Curated by Jay Rubin (who has himself freshly translated several of the stories) and introduced by Haruki Murakami this is a book which will be a revelation to many of its readers. Short story writers already well-known to English-language readers are all included - Tanizaki, Akutagawa, Murakami, Mishima, Kawabata, Yoshimoto - but also many surprising new finds. From Tsushima Yuko's 'Flames' to Sawanishi Yuten's 'Filling Up with Sugar', from Hoshi Shin'ichi's 'Shoulder-Top Secretary' to Yoshimoto Banana's 'Bee Honey', The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories is filled with fear, charm, beauty and comedy.

      Two months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, between the islands of Java and Sumatra, the naval cruiser USS Houston sank after taking four torpedo hits by Imperial Japanese warships. Among the survivors clinging to makeshift rafts was James Gee, PFC, USMC. Rescued by the enemy, Gee was transferred to Rangoon and subjected to hard labor in the construction of the Burma Railway. Here on the muddy banks of the River Kwai, thousands of allied prisoners succumbed to the harsh conditions. Again, Gee survived. But the worst was yet to come. A fresh hell awaited 2,700 miles away: a Japanese POW camp where the young marine would remain until the end of the war.   This is the remarkable memoir of one man’s three-year ordeal amid the direst conditions imaginable—and how the compassion and companionship of his fellow allies strengthened his resolve, and turned desperation into an unbeatable will to make it back home alive.

    Yet even though generations of Japanese high school students have been expected to memorize passages from his novels and he is routinely voted the most important Japanese writer in national polls, he remains less familiar to Western readers than authors such as Kawabata, Tanizaki, and Mishima.In this biography, John Nathan provides a lucid and vivid account of a great writer laboring to create a remarkably original oeuvre in spite of the physical and mental illness that plagued him all his life. He traces Sōseki's complex and contradictory character, offering rigorous close readings of Sōseki's groundbreaking experiments with narrative strategies, irony, and multiple points of view as well as recounting excruciating hospital stays and recurrent attacks of paranoid delusion. Drawing on previously untranslated letters and diaries, published reminiscences, and passages from Sōseki's fiction, Nathan renders intimate scenes of the writer's life and distills a portrait of a tormented yet unflaggingly original author. The first full-length study of Sōseki in fifty years, Nathan's biography elevates Sōseki to his rightful place as a great synthesizer of literary traditions and a brilliant chronicler of universal experience who, no less than his Western contemporaries, anticipated the modernism of the twentieth century.

    

    Melissa McCormick provides a unique companion to Murasaki's tale that combines discussions of all fifty-four of its chapters with paintings and calligraphy from the Genji Album (1510) in the Harvard Art Museums, the oldest dated set of Genji illustrations known to exist.In this book, the album's colorful painting and calligraphy leaves are fully reproduced for the first time, followed by McCormick's insightful essays that analyze the Genji story and the album's unique combinations of word and image. This stunning compendium also includes English translations and Japanese transcriptions of the album's calligraphy, enabling a holistic experience of the work for readers today. In an introduction to the volume, McCormick tells the fascinating stories of the individuals who created the Genji Album in the sixteenth century, from the famous court painter who executed the paintings and the aristocrats who brushed the calligraphy to the work's warrior patrons and the poet-scholars who acted as their intermediaries.Beautifully illustrated, this book serves as an invaluable guide for readers interested in The Tale of Genji, Japanese literature, and the captivating visual world of Japan's most celebrated work of fiction.

    With a midlife crisis looming, Kido’s life is upended by the reemergence of a former client, Rié Takemoto. She wants Kido to investigate a dead man—her recently deceased husband, Daisuké. Upon his death she discovered that he’d been living a lie. His name, his past, his entire identity belonged to someone else, a total stranger. The investigation draws Kido into two intriguing mysteries: finding out who Rié’s husband really was and discovering more about the man he pretended to be. Soon, with each new revelation, Kido will come to share the obsession with—and the lure of—erasing one life to create a new one.In A Man, winner of Japan’s prestigious Yomiuri Prize for Literature, Keiichiro Hirano explores the search for identity, the ambiguity of memory, the legacies with which we live and die, and the reconciliation of who you hoped to be with who you’ve actually become.

    The most comprehensive compendium of short medieval Japanese fiction in English, Monsters, Animals, and Other Worlds illuminates a rich world of literary, Buddhist, and visual culture largely unknown today outside of Japan.These stories, called otogizōshi, or Muromachi tales (named after the Muromachi period, 1337 to 1573), date from approximately the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries. Often richly illustrated in a painted-scroll format, these vernacular stories frequently express Buddhist beliefs and provide the practical knowledge and moral education required to navigate medieval Japanese society. The otogizōshi represent a major turning point in the history of Japanese literature. They bring together many earlier types of narrative--court tales, military accounts, anecdotes, and stories about the divine origins of shrines and temples--joining book genres with parlor arts and the culture of itinerant storytellers and performers. The works presented here are organized into three thematically overlapping sections titled, "Monsters, Warriors, and Journeys to Other Worlds," "Buddhist Tales," and "Interspecies Affairs." Each translation is prefaced by a short introduction, and the book features images from the original scroll paintings, illustrated manuscripts, and printed books.

