He is best known for his lyrical and experimental manga for "Garo," the famous alternative comics magazine. This volume collects a selection of Hayashi's most important manga from this period, including "Red Dragonfly" (1968), "Yamauba's Lullaby" (1968) and "Gold Pollen" (1971). Published here in their original full color, these stories mix traditional Japanese aesthetics with Pop art sensibilities, and range in topic from the legacies of Japanese rightwing nationalism and World War II, to the pervasive influence of America over 1960s Japanese youth culture. This first color reprinting of Hayashi's work captures the vivid experimentation of Japanese art at this time. In addition, Hayashi's youth and beginnings as an artist are illuminated by an autobiographical essay from 1972, translated here for the first time into English. Art historian Ryan Holmberg discusses Hayashi's place in postwar Japanese art and manga, as well as his wider contributions to the Tokyo avant-garde as a designer and experimental animator. This lavishly illustrated book is likely to have widespread crossover appeal for design and fashion aficionados, as well as for students of the manga genre.Seiichi Hayashi (born 1945) is best known for his lyrical and experimental manga for "Garo," the famous alternative comics magazine. His animated films have been screened at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, among other institutions. Since the 1970s Hayashi has been a nationally revered illustrator, famous for his classically informed depictions of contemporary women and an important influence on acclaimed director Hayao Miyazaki, among others. Hayashi lives and works just outside of Tokyo.

    In The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi, Junichir Tanizaki reimagines the exploits of a legendary samurai as a sadomasochistic dance between the hero and the wife of his enemy. Arrowroot, though set in the twentieth century, views an adult orphan’s search for his mother’s past through the translucent shoji screen of ancient literature and myth. Both works are replete with shocking juxtapositions. Severed heads become objects of erotic fixation. Foxes take on human shape. An aristocratic lady loves and pities the man she is conspiring to destroy. This supple translation reveals the full scope of Tanizaki’s gift: his confident storytelling, luminous detail, and astonishingly vital female characters.

    In Japan, Murata is particularly admired for her short stories, which are sometimes sweet, sometimes shocking, and always imbued with an otherworldly imagination and uncanniness.In these twelve stories, Murata mixes an unusual cocktail of humor and horror to portray both the loners and outcasts as well as turning the norms and traditions of society on their head to better question them. Whether the stories take place in modern-day Japan, the future, or an alternate reality is left to the reader’s interpretation, as the characters often seem strange in their normality in a frighteningly abnormal world. In “A First-Rate Material”, Nana and Naoki are happily engaged, but Naoki can’t stand the conventional use of deceased people’s bodies for clothing, accessories, and furniture, and a disagreement around this threatens to derail their perfect wedding day. “Lovers on the Breeze” is told from the perspective of a curtain in a child’s bedroom that jealously watches the young girl Naoko as she has her first kiss with a boy from her class and does its best to stop her. “Eating the City” explores the strange norms around food and foraging, while “Hatchling” closes the collection with an extraordinary depiction of the fractured personality of someone who tries too hard to fit in.In these strange and wonderful stories of family and friendship, sex and intimacy, belonging and individuality, Murata asks above all what it means to be a human in our world and offers answers that surprise and linger.

    The seventeen-syllable form is rooted in a Japanese tradition of close observation of nature, of making poetry from subtle suggestion. Infused by its great practitioners with the spirit of Zen Buddhism, the haiku has served as an example of the power of direct observation to the first generation of American modernist poets like Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and also as an example of spontaneity and Zen alertness to the new poets of the 1950s. This definitive collection brings together in fresh translations by an American poet the essential poems of the three greatest haiku masters: Matsuo Basho in the seventeenth century; Yosa Buson in the eighteenth century; and Kobayashi Issa in the early nineteenth century. Robert Hass has written a lively and informed introduction, provided brief examples by each poet of their work in the haibun, or poetic prose form, and included informal notes to the poems. This is a useful and inspiring addition to the Essential Poets series.

    When Harada, a jaded TV scriptwriter, runs into his long-dead parents one night, he enters the womb of a city whose living inhabitants have perhaps lost their souls. Can Harada save his?

    One day, her family and friends notice she's suddenly acting strange. Little do they know, a high school boy from Tokyo named Taki Tachibana found himself randomly switching places with her when he fell asleep. But he has no clue how to act as a high school girl in an unfamiliar place! This is the story of the hit novel your name. from the perspective of Mitsuha's friends and family as they deal with her strange new quirks--and avoid disaster.

