The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories

Edited by Jay Rubin The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories is also introduced by Murakami Haruki, who offers a synopsis of the writers and stories featured, it's interesting to note Murakami's admission of his allergies towards the tradition of the Watakushi shosetsu/I-novel and also of his general disinterest of the mainstay of Japanese literature, although obviously there are some exceptions. In his Editorial Note Rubin discusses the difficulties of compiling anthologies in that it's a near on impossible task to include everything, no doubt when thinking of stories/authors to include something of a domino effect of associations must arise and you'd end up with a volume running into many thousands of pages. Perhaps looking through the authors here it's something of a shame to see that Dazai remains left out, although him aside the rest of the big names of his era are represented here, Mishima, Kawabata, Soseki, Tanizaki, whose novella The Story of Tomoda and Matsunaga translated by Paul Warham opens the anthology, Rubin notes that this was to be a first appearance of the story into English although the story previously appeared in Red Roofs and Other Stories, trans by Chambers and McCarthy, as noted in the Further Reading chapter, another author whose omission might cause surprise is Abe Kobo, another Ichiyo Higuchi. Another aspect of compiling anthologies is the conundrum of the layout of the stories and here Rubin has gone for a thematic approach as well as usefully listing the stories in chronological order in his Editorial Note. It's also interesting that Rubin has said that this will be the last of this kind of enterprise that he will be involved with so it feels that the stories are ones that carry a resonance for him, as well as their being a number of stories having their debut in English translation, the anthology also recollects a number of stories that have been presented previously in varying anthologies and offers them up again for reconsideration, as well as including the stories from Penguin's new Modern 50's older translations of his resurface; Peaches by Abe Akira and American Hijiki by Nosaka Akiyuki, and obviously two from Murakami Haruki, among more.

Among the stories that have seen publication previously then but perhaps have slipped from prominence is Enchi Fumiko's fascinating A Bond for Two Lifetimes - Gleanings translated by Phyllis Birnbaum originally published in Rabbits, Crabs, Etc: Stories by Japanese Women, centering on a one time student of Professor Nunokawa who has been asked by the professor to assist him with the transcribing of Akinari's Tale of Moonlight and Rain and Tales of Spring Rain into modern Japanese. As with a number of other stories in the anthology, Ogawa Yoko's The Tale of the House of Physics being another, Enchi's story uses the story within a story premise, or book within a story to great affect, the tale of the buried monk Josuke who comes back to life begins to find parallels with that of the narrator's husband who had died in the war, the narrator also confronts male dominance recollecting the professor's advances towards her and also of the male figure who appears at the end of the story adds to associations and conclusions for the narrator. Another noteworthy story that comes under the chapter themed Men and Women is Ohba Minako's The Smile of a Mountain Witch translated by Noriko Mizuta an allegorical story that uses the myth of the yamauba to explore male/female relations as well as that of mother/daughter. Also included in this chapter is the first time in English translation of Banana Yoshimoto's Bee Honey, translated by Michael Emmerich. Another story appearing for the first time is Nakagami Kenji's Remaining Flowers translated by Eve Zimmerman, which bears some of the physicality and dark eroticism his stories are known for, which follows logger Jukichi as he falls in love with a beautiful blind woman, the story opens with the finding of a man's body whilst builders demolish a house for redevelopment, the story unfolds and follows dark paths to conclude with allusions to it's opening.

