(And don't miss the manga adaptation, also available from Seven Seas.)An unhappy girl who engages in self-harm, a high schooler ostracized by her classmates, and an old woman looking to live out her twilight years in peace–what could three such different people have in common? That’s what grade schooler Nanoka Koyanagi is trying to find out. Assigned by her teacher to define what “happiness” means to her, Nanoka tries to find her place in the world by exploring her relationships with these three strangers, and through them, comes to know herself.

    Yet the riches of Okinawa's literature have yet to be adequately mined. Islands of Protest attempts to address this lacuna with this new selection of critically acclaimed modern and contemporary works in English.The anthology includes poetry, fiction, and drama, drawing on Okinawa's distinct culture and subtropical natural environment to convey the emotions and tensions present in everyday life. Tōma Hiroko's poem "Backbone" juxtaposes the natural environment of aquamarine beaches and subtropical flora and fauna with the built environment of America's military bases. Stories by two of Okinawa's most dynamic contemporary authors display wide breadth, from the preservation of island dances and burial practices in Sakiyama Tami's "Island Confinement" and "Come Swaying, Come Swinging" to the bold, disquieting themes of violence and comfort women in Medoruma Shun's "Hope," "Taiwan Woman," and "Tree of Butterflies." The crown jewel of the anthology, Chinen Seishin's play The Human Pavilion, is based on an infamous historical incident in which Okinawans were put on display during a 1903 industrial exhibition in Osaka. In his 1978 masterpiece, Chinen depicts the relentless pressure on Okinawans to become more Japanese.Given the controversial presence of U.S. military forces in Okinawa, this book is particularly timely. Disputes between the United States and Japanese governments over construction of a new marine airbase at Henoko have led to the resignation of Japan's prime minister, the election of an anti-base governor, and repeated protests. Islands of Protest offers a compelling entrée into a complex culture, one marked by wartime decimation, relentless discrimination, and fierce resistance, yet often overshadowed by the clichéd notion of a gentle Okinawa so ceaselessly depicted in Japan's mass media.

    Divided by war, in order to see each other again they must overcome terrible danger. The beautiful landscape of Burma and the tragedy of war are evocatively portrayed in this haunting and moving book.Hong Kong. 1941. The Japanese have invaded the island with overwhelming force. Leading an attack on Golden Hill, Jack Devereux of the Royal Scots Regiment is shot through the head. A Japanese officer attempts to decapitate him, in order to blood his samurai sword; waking momentarily, Jack kills his would-be executioner. His head swarming with maggots, he survives capture as Japanese soldiers are both impressed and fascinated by his wounds. Alive, albeit in a dangerously precarious physical state, he then goes on to experience and escape the horrific and tragic incident of the sinking of the Lisbon Maru, in which hundreds of POWs drown, or succumb to the sharks of the South China Sea, and he goes on to experience the mines of Nagasaki and the atom bomb.Burma, 1942. Jack s wife Kate Devereux, her infant son (the author) and mother Harriet desperately try to avoid the unstoppable advance of the Japanese; they flee their home, taking only what they can carry, and walk the jungles foraging for food while avoiding predators, snakes and armed bandits alike. Terrified that Kate s marriage certificate to a Scotsman will be discovered by the Japanese, they adopt the guise of the Mons Burmese tribe. The once prosperous family becomes destitute and starving. Their chance of survival was slim; multitudes of people like the Devereux s fleeing the Japanese died of exposure and starvation, or were waylaid by bandits or killed in bombing raids. They are kept alive by the author s incredible grandmother, a strong-willed woman with a proud bearing, able to speak fluent Japanese as well as pass herself off as a native Burmese. Their destination is the deserted and mystic medieval city of Pagan deep in the jungle where the Japanese have declined to invade. The beautiful but deadly landscape of Burma is the setting for their adventure-filled story."

    With only a few of his works currently available in English, however, Anglophone readers have for the most part been unaware of the "Teru" literary phenomenon. This book brings together his most famous work, the superlative Rivers Sequence: "Muddy River," which was published in 1977 and won the 78th Akutagawa Prize; "River of Fireflies," published the following year and promptly winning the 13th Dazai Osamu Prize; and "River of Lights," also published in 1978 but later extensively rewritten and expanded into a novel. All three works have been released as major films in Japan. Rivers explores the perennial themes of Miyamoto's fiction, drawing extensively on his own childhood in working-class Osaka neighborhoods to recreate a vivid and powerful world with consummate skill. While he frequently deals with perennial themes of life, death, and loss, his writing is touched with a pathos and humor to bring out the essential humanity of each character. Like the depressed areas described in much of his fiction, his characters too are often "left behind" by post-war Japan's rapid economic growth, by unexpected changes in their lives, or by the deaths of loved ones. His heroes are ordinary people who, as he puts it, "are trying to lift themselves up, who are struggling to live," and who achieve quiet triumphs.