    Along with other Jewish refugees, Lilli makes a home in the ghettos of Shanghai. Though they managed to escape the horror in Europe, they are now faced with starvation, subhuman conditions, and violence at the hands of Japanese soldiers in Shanghai.Lilli Chernofsky provides a portal to history, a glimpse into the lives of ordinary people in tragic circumstances. The mystery of who people really are, what they will do in adversity—survive honorably or by betraying others—is at the novel’s heart, but it is young Lilli’s startling metamorphosis from sheltered teen to unwavering heroine that is its cri de coeur.

    in 20 thematic books, was the first imperial anthology of Japanese poetry. It was an enormous success, becoming a cultural touchstone that defined the acceptable topics, diction, imagery, and style of court poetry for the next thousand years. Haiku poets took many cues from this tradition, including giving primacy to seasonal imagery.Ice Melts in the Wind is an exciting new translation of the six books of seasonal poems, depicting the progression from New Year

    Some had to endure the inhumane conditions during hazardous journeys on the 'hellships' and all suffered appalling cruelty, starvation, disease and prolonged degradation on an epic scale. Yet these were the fortunate ones - many thousands perished and their graves were unmarked.The book also examines the differing mental and physical effects that the prisoners' captors' cruel treatment had on them. The author's handling of the 'legacy' of their experiences during the post-war years makes this moving book particularly important. For a full understanding of this dreadful aspect of the Second World War, A Cruel Captivity is a must-read.

    Fully illustrated with gorgeous photograph of the forest and its inhabitants, it allows avid—and beginning—forest bathers to record and reflect on their therapeutic trips into the woods. In addition to blank pages for capturing the date, season, weather, and location of specific outings, it will also feature simple, encouraging prompts. These prompts will inspire the user to describe the texture or shade of leaves, to explain the sounds of footsteps over different materials on the trail, to draw the animal life seen and heard, and much more. Inspirational quotes and sidebars on the benefits of forest bathing pepper the pages for added motivation and depth.

    Left behind in the debris of the failed Outer Planet Revolt in 2099, Erinys is quietly decaying. For the hunted remnants of the Outer Planet Alliance (OPA), however, it offers a potential hiding place, and, possibly, a way to independence for the Outer Planets. With a highly detailed background, realistic technology, and convincing characters, The Erinys Incident is a fascinating journey from deep in the gravity well of the sun, to lonely outposts far beyond the rings of Saturn.When it comes to gritty, realistic Space Opera, Tani Kōshū's name is always high on the list in Japan. With an extensive future history stretching from the early 21st century (and already partially overwritten by the pace of history!) into the far future, he writes of people and spaceships with quirks and "issues," facing life-and-death problems with creativity and dogged determination. Tani's first story in English, "Q-Cruiser Basilisk," was published to acclaim in Speculative Japan Volume 2 and Erinys reveals another part of his saga of the development of starfaring humanity. The author is currently revising his works to take recent astronomical discoveries (and technological developments) into account, and continuing to write new adventures set in the same universe.

     Eighteen O’Clock Music Bath, one of his most well-known works, is a dystopian novella set in a future where humanity has obtained eternal life and the freedom to do almost anything–except for a single hour a day, where citizens must perform the most important societal tasks with superhuman productivity. This extreme productivity is made possible by the refreshing 30-minute “music bath”, where citizens listen to a specially-engineered melody that integrates a long list of factors chosen by the government. However, little do the people know that increased productivity is not the only side-effect... Eighteen O’Clock Music Bath is a tour de force skillfully crafted by Juza Unno–a roller coaster ride of political intrigue, drop-dead gorgeous robotic girls, interplanetary war, and a unique form of gender bending. It is a tribute to the roles of science vs government, and a must-read for fans of dystopian or Japanese literature.

    As seen through the eyes of a precocious young girl named Masuko, the frontier town of Jiamusi and its inhabitants are by turns enchanting, bemusing, and horrifying. Takarabe skillfully captures Masuko's voice with language that savors Manchukuo's lush forests and vast terrain, but violence and murder are ever present, as much a part of the scenery as the grand Sungari River.Masuko recounts the "Heaven" of her early life in Jiamusi, a place so cold in winter her joints freeze as she walks to school. She accepts this world, with its gentle ways and terrible brutality, because it is the only home she has known. Masuko feels at ease wandering among the street vendors hawking their hot and sticky steamed cakes or watching the cook slaughter ducks for dinner, and takes pleasure in following the routines of her Chinese, Russian, and Japanese neighbors. Her world is shattered in 1945, when she and her family must flee their adopted home and struggle, along with other Japanese settlers, to return to Japan. This second half of the book, the "Hell" of refugee life, is heartbreaking and disturbing, yet described with ferocious honesty.