Book picks similar to
Warrior Ghost Plays from the Japanese Noh Theater by Chifumi Shimazaki
japanese-lit
literature
genre_fairy-folktales_myth_fables
translations
Clouds
Aristophanes
Dover examines the two versions of the play, recounts the history of the text, and analyzes a number of problems surrounding the play's overall interpretation, including the Greek notion of right and wrong, the purpose of the chorus, and Aristophanes' sexual jokes.
In Search of a Distant Voice
Taichi Yamada - 1989
His problems worsen following the emergence of a strange voice - a woman who is trying to contact him. Tsuneo desperately chases this woman, and the mystery behind what happened eight years earlier.
The Father
August Strindberg - 1887
More than in any of his other plays, Strindberg explores this theme in depth in The Father.In exploring the emotionally charged battle of the sexes and the clashes between scientific and religious convictions, The Father vividly delineates the essential quality of a man’s relationship with his wife and his daughter. The problem of paternity, trivial at the outset, develops into marital upheaval and a no-holds-barred struggle between man and woman.Widely regarded as one of Strindberg's best literary efforts, The Father remains one of the most gripping psychological dramas of the theater.
Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination
Edogawa Rampo - 1956
Collected in this chilling volume are some of the famous Japanese mystery writer Edogawa Rampo's best stories—bizarre and blood-curdling expeditions into the fantastic, the perverse, and the strange, in a marvelous homage to Rampo's literary 'mentor', Edgar Allan Poe.
One Man's Justice
Akira Yoshimura - 1978
Takuya, a demobilized officer returns to his native village only to learn that the Occupation authorities are intensifying their efforts to apprehend suspected war criminals. Will they learn of his involvement in the execution of American prisoners during the last days of the war? To avoid prosecution, Takuya becomes a fugitive in his own country." "As he travels on crowded trains through a land of defeat, humiliation, and hunger, he fears that his past will catch up with him. And yet Takuya doesn't feel like a criminal. After all, he had only been following orders. Why should an honest and dutiful man be prosecuted by the very people who dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, slaughtering countless innocent civilians?"--BOOK JACKET.
Seventeen
Hideo Yokoyama - 2003
Kazumasa Yuuki, a seasoned reporter at the North Kanto Times, runs a daily gauntlet of the power struggles and office politics that plague its newsroom. But when an air disaster of unprecedented scale occurs on the paper’s doorstep, its staff is united by an unimaginable horror and a once-in-a-lifetime scoop.2003. Seventeen years later, Yuuki remembers the adrenaline-fueled, emotionally charged seven days that changed his and his colleagues’ lives. He does so while making good on a promise he made that fateful week—one that holds the key to its last solved mystery and represents Yuuki’s final, unconquered fear.From Hideo Yokoyama, the celebrated author of Six Four, comes Seventeen—an investigative thriller set amid the aftermath of disaster.
Sayonara, Gangsters
Genichiro Takahashi - 1982
Set in a facetious near-future that is both mind-bendingly bizarre and achingly familiar. Sayonara, Gangsters is an inventive novel about language, expression and the creative process that unfolds through hilarious sketches. The peaceful if bizarre life of a poetry teacher is forever transformed by a group of terrorists called "the gangsters" in what is, incredibly, a semi-autobiographical novel. On this literary gonzo trip in which a man of letters finds out, too late, that flirting with extremist politics can have unsavoury consequences for one's mind, we encounter the likes of Virgil, the refrigerator (a memorable three-dimensional character) and "Henry IV" the feline aficionado of books. Endlessly resourceful, relentlessly erudite, but always accessible, Sayonara, Gangsters is a unique masterpiece of literary postmodernism that aims to entertain rather than to intimidate. From the outrageous beginning, which reads like an oblique reference to the war on terror but is no such thing (it was written more than twenty years ago), to the sobering, devastating end, through the lyrical, poignant middle, Takahashi's legendary first novel is candy for your brain. Sayonara, Gangsters is a must-read for all fans of world literature, available for the first time in English.
The Little House
Kyōko Nakajima - 2010
On the outskirts of Tokyo, near a station on a private train line, stands a modest European style house with a red, triangular shaped roof. There a woman named Taki has worked as a maidservant in the house and lived with its owners, the Hirai family. Now, near the end of her life, Taki is writing down in a notebook her nostalgic memories of the time spent living in the house. Her journal captures the refined middle-class life of the time from her gentle perspective. At the end of the novel, however, a startling final chapter is added. The chapter brings to light, after Taki’s death, a fact not described in her notebook. This suddenly transforms the world that had been viewed through the lens of a nostalgic memoir, so that a dramatic, flesh-and-blood story takes shape. Nakajima manages to combine skillful dialogue with a dazzling ending. The result is a polished, masterful work fully deserving of the Naoki Prize.
The Diviners
Jim Leonard - 1983
platforms Winner of the American College Theatre Festival, this marvelously theatrical play is the story of a disturbed young man and his friendship with a disenchanted preacher in southern Indiana in the early 1930s. When the boy was young he almost drowned. This trauma and the loss of his mother in the same accident has left him deathly afraid of water. The preacher, set on breaking away from a long line of Kentucky family preachers, is determined not to do what h
Japanese Mythology
Juliet Piggott - 1969
Discusses the mythology of Japan, its origins in Shintoism and Buddhism, and the gods, spirits, men, and animals that appear in the many legends and stories.
Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement, and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater
William T. Vollmann - 2010
Vollman’s colossal body of work stands unsurpassed for its range, moral imperative, and artistry.”—Booklist William T. Vollmann, the National Book Award–winning author of Europe Central, offers a charming, evocative, and piercing examination of the ancient Japanese tradition of Noh theatre and the keys it holds to our modern understanding of beauty. Kissing the Mask is the first major book on Noh by an American writer since the 1916 publication the classic study Pisan Cantos and the Noh by Ezra Pound. But Kissing the Mask is pure Vollman—illustrated with photos by the author with provocative related side-discussions on femininity, transgender, kabuki, pornography, geishas, and more.
Gulliver's Travels
Saddleback Educational Publishing - 2010
This series features classic tales retold with color illustrations to introduce literature to struggling readers. Each 64-page hardcover book retains key phrases and quotations from the original classics. In this humorous satire, which makes fun of English politicians in the early 1700s, you'll travel to many strange make-believe worlds. Join Gulliver as he sails from the land of the tiny six-inch people called Lilliputians and the land of the giant people called Brobdingnagians, to the land of the Houyhnhnms- where wise and understanding horses tame herds of wild Yahoos, creatures that are strangely human!
Winter Sleep
Kenzo Kitakata - 2005
An artist's quest for growth from one of the world's greatest stylists. Nakagi, an ex-con painter who has sequestered hismself in a mountain cabin, is trying to elevate his art. The only thing breakin his solitude are the visits of two women: an art dealer who wants him to produce the sort of paintings that she would like to buy from him, and a young aspiring, and soulful apprentice. When Nakagi welcomes an escaped felon into the emotionally fraught fold, and begins to teach him to pain well. Winter Sleep awakens to a literally incendiary climax.