Another of the themed chapters is Nature and Memory which as well as including stories by Motoyuki Shibata, Murakami Haruki, Abe Akira and Ogawa Yoko, Jay Rubin has included his translation of Doppo Kunikida's Unforgettable People a story from 1898 which is the oldest of the anthology, a nuanced story that arises from a conversation between writer and painter Otsu and Akiyama on a night at an inn examines the subtleties of memory and acknowledgement of human presences. The chapter headed Modern Life and Other Nonsense offers up an interesting selection of writers that span the decades, featuring the stories - Closet LLB by Uno Koji, brief ones from Hoshi Shin'ichi and Betsuyaku Minoru, also Mr English by Genji Keita and Dreams of Love, Etc by Kawakami Mieko, an interestingly engaging story of a brief connection between two women of a neighbourhood, whilst through their encounters with each other adopt alternative identities. Through the briefer chapter ominously entitled Dread is the chapter Disasters, Natural and Man-Made which itself is then broken down with subcategories - containing stories concerning the earthquakes of Kobe, Kanto and Tohoku and more under the headings of Post-War Japan and also The Atomic Bombings, 1945 which includes the piece Hiroshima, City of Doom translated by Richard H. Minear, visualizing the protagonists at the riverside on the first night of the bombing brings to mind John Hersey's book Hiroshima. As with this story and Saeki Kazumi's Weather-Watching Hill, translated by David Boyd the reader receives the impression of being deposited at scenes of destruction so immense that perhaps literature can only partially convey although their ability to move remains total.

As with all anthologies it is that they can be approached on many levels, The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories is a solid mixture of stories covering multiple themes and events, they also come to us from various perspectives of varying time periods. As well as containing some firsts into translation, the book offers a variety of the familiar and the not so but it remains a great and essential addition for both seasoned and first time readers.




The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories at Penguin 


     

         

Tokyo Stories - A Literary Stroll

After finishing The Book of Tokyo: A City in Short Fiction recently published by Comma Press, I turned to Tokyo Stories - A Literary Stroll edited and translated by Lawrence Rogers, I've had a copy of this for a long time and it seemed the natural book to continue on with. Similar to The Book of Tokyo, Tokyo Stories has a mixture of well known authors juxtaposed with those who are making their debut into English, as well as featuring stories from Mishima, Kawabata, Akutagawa, Kafu and Soseki, there are stories from, (among others), Takedo Rintaro, Irokawa Takehiro, and Ikeda Michiko. Where it might be said of The Book of Tokyo that the stories feel on the whole largely character driven, Tokyo Stories remains rooted in the city, an aspect to the collection is that a place or an area mentioned in one story may resurface again in another from a different author, with a different perspective lending them the impression of being impervious to time and a sense of permanence arises. The book is divided into four main areas, Central Tokyo, Shitamachi, West of the Palace, and The South End, and comes with a map included at the start to help with the locating, what is interesting is in his introductions to each of the stories Rogers elucidates their settings, for instance the location of the real fountains of one of the two Mishima stories here, Fountains in the Rain. The second story of Mishima's located in the shitamachi section is Fire Works which as far as I can see can only be found in translation in this anthology, it's a story of a chance meeting between two young men who share an exacting resemblance to one another, whilst working at a part time job the narrator stumbles into what could surmount as being a scandal involving a senior politician and the man with whom he shares the resemblance with, it carries the hallmarks of themes that feature in many of Mishima's writing.

Tokyo Stories is a book that inspires further reading, the Akutagawa story is the family chronicle The Death Register which acts as a prompt so seek out more of his stories, perhaps in Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories, the offering of Soseki is a snippet from Inside My Glass Doors, a book which celebrates it's centenary this year, which you very much feel like continuing with when you reach the end of what is represented here, and from Kawabata is Kid Ume, the Silver Cat from The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa. Along with these prompts the suggested reading list points to further titles of interest, two standouts for me being Peter Popham's Tokyo: The City at the End of the World (Kodansha), which as far as I can see is out of print, and also Jinnai Hidenobu's Tokyo: A Spatial Anthropology.