    Much of the five-month campaign was waged on the Bataan Peninsula and Corregidor Island. Despite dwindling supplies and dim prospects for support, the garrison held out as long as possible and significantly delayed the Japanese timetable for conquest in the Pacific. In the end, the Japanese forced the largest capitulation in U.S. military history. The defenders were hailed as heroes and the legacy of their determined resistance marks the Philippines today. Drawing on accounts from American and Filipino participants and archival sources, this book chronicles these critical months of the Pacific War, from the first air strikes to the fall of Bataan and Corregidor.

    Much of his work is highly unorthodox: it challenges the print medium and language itself, and consequently Alice Iris Red Horse is as much a book on translation as it is a book in translation. Since the late '60s, Gozo has collaborated with visual artists and free-jazz musicians. In the 1980s he began creating art objects engraved on copper plates and later produced photographs and video works. Alice Iris Red Horse contains translations of Gozo's major poems, representing his entire career. Also included are illuminating interviews, reproductions of Gozo's artworks, and photographs of his performances. Translated by Jeffrey Angles, Richard Arno, Forrest Gander, Derek Gromadzki, Sawako Nakayasu, Sayuri Okamoto, Hiroaki Sato, Eric Selland, Auston Stewart, Kyoko Yoshida, and Jordan A. Y. Smith. Introduction and notes by Derek Gromadzki. Edited by Forrest Gander.

    Through close textual readings of a wide range of classical and medieval narratives, from well-known works such as the Tale of Genji to popular Buddhist tales, Rajyashree Pandey offers new ways of understanding such terms within the context of medieval Buddhist knowledge.Pandey suggests that woman in medieval Japanese narratives does not constitute a self-evident and distinct category, and that there is little in these works to indicate that the sexed body was the single most important and overarching site of difference between men and women. She argues that the body in classical and medieval texts is not understood as something constituted through flesh, blood, and bones, or as divorced from the mind, and that in the Tale of Genji it becomes intelligible not as an anatomical entity but rather as something apprehended through robes and hair. Pandey provocatively claims that woman is a fluid and malleable category, one that often functions as a topos or figural site for staging debates not about real life women, but rather about delusion, attachment, and enlightenment, issues of the utmost importance to the Buddhist medieval world.Pandey's book challenges many of the assumptions that have become commonplace in academic writings on women and Buddhism in medieval Japan. She questions the validity of speaking of Buddhism's misogyny, women's oppression, passivity, or proto-feminism, and points to the anachronistic readings that result when fundamentally modern questions and concerns are transposed unreflexively onto medieval Japanese texts. Taking a broad, interdisciplinary approach, and engaging widely with literature, religious studies, and feminism, while paying close attention to medieval texts and genres, Pandey boldly throws down the gauntlet, challenging some of the sacred cows of contemporary scholarship on medieval Japanese women and Buddhism.

    This collection brings together the work of three of Japan's most creative, innovative, and challenging contemporary poets. During the 1980s, It and Hirata quickly emerged as major new poetic voices, breaking taboos and writing about sexual desire, marital strife, pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood in such direct and powerful ways that they sent shockwaves through the literary establishment. In recent years, Arai has emerged as a leader of the next generation of poets, writing about working-class women and their fates within the world of global capital. All three poets have rejected the stayed, polished language that dominates poetic discourse and instead have favored dramatic voices that are raw, powerful, and frequently quite dark. Socially engaged and poetically aware, these three are poised to become some of the most important poetic voices of the twenty-first century. For more information visit: www.vagabondpress.net"

    Jackuk has translated one of the most controversial novels recently published in Japan. The author of this "Kyoko's House" was complicit in the ritual suicide of famed novelist and playwright Yukio Mishima.

    It is impossible not to be horrified and moved by their stoic courage in the face of inhuman brutality, appalling hardship and ever-present death.While Barry Custance Baker was enduring his 1000 days of captivity, his young wife Phyllis was attempting to correspond with him and the families of Barry's unit. Fortunately these moving letters have been preserved and appear, edited by their daughter Hilary, in this book along with Barry's graphic memoir written after the War.Surviving the Death Railway's combination of first-hand account, correspondence and comment provide a unique insight into the long nightmare experienced by those in the Far East and at home.The result is a powerful and inspiring account of one of the most shameful chapters in the history of mankind which makes for compelling reading.

