In her brief life she wrote poems, essays, short stories and a great, multivolume diary. This book is made up of a critical biography, interlaced with extracts from the diary, and Robert Danly's translations of nine representative stories.

    With acute irony tempered by a generous curiousity, she documents life's improbability as well as its transient beauty.

    Edited and with an introduction by the critic I.A. Richards, this volume vastly expands our understanding of a writer of visionary insight and protean range.

    Some are "Momotaro, "The Son of a Peach", "The Jellyfish and the Monkey", "The Mirror of Matsuyama", "The Bamboo Cutter and the Moon Child", "The Stones of Five Colors and the Empress Jokwa."