Contrary also to giving the impression of the permanence of some of the city's more famous locations is also that of places  disappearing from the map as can be seen in Ikeda Michiko's An Unclaimed Body which offers a rare female perspective of a worker living in the San'ya area, the main aspect of the narrative is made up of observations of the other women living in her shared dormitory, eventually focusing onto one woman who through the story becomes hostile to the narrator and falls ill which leads to a somewhat foreseeable fate, again the story prompts to seek out other works on the area and subject; Edward Fowler's San'ya Blues - Labouring Life in Contemporary Tokyo as well as, although a more broader study; Tom Gill's Men of Uncertainty, and of course Oyama Shiro's A Man With No Talents, the disappearance occurs when the narrator observes the change of the place name on bus time tables, which marks the beginning of the erasing of San'ya. Along with An Unclaimed Body Tokyo Stories offers a number of additional stories with prominent female narratives, Sata Ineko's Elegy from 1945, an autobiographically inspired piece has as it's narrator an assistant from Maruzen set just before the Kanto earthquake, and a story from the immediate post war years is The Old Part of Town by Hayashi Fumiko, a story with a more fraught edge is one of two from Takedo Rintaro, The Image, which conveys in a close up first person narrative style a woman's obsessive and unrequited love. The stories collected in Tokyo Stories span some nine decades of seeing events and places of the city from a fascinating array of perspectives and is well worth picking up for the number of translations some maybe acquainted with and more so of the authors and stories who remain untranslated elsewhere.

Tokyo Stories - A Literary Stroll at University of California Press                 

      

Speculative Japan 2

Noticing that the contents list of the first volume of Speculative Japan included a slight overlap of stories - two I think, from The Best Japanese Science Fiction Stories , I thought I'd better get a copy of Speculative Japan 2. Published by Kurodahan Press the collection comes with a Preface by Edward Lipsett who mentions that in this second collection the scope was broadened a little wider to include fiction that could be read as speculative, and the stories selected here offer a great range, Takagi Nobuko, who won the Tanizaki Prize with, Translucent Tree, is represented with the story Melk's Golden Acres, translated by Dink Tanaka, whose translation of the story won the 2009 Kurodahan Press Translation Prize, the narrative follows a woman's visit to Melk Abbey, taking in the Abbey's history and collection of ancient manuscripts, she pauses in the monastic atmosphere of the Abbey, the woman encounters a man who at first meeting exhibits some peculiar sentiments, looking up at the fresco/secco he points out the hidden image of a woman , the narrator slowly unravels the con-sequences of their relationship, this story seems to be distant to resembling science fiction but has an explorative theological theme to it. Open Up by Hori Akira, translated by Roy Berman, is a brief, but very readable homage to Hoshi Shinichi, narrated by two  perspectives, but possibly from one person, it follows a lone astronaut exiting from hyperspace, who's caught on the toilet when unexpectedly he hears a knock on the door.. The opening story is by Awa Naoko, A Gift From the Sea translated by Sheryl A. Hogg is an intriguing fable like tale, situated in a rural seaside village,  The Fox's Window and Other Stories, translated by Toshiya Kamei was recently published by University of New Orleans Press, Blue Shells, a short story by Awa Naoko along with an interview with translator Toshiya Kamei can be read at Moulin Review.

A story that seemed to fully represent the speculative is Freud by Enjoe Toh, translated by Kevin Steinbach , after the Grandmother of the narrator passes away the family are left with what should happen to the old woman's house, concluding that no one in the family wants to move into the house, and none can afford the upkeep they agree on pulling it down. The family gather to begin the demolition and under the floor they discover a 'crowd' of Freuds, yes, Sigmund Frueds, or 'old Mr. Scary Face', as the narrator puts it. Following the family as they ponder on the meaning of this mystifying discovery, the story is full of humorous metaphorical and philosophical explorations. The Big Drawer by Onda Riku, translated by Nora Stevens Heath, is a story that could straddle many genres. A brother, (Mitsunori) and sister, (Kimiko), of an extraordinary, possibly extra-terrestrial  family settle into their new life and school in Tokyo, the family have an ability to memorize vast chunks of Japanese Literature, Mitsunori has already memorized up to the 19th century, although they are told to keep this ability a secret from the other children by their parents. Walking to school Mitsunori usually passes an elderly neighbour, one morning the neighbour keels over and dies, at this moment Mitsunori has a psychic vision of the key events in the man's life, which enables him to expose a secret that will heal a rift between the man and his son. Mountaintop Symphony by Nakai Norio, translated by Terry Gallagher, follows an orchestra as they prepare to perform their movement in an epic symphony that is so long that no one alive has heard the beginning of or will ever hear it's completion, the story is a fantastically realized metaphorical one as the slight neurosis of each of the characters is subtly revealed and explored. The title story, The Man Who Watched the Sea, by Kobayashi Yasumi is translated by Anthea Murphy, is a tale of an unfulfilled romance between a couple who are in differing dimensions, one in Shoreville and the other in Mountville.

