terms, a chronology, and a bibliography that points the reader toward other works by and about these poets. There is no comparable collection available in English.Students and anyone who appreciates poetry and Japanese culture will treasure this magnificent anthology. Editor and translator Hiroaki Sato is a past winner of the PEN America translator prize and the Japan-United States Friendship Commission's 1999 literary translation award.

    During all that time, their primary goal has been to sustain the poetic enterprise, or michi (way), of the house and to safeguard its literary assets.Steven D. Carter weaves together strands of family history, literary criticism, and historical research into a coherent narrative about the evolution of the Reizei Way. What emerges from this innovative approach is an elegant portrait of the Reizei poets as participants in a collective institution devoted more to the continuity of family poetic practices and ideals than to the concept of individual expression that is so central to more modern poetic culture.In addition to the narrative chapters, the book also features an extensive appendix of one hundred poems from over the centuries, by poets who were affiliated with the Reizei house. Carter's annotations provide essential critical context for this selection of poems, and his deft translations underscore the rich contributions of the Reizei family and their many disciples to the Japanese poetic tradition.

    Launched in 1911 as a venue for women’s literary expression and replete with poetry, essays, plays, and stories, Seitô soon earned the disapproval of civic leaders, educators, and even prominent women’s rights advocates. Journalists joined these leaders in ridiculing the Bluestockings as self-indulgent, literature-loving, sake-drinking, cigarette-smoking tarts who toyed with men. Yet many young women and men delighted in the Bluestockings’ rebellious stance and paid serious attention to their exploration of the Woman Question, their calls for women’s independence, and their debates on women’s work, sexuality, and identity. Hundreds read the journal and many women felt inspired to contribute their own essays and stories. The seventeen Seitô pieces collected here represent some of the journal’s most controversial writing; four of these publications provoked either a strong reprimand or an outright ban on an entire issue by government censors. All consider topics important in debates on feminism to this day such as sexual harassment, abortion, romantic love and sexuality, motherhood, and the meaning of gender equality. The Bluestockings of Japan shows that as much as these writers longed to be New Women immersed in the world of art and philosophy, they were also real women who had to negotiate careers, motherhood, romantic relationships, and an unexpected notoriety. Their stories, essays, and poetry document that journey, highlighting the diversity among these New Women and displaying the vitality of feminist thinking in Japan in the 1910s

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    Forwarded by Haruki Murakami. In Japanese. Distributed by Tsai Fong Books, Inc.

    This translation, by Hiroaki Sato, is Nishiwaki’s masterpiece of 1953.

    It delves into the essential but hidden nature of his daily life, employing prose that is relentless in its re-creation of detail. Each scene is recorded in such minuteness that the novel sometimes leaves the impression that it has gone beyond the bounds of reality. "I", the protagonist, cannot sleep, so he goes to the hospital where he is receiving treatment. There he meets a young man with a broken leg. Without being asked, the young man begins to relate episodes about deaths that have occurred in his family. In a nearby park, he then meets a man with white hair like his own. It turns out that this man is Fujisato, a high school classmate from over forty years ago. He, Fujisato and another friend get together frequently after that, and as he interacts withthese friends, he begins to recall incidents connected with life and death in his own past: the suicide of a classmate in high school; the frenzy of trying to escape the flames during the fire bombings; his parents' deaths; the death of a friend's girlfriend; the almost daily reports of the deaths of people he has known; and so on. It is virtually a dialogue with the dead, belonging neither to this real world nor to any dream world. Then Fujisato relates to "I" how he had had one particularly difficult period, just before reaching retirement, when he went mad. "I" wonders if it is possible that people go mad as they approach old age. Are his dialogues with the dead a sign of madness? On the other hand, he hears that his young friend with the broken leg will soon be blessed with a baby. Sanity and insanity, life and death, stretching back into the past and forward into the future, appear in the strangely cheerful lives of these aging men.

    Each volume in this special children's book series exposes young inquisitive minds to a different cultural heritage by carefully selecting and translating the most distinctive stories from that culture and bringing them to life with colorful and engaging full-page illustrations. Every volume is bound in a durable hardcover. To further educate readers, ages 8-12, each volume also includes lists of famous people and important concepts from the featured culture as well as a map. While presenting such a range of cultural diversity, these books taken together will ultimately reveal how alike we truly are.