    Her delicately penned portraits challenge the tired, erotic tropes of the geisha and schoolgirl, while delving into the dilemmas women themselves faced in their personal and professional relationships.The stories and novella translated here span a period of two decades and the most important events and themes in twentieth-century history. "Cafe Kyoto" (1929) takes up the glamorous, if tragic, lives of cafe waitresses in the wake of the late 1920s Depression. "Tears of a Factory Girl in the Union Leadership" (1931) offers a unique portrait of a woman who works with the underground Communist Party. "The Scent of Incense" (1942), written as a work of "home front" literature, was meant to help mobilize women as productive workers and supportive housewives during World War II. "White and Purple" (1950), one of Sata's rare postcolonial works penned just after the outbreak of the Korean War, reflects on the psychological damage inflicted on women during Japan's occupation of Korea. Sata's first novella, Crimson (1936-1938), joins a long tradition of women's writing in Japan that sought to assert women's "liberation" from what was seen as the oppressively patriarchal institution of marriage.Translator Samuel Perry's critical introduction weaves the story of Sata's life into an examination of the historical and cultural milieu that helped to generate her stories about working women, their lives in the workplace and in the home. As the celebrated author herself once wrote, "The kinds of womanhood available today exist precisely because literary masters of different ages and cultures have drawn us to them: the woman we pity, the woman with a heart of gold, the cruel woman, the clever woman, the hen-pecker, the cheapskate, and the 'good wife wise mother.' As terms we use to describe the kinds of women who exist in the world today, they have simply outgrown their usefulness."

    The theme of IPHHK2015 is "Poetry and Conflict." 21 international poets from 18 different places are invited to participate in recitations, symposia and sharing sessions of the Poetry Nights. A recitation focusing on 10 local Hong Kong poets, "Hong Kong Cantonese Poetry Night" is included. This collection seeks to make accessible the best of contemporary international poetry with outstanding translations.

    A thought-provoking and entertaining novel for the 21st Century, when we have to care for our environment more than ever.On March 11th in 2011, Japan was hit by a terrible disaster. Magnitude 9.0 earthquake shook the eastern part of Japan and following tsunami devastated Tohoku (north eastern Japan) coast completely. A nuclear power plant in Fukushima experienced a serious hazard and meltdown, its leaked radiation polluted the surrounding land, sea, and air. You might still be able to remember the horrible scenes like a big river rushing backward and flooding a whole plain, white plumes rising from nuclear power plant's damaged buildings, LPG tank fire emitting black smokes over the sky of Tokyo, mass of people walking home without any transportation or electricity, etc. Yes, we're living in a vulnerable world, where a big quake could cause terrible tragedy, especially with big tsunami.This fictionalized simulation was originally written in 2005, but predicted the horror of big quake and tsunami, especially when it hit the location of a nuclear power plant. The protagonist, Shunsuke Kuroda and the people around him had experienced 1995 Kobe earthquake and 2004 Indonesian tsunami, and chose their separate battlefields against that kind of natural disasters. But the Big One strikes beyond their imagination.TSUNAMI by Tetsuo Takashima is a book of warning. And it could happen to you as long as you live on this earth which has been alive and kicking for the past 4.6 billion years.

    This is the most comprehensive text on striking in Aikido, and it begins with the notion that strikes should not be disregarded in modern dojo. It explores the common (yet mistaken) notion of atemi as a secondary aspect of Aikido, and argues that such an idea is incorrect, since O-Sensei’s own teachings reveal that striking is the very core of the art.The authors describe through brilliant and specific examples and clear photographs, how atemi is used in Aikido pins and throws while still keeping with the physical philosophy of the art. The journey continues as they then demonstrate how Ueshiba Morihei and some of his most important students viewed atemi and technique as one, instead of separate aspects of the art.The text is divided into three sections: Shodan (beginner’s level), Chudan (intermediate level), and Jodan (advanced level). The final chapters suggest ways that O-Sensei taught his students how to develop internal power, which can be channeled into Aikido’s powerful strikes. Atemi: The Thunder and Lightning of Aikido presents a thorough explanation of O-Sensei’s teachings and suggests that many practitioners have only scratched the surface of the art’s true nature.

    Winner of the 2011 Agatha Christie Award.

    A Tokyo teenager obsessed with becoming an idol singer despite her mother's trepidations. An American bar hostess searching for solace yet unable to escape her own demons. An unlikely cross-cultural friendship that is deepened through the way of tea. A Japanese single woman stuck in a rut who finds joy in a cluttered life. A pop star who makes a fatal mistake and has no choice but to pay the price. A San Francisco cat that becomes a stowaway in hopes of making it big in Japan. Poignant but also often laced with humor, these mesmerizing stories in Postcards from Tokyo (the first in a series of short story collections) are sure to both entertain and move readers.