Other authors included are; Ogawa Issui, with Old Vohl's Planet, translated by Jim Hubbert who has also translated Ogawa's  The Next Continent and The Lord of the Sands of Time for Haikasoru. Kajio Shinji, whose story Reiko's Universe Box features in the first volume of Speculative Japan is represented with, Emanon: A Reminiscence, an award winning story translated by Edward Lipsett. Kitakuni Koji: Midst the Mist, translated by Rossa O'Muireartaigh, Tani Koshu with Q-Cruiser Basilisk translated by Simon Varnam and also Yamao Yuko, whose story Perspective is translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori.  

           

The Best Japanese Science Fiction Stories

Published in 1997 by Barricade Books this collection edited by John L. Apostolou and Martin H. Greenberg, brings together some intriguing short stories from authors not wholly associated with science-fiction, Morio Kita's story from 1973, The Empty Field includes a description of a crowd coming together in anticipation to watch a flying saucer make contact with earth, much of the story though concerns 'Youngman' as he navigates his way through an expansive void like place, The Empty Field of the title alludes to an undefined barren environment, and essentially the relationship between the man's kokoro and this desolate place, but there's a great sense of spiritual befreftness,Youngman is customised to the non-eventful life. A story rooted as much in the internal psyche as much as the extra terrestial. The most well known name here is Kobo Abe, his story is The Flood, translated by Lane Dunlop, I've read that this story was originally written by Abe in 1950, it's a surreal story which starts with a bored astronomer diverting his telescope from the heavens towards the earth and spots a worker making his way home from the factory, the astronomer is stunned to see the worker turn to liquid before his eyes and stranger still when the mercurial like liquid carries on making it's way over walls. Soon workers all over the world begin to liquefy, but things only begin to appear to get serious when the rich people begin to be affected, Abe works in an appearance from Noah into the ending of this short story in what called be seen as an early forerunner to his later novel The Ark Sakura. The brevity of some of these stories add to their effect as in Takashi Ishikawa's The Road to the Sea, a story only a few pages long which reads as if it were set in a  rural village until the reader comes to the final sentence to understand it's other worldly setting. Shinichi Hoshi has two stories selected, one concerning a robot girl created by the owner of a bar to attract customers, but his plan goes tragically wrong when one of his customers falls in love with her, the second story, He-y,Come on Ou-t! (1978) is one of my favourites in the collection, after a typhoon villagers notice that where the local shrine once stood now exists what appears to be a bottomless hole, one of them shouts down into the hole Hey,Come on Out! and then another villager throws down a pebble to see if he hears it land.Officials arrive to try to gauge how deep the hole is but without success, and leave with the advice 'Fill it!'. People begin to fill the hole and eventually it's arranged to deposit radioactive waste from power plants into the hole, then animals infected with unknown diseases, then boxes of classified documents,instead of dumping things at sea, the hole is used to get rid of any unwanted things that the inhabitants of the city want to get rid of, including criminals dumping incriminating evidence into it. The last paragraph starts with a seemingly unrelated scene of a builder on a building site thinking he hears someone above him shouting out 'Hey,Come on Out!', little after he sees a pebble falling past him.., Shinichi Hoshi is an author I hope to read more of in the near future. Cardboard Box is a metaphorical short story by Ryo Hanmura, narrated by a cardboard box, following it's literal search for life fulfillment, to dispel it's empty existence. 

