Award-winning Japanese author Shion Miura’s novel is a reminder that a life dedicated to passion is a life well lived.Inspired as a boy by the multiple meanings to be found for a single word in the dictionary, Kohei Araki is devoted to the notion that a dictionary is a boat to carry us across the sea of words. But after thirty-seven years creating them at Gembu Books, it’s time for him to retire and find his replacement.He discovers a kindred spirit in Mitsuya Majime—a young, disheveled square peg with a penchant for collecting antiquarian books and a background in linguistics—whom he swipes from his company’s sales department.Led by his new mentor and joined by an energetic, if reluctant, new recruit and an elder linguistics scholar, Majime is tasked with a career-defining accomplishment: completing The Great Passage, a comprehensive 2,900-page tome of the Japanese language. On his journey, Majime discovers friendship, romance, and an incredible dedication to his work, inspired by the bond that connects us all: words.

    An undiscovered genius during her lifetime, only seven out of her total of 1,775 poems were published prior to her death. She had an immense breadth of vision and a passionate intensity and awe for life, love, nature, time and eternity. Originally branded an eccentric, Emily Dickinson is now recognised as a major poet of great depth.

    This book is the result of long hours spent poring over data and descriptions from a variety of sources, including microfilms of eighteenth-century illustrations from the National Diet Library in Tokyo, in order to bring you detailed information on almost 50 of these amazing creatures for the first time in English.Illustrations, created by the talented Tatsuya Morino, detail the potential appearance of each yokai. Alongside each illustration is a series of "data points," with each yokai's significant features at a glance—especially handy for any potential close encounters.Yokai Attack! will surely convince you that Japan's tradition of fascinating monsters is a long one—yet far from being history.Together with Yurei Attack! and Ninja Attack!, Yokai Attack! is the last guidebook to Japan you'll ever need.

    So great was his stature as an Urdu poet that he never had to mould his poetry to suit the demands of film songwriting; instead, producers and composers adapted their requirements to his poetry. His songs in films like Pyaasa, Naya Daur and Phir Subah Hogi have attained the status of classics. This exhaustive biography traces the poet’s rich life, from his troubled childhood and his equally troubled love relationships, to his rise as one of the pre-eminent personalities of the Progressive Writers Movement and his journey as lyricist through the golden era of Hindi film music, the 1950s and 1960s.

    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."

    He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as his major prose work Biographia Literaria."

    Asian American Studies. Is there a relationship between the population density of Tokyo and the pinkest part of a hamburger? Can one touch the inside of a noun to learn the difference between one bicycle and a field of bicycles? How close is yellow to need? How far are human fears from the fears of insects? Through a sequence of prose investigations, directions, theoretical performances, and character sketches, Sawako Nakayasu's TEXTURE NOTES presses itself against everything. Here is a book of liminal cartography, where textures are percolated by thought and propelled by feeling, where intellectual frottage meets sunlight, moonlight, the pain of seeing something beautiful and an entire town enamored by a simple rock. Once again, Nakayasu's writing explodes with genre-bending fury and fine-tuned improvisation, leaving in its wake a largess of feeling for the things of the world.

    To the Western mind these fearsome warriors-samurai, the masterless ronin, and the assassin ninja-have always been a source of mystery and wonder, combining the idealism of chivalry with military fanaticism. The Ways Of The Samurai digs beneath the myth and reveals a truth even more amazing about the men who practiced a discipline drawn from Zen and Confucian ethics-bushido, the way of the warrior.

    Covering topics from love and heartbreak to chaos and self-discovery, each poem is laced in a cozy, magical energy that is sure to hold the reader suspended in the in-between.

    Find yourself in the middle of torrid love affairs, undying devotion, and scandalous betrayal as you uncover long-lost correspondences between lovers.From great Kings to War Heroes to Philosophers, spanning a period of five centuries, this collection illustrates that the human desires of sex and love were as powerful then as they are now.

    With this book, Barthes offers a broad-ranging meditation on the culture, society, art, literature, language, and iconography--in short, both the sign-oriented realities and fantasies--of Japan itself.

    In a perfect fusion of treatment and theme, this powerful novel tells the story of a seventeenth-century Portuguese priest in Japan at the height of the fearful persecution of the small Christian community.

    Musashi is a novel in the best tradition of Japanese story telling. It is a living story, subtle and imaginative, teeming with memorable characters, many of them historical. Interweaving themes of unrequited love, misguided revenge, filial piety and absolute dedication to the Way of the Samurai, it depicts vividly a world Westerners know only vaguely.

    1008 at the height of the Heian period, Lady Sarashina (as she is known) probably wrote most of her work towards the end of her life, long after the events described. Thwarted and saddened by the real world with all its deaths and partings and frustrations, Lady Sarashina protected herself by a barrier of fantasy and so escaped from harsh reality into a rosier more congenial realm. She presents her vision of the world in beautiful prose, the sentences flowing along smoothly so that we feel we are watching a magnificent scroll being slowly unrolled.'It is like seeing a garden at night in which certain parts are lit up so brightly that we can distinguish each blade of grass, each minute insect, each nuance of colour, while the rest of the garden and the tidal wave that threatens it remain in darkness'--Ivan Morris

    Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927)Akutagawa's Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories is also available in Penguin Classics.