    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. Yoshida Kenko (c. 1283-1352). Kenko's work is included in Penguin Classics in Essays in Idleness and Hojoki.

    Abandoned at birth in adjacent train station lockers, two troubled boys spend their youth in an orphanage and with foster parents on a semi-deserted island before finally setting off for the city to find and destroy the women who first rejected them. Both are drawn to an area of freaks and hustlers called Toxitown. One becomes a bisexual rock singer, star of this exotic demimonde, while the other, a pole vaulter, seeks his revenge in the company of his girlfriend, Anemone, a model who has converted her condominium into a tropical swamp for her pet crocodile.Together and apart, their journey from a hot metal box to a stunning, savage climax is a brutal funhouse ride through the eerie landscape of late-twentieth-century Japan.

    James, Robert Barnard and other literate writers in the genre will welcome US publication of this prize-winning author's first work. In postwar Tokyo, the K Apartment House for ladies is about to be moved intact in a highly publicized engineering feat. Then, flashback seven years to one of its occupants and her confederate--a man dressed in woman's clothes--as they bury a child's body in an unused communal bath beneath the building. A second flashback tells of the kidnapping of four-year-old George Kraft, son of an American army officer and his Japanese wife. The stage is set. The actors are a few of the present-day occupants of the K apartments--single, lovely, obsessed, neurotic--each life a novel in itself, told in a spare, unembellished style that never lapses into the sentimental. Manipulated by hidden strings, their actions and reactions lead to suicide, murder, and some final surprising revelations. This is a fresh, original novel, superbly crafted and riveting from start to finish.

    It's her bread and butter . . . literally! Tohko is actually a literature-gobbling demon, and instead of the less palatable option of water-soaked bread, she opts to munch on torn out pages from all kinds of stories. But for Tohko, the real delicacies are handwritten stories. And to satisfy her gourmet tastes, she's employed (aka. browbeaten) one Konoha Inoue, an underclassman who has retreated from writing novels after his experiences with getting published at an early age. So day in and day out, Konoha scribbles away to satisfy Tohko's appetite. But when, one day, another student comes knocking on the literary club door to seek advice on writing love letters, will Tohko discover a new kind of delicacy to whet her voracious appetite?

    Written by a lady of the court at the height of Heian culture, this book enthralls with its lively gossip, witty observations, and subtle impressions. Lady Shonagon was an erstwhile rival of Lady Murasaki, whose novel, "The Tale of Genji," fictionalized the elite world Lady Shonagon so eloquently relates. Featuring reflections on royal and religious ceremonies, nature, conversation, poetry, and many other subjects, "The Pillow Book" is an intimate look at the experiences and outlook of the Heian upper class, further enriched by Ivan Morris's extensive notes and critical contextualization.

    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.

    This is a curiously elegant and scandalous tale of sexual deception and revenge. Ibuki loves widow Yasuko who is young, charming and sparkling with intelligence as well as beauty. His friend, Mikame, desires her too but that is not the difficulty. What troubles Ibuki is the curious bond that has grown between Yasuko and her mother-in-law, Mieko, a handsome, cultivated yet jealous woman in her fifties, who is manipulating the relationship between Yasuko and the two men who love her.

    So why did he dream the other night--and dream that he has a son?At one time, Batou had a human love for his partner, the legendary Major, before he witnessed her transfiguration into something beyond humanity. Now he has only his job, and his beloved basset hound, Gabriel. But when Batou has a near-death experience in an arranged car "accident," he returns home to find Gabriel has gone missing--perhaps, to go look for her owner's lost soul.Batou's desperate search for Gabriel leads him down surreal streets where homeless men fight tanks and yakuza racing hounds chase rabbits downloaded into their heads. Batou fears his poor dog has made a horrible mistake out of innocence--for Batou has taken a cold look inside himself...and decided that he never truly had a soul...Innocence, After The Long Goodbye is the prequel to the Ghost In The Shell 2: Innocence film, also available as a four-volume Ani-Manga box set from VIZ Media. The Innocence novel contains a special bonus discussion between the director, Mamoru Oshii, and the author, Masaki Yamada.

    The story follows Morishita and Yamashiro, two high-school boys approaching the age in life when they must choose what kind of people they want to be. When their favourite J-pop idol kills and dismembers her boyfriend, Morishita and Yamashiro unite to convince the police that their idol’s act was in fact by them. This thrilling novel is a meditation on belonging, the objectification of young popstars, and teenage alienation.