The longest story is by Tetsu Yano who actually translated some of the collection's stories into English, The Legend of the Paper Spaceship is narrated by an unnamed serviceman recalling a village he was posted to during the war, quite a remote place he describes his memories of a naked woman who folded paper planes or spaceships and flew them at a place called Endworld Mere, a place that features a mythical lake were the elderly go to die. No one in the village could recollect the reason for the woman's nakedness,some think that she was traumatised during a family dispute, there are rumours that when she was a child a foreigner was trapped and killed in her house. Roaming naked she became the object of lust for the men of the village, the narrator observes the irony that someone regarded as the village idiot was in fact the person who held the most power over the men of the village. After time the woman (Osen) falls pregnant, the women of the village thinking that Osen wouldn't be able to look after the child plead with her to abort it, but Osen in her broken language refuses. The narrator notes hearing the songs that Osen sings as she plays with her paper planes/ spaceships, later in the story the narrator begins to come around to reasoning that maybe he had misheard what she had been singing, confusing the words, and what she was actually singing about was of some sort of craft that had landed, and that she wanted to go home. Osen gives birth to a son and names him Emon, during the story there are references to the myths surrounding the small community, and as Emon grows up we learn that he has psychic abilities, he tries to read his mothers thoughts but she remains a mystery to him, he comes to loathe the men that visit his mother, and begins to wonder about the identity of his father. The narrative is fantastically well balanced, leaving hints to the reader as to the possibility of involvement of the extra-terrestial, Emon one day suspects that his mother's insanity was just an act covering up a wholly different secret, and the narrator observes that during his time in the village he never met anyone else from the outside world, and that on occasions when he had tried to return to the village something has always seemed to intervene, stopping him from revisiting,his suspicions of a cover up are hinted at. Although this collection is I think out of print, it's well worth tracking out a copy.          

The Old Woman, the Wife, and the Archer

Published by The Viking Press, New York in 1961 The Old Woman, the Wife and the Archer collects three short stories translated and introduced by Donald Keene. The old woman is represented in the short story The Songs of Oak Mountain by Shichiro Fukasawa, first published in Japan in 1956, which is a rendering of the folklore tale of Ubasute, this story was also adapted to film by director Keisuke Kinoshita in the Ballard of Narayama (1958), and then again by Shohei Imamura in 1983. The story is set in a small village community, Orin lives a peasant life with her widowed son, Tatsuhei, and his two sons, as she is getting older her main concern before she has to make her pilgrimage up the mountain is to see her son remarried. News comes from the next village that a match could be made with a woman of Tatsuhei's age, with this solution Orin prepares for her departure. Tatsuhei's sons make up songs from older folk rhymes to tease Orin, and other villagers use them as aphorisms 'Cleanse the heart and cleanse the senses, A companion's lot is harder than it seems. On my shoulders the weight is galling. Oh, the burden, it's appalling, Cleanse the heart and cleanse the senses' . Preparations for the summer Bon festival begin, Orin had planned to make her pilgrimage at the beginning of the new year but decides to slip out to visit the priest before so as not to cause trouble to her family. Tatsuhei wakes up too and accompanies Orin as she makes her way to visit the God of the mountain, as they climb higher up the mountain they begin to encounter the bones and corpses of those who had made the pilgrimage before, some still in the posture of prayer, the mountainside is covered with crows. Tatsuhei breaks the oath of not speaking on the mountain when he cries out to his mother, but Orin instructs him to leave her and go back down the mountain.

The Wife of the collection's title is represented with the story Ohan by Chiyo Uno, a story told in retrospect, the narrator is a man who's feelings are caught between a geisha whom he lives off, and that of his estranged wife, his affection for his wife is rekindled after seeing her again. He runs a flailing business from a shop, he sees the school children running back and forth outside of his shop, his wife was taken from him by her parents as they began to see that the marriage was a mismatch, but his wife has remained faithful to him despite their estrangement, in their brief time together they produced a son, who unwittingly visits his father's shop, dreaming that one day they will be able to sleep together again in a row on the same tatami spurns the man to make plans to rent a house for them to live in. The man's actions are observed by the twelve year old niece of the geisha he lives with, she knows that he is about to abandon them for his wife, but like him is unable to inform her aunt. Tragedy thwarts the man's dreams when his son falls victim during a storm.

Asters by Jun Ishikawa takes us back further in history, Muneyori, the governor of a province although born into a family of court poets and is a skilled poet himself argues with his father, who arranges a marriage and sends him to the edges of the province. Trained by his uncle in the art of archery and advised by Tonai (who wants to topple him from power to become governor), he suffers fools badly and with his arrows 'thirsty for blood' begins to extend their use from hunting foxes.Whilst hunting Muneyori notices a realm beyond the mountains,Tonai deters him from exploring this region, but one night he travels back across the mountain, where he meets Hetai a man who spends his life sculpting an image of the Buddha, who explains to Muneyori that the two regions shouldn't mix due to a difference in blood between the people, Muneyori vows to return this place thinking there should be nowhere in the province that he shouldn't go. On his return he encounters a beautiful young woman wandering in the forest, she returns to the castle with Muneyori. All the stories here offer an intriguing insight into Japanese folklore.    

  

New Writing in Japan

The early 1970's saw Penguin Books publish the New Writing in...series, which devoted a volume of prose and poetry of each country it covered, the cover of the Japan edition features a detail from a painting by Kawabata Ryushi, and was edited by Geoffrey Bownas and Yukio Mishima, in Geoffrey Bownas's translator's preface, the shock of Mishima's suicide of some months previously is felt, Bownas recalls the last time he met Mishima and looks back at the last movements of the author's life . The collection contains many of the big names from Japanese literature and also some that are not so recognised outside of Japan, many of the translations are by Geoffrey Bownas, although other translator's pieces are featured. Mishima's story Patriotism is included, which has recently been republished by New Directions. The Catch by Oe Kenzaburo is included here, translated by John Bester, the story also featured in the anthology in The Catch and Other War Stories. The Cosmic Mirror is a short story by Haniya Yutaka, Haniya was born in Taiwan in 1910 and was imprisoned during the war due to his political leanings, the story is set in the realm of sleep and dream, here the protagonist has learned the skill of controlling his movements within his dream. As he progresses within his dream we follow him as he makes his way to a room in a cellar, which is at the bottom of a very long and dark staircase. In the room hangs a mirror that has a strange light to it, the character tells us that since he was young he had come to regard mirrors as the 'tool of the devil' , and that they offered glimpses into other worlds, night after night he returns to the room staring into the mirror. One night he stares very closely, putting his eyes up close to the mirror, and cupping his hands to block the light from within the room, he stares again, concentrating his vision on the blackness of the pupils of his eyes, he begins to see movement.

Yoshiyuki Junnosuke's story included here is Sudden Shower/Shu-u(1954),which won the Akutagawa Prize, it tells the relationship of Hideo Yamamura who works in an office on board a steam ship, and that of the prostitute he visits, Michiko. After visiting her a number of times Hideo realizes that he has feelings of jealousy when he contemplates her being with her other customers. Together they visit a fortune teller who foresees that Michiko will succeed in her life, recently she has been contemplating leaving her profession and maybe opening a flower shop. Hideo has to travel away to a colleague's wedding, whilst away Hideo finds it harder and harder to keep Michiko out of his thoughts, after seeing what he believes was a look of relief on her face when she discovered that he's actually single and not married. When he returns from the wedding, his jealousy seems to be at breaking point, when he's told that he has to wait before he can see her as she's with a customer. Junnosuke's prose is taught in capturing Hideo's confusion at trying to decipher if her feelings for him are real, or just a tool being used to keep him returning. Kobo Abe's Stick and Red Cocoon, two well anthologised stories, also in the prose segment of the book stories from Ishihara Shintaro and Yasuoka Shotaro. Inagaki Taruho is a writer I've been looking forward to explore, whose book One Thousand and One Second Stories is soon to be reissued, the piece included here is Icarus.

The poetry that Mishima and Bownas chose comes from the poets, Tanikawa Shuntaro, Tsuji Takashi, Yoshioka Minoru, Anzai Hitoshi, Tamura Ryuichi, Shiraishi Kazuko, Takahashi Mutsuo, tanka from Tsukamoto Kumio and Mizushima Hatsu's modern haiku. Most of these I've got to know through this collection, Shiraishi Kazuko has recently had a collection published by New Directions, My Floating Mother,City. Takahasi Mutsuo has six poems included here, some taken from his un-translated collection, Rose Tree, End of Summer, a dark poem about obsessive love. This is quite a unique little anthology for a number of reasons, which is sadly out of print at the moment.

The Catch and Other War Stories

The Catch and Other War Stories first appeared in hardback as 'The Shadow of Sunrise', published by Kodansha International, it also came with an extra story, which was 'The Far Worshipping Commander' by Masuji Ibuse, I'm not sure why the story wasn't included in the paperback edition as I would have liked to have read it. The paperback edition came out in 1981, and the stories were selected by Shoichi Saeki, who also writes an introduction and biographical notes on each of the authors included, the collection doesn't contain war stories as we know them, rather as Shoichi Saeki mentions, 'a spectrum of human situations in wartime'.

The first story is by Oe Kenzaburo called The Catch the story has also appeared as Prize Stock in other translations and anthologies, translated here by John Bester, the story won Oe the Akutagawa prize, and was adapted to film by Oshima Nagisa, (Shiiku). The second story, Sakurajima, is by Umezaki Haruo - 梅崎 春生, an interesting author who hasn't been widely translated into English, born in Fukuoka in 1915, he won the Naoki Prize for Boroya no shunju, ('Shanty Life'). Two other short stories of his that I'd like to read one day are 'The Birthmark on S's Back' and 'Under The Sky', the latter translated by Sakae Shioya, two of his novels have been translated into French. Sakurajima is the longest story in the collection, and was published in Japan in 1946, the translator was D.E Mills. The story opens in July 1945 and centres around Murakami, a petty officer who is stationed at a signals unit in Bonotsu but gets transfered to Sakurajima. Arriving at his new post he encounters C.P.O Kira an overbearing disciplinarian who Murakami can't get along with from the start, Kira's obsession about order and discipline is taken to pointless extremes when Murakami observes the men digging a ditch that would take them until at least November before they would finish, Murakami is seen throughout the story questioning Kira about his orders, looking into Kira's eyes Murakami knows that he hates him, the relationship between these two characters is fraught with tension. Murakami sometimes walks up to the observation post, and talks to the man on duty, they discuss the suicide squadrons, and the year's first appearance of tsukutsukuboshi cicadas as they watch the occasional stray Grumman fly over. Umezaki's story captures the sense of futility felt by the ordinary soldiers, and the mounting tension they feel fearing that an American invasion is imminent. The unit has a drunken party one night and Kira starts questioning Murakami's willingness to die in battle, Murakami's preoccupation with his feelings about his own death form an underlying narrative that starts from the beginning of the story,'Let me live unhurried, calm, until my death' he reasons to himself. Murakami's tone is very distant from any type of 'glory in death', when the lookout is shot dead by an enemy plane he sees that - 'The face of the dead lookout had been peaceful, but it was not the face of a man who had learned in death the key to all the mysteries of human life'.

The third story is Summer Flower by Tamiki Hara, and translated by George Saito, a prize winning piece concerning the first few hours after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the story has also appeared in the The Crazy Iris and Other Stories, not many of Tamiki Hara's writings have been translated into English, three poems can be read here. The last story is by Fumiko Hayashi and translated by Ted T.Takaya, 'Bones' centers around Michiko, who's husband we learn died on Okinawa, with no other means to support herself or her family she heeds a suggestion made by a friend to become a prostitute. The first half of the story describes the nervous night of her first encounter into this world. Hayashi's prose has a brilliant straight forwardness to it, which immediately forms an empathy with her character's plight. Michiko's younger brother, Kanji, who worked at a factory contracts T.B and is sent home after coughing up blood, her mother died sometime ago, and Michiko also supports her ageing father as well as her young daughter.The money she manages to save through her earnings she hides away in her husband's bones box. 'Bones' was published in 1949, Hayashi Fumiko is another author who has many short stories scattered across various anthologies, the subjects of many of her stories are war widows, her writings are a great chronicle of post war life seen from the civilian perspective.

A Late Chrysanthemum

A collection containing stories selected and translated by Lane Dunlop, twenty one stories by seven authors, many of the stories that appear here are included in various anthologies, but still an interesting collection. The cover is from a woodblock by Masako Tanaka. Originally published by North Point Press back in 1986, and then republished in an edition by Tuttle in 1988, I think. The four stories by Shiga Naoya appear in 'The Paper Door & other Stories' which I've still not read yet, 'At Kinosaki' in particular, a writer involved in an accident with a trolley car, recuperates at the hot springs in Kinosaki, he spends time reflecting on his near death experience, one morning spotting a dead wasp on the roof of the entryway,and seeing the indifference the other wasps have regarding the corpse of their fellow he begins to find an unexpected repose. Then an episode with a duck, killed by children throwing stones at it, prompts the narrator further into his examinations of mortality. Ozaki Shiro (1897-1964), an author I can't find much available in English, although, Irena Powell's 'A Writer's War: Ozaki Shiro in China 1937-39', could be a good starting point, if I could track down a copy, has two stories. In 'The Wagtails Nest', Ozaki intertwines Minasato's growing desire for a young woman with that of his pinching of a wagtail's chicks, although he suspects a fellow villager maybe pinching from the nest too. In his mind he knows that like the young wagtails in the nest, the young woman will one day be snatched away from him. Kawabata's three short pieces are also in 'Palm of the Hand Stories'.

 

Another author included here that I can't find much else by is, Shimaki Kensaku, I think maybe his first story 'Leprosy' is included in some other collections, but he has four stories included in this one all have an autobiographical tone, observations on the comings and goings of insects, mainly seen from his sick bed cause a series of introspective episodes, my favourite piece 'The Black Cat', the narrator (Shimaki?), recuperating in bed reading of a mysterious huge cat in a nature magazine, is soon plagued by a real life menacing cat invading his house. Shimaki's pieces reminded me a lot of the observational pieces of Dazai who also appears later in this collection. Next is the title story, A Late Chrysanthemum, by Hayashi Fumiko, a poetess also famous for her 1951 novel 'Floating Clouds'. Kin, an ageing woman, ex-geisha who lives alone with her mute maid receives a visit from a man from her past, Tabe, now married to a young woman, is in financial trouble, reduced to begging for money from her to the degree that his has to keep his murderous intentions in check. This is the longest story in the volume and it's a great sample of Hayashi's writing which I'd like to read more of. Dazai Osamu probably needs no introduction, his four short pieces have surfaced in other collections too, also by various translators, 'Memories' appears in 'Crackling Mountain and Other Stories' translated by James O'Brien, (another book for reading next year), a piece about his childhood, focusing on his observations of his immediate family. Also here is 'A Golden Picture' which appears also in 'Self Portraits' translated by Ralph F. McCarthy, his if I remember rightly was a longer translation. Included is Dazai's short story 'Chiyojo' which I can't actually seem to see elsewhere.

 

Lastly Kobo Abe's three stories - 'The Red Cocoon', (from 1950), 'The Flood' and 'The Stick' appear elsewhere. In 'The Stick', a man accidently falls from a railing, when he lands he's transformed into a stick, picked up by a teacher and then is the object of philosophical inquiry by two students. Interestingly Kobo Abe is missing in the 'notes on the authors' section. I think this interesting collection is now out of print, which is a shame, as juxtaposes some well known stories/authors alongside some lesser known names. After reading collections like these, I usually end up wanting to track down several other books as a result, which I guess I'll do.

Post- War Japanese Poetry

This is one of the first books I bought about Japan, I bought it in a charity shop, pretty sure it's out of print now. A collection of Post-War Japanese Poetry, edited by Harry and Lynn Guest and Kajima Shozo, first printed by Penguin Books in 1972. It includes some recognisible names and some not so well known names, and I think thats one of the reasons I like it so much, some poems seem not to be written in any grand scale but they perfectly convey what the author is trying to put across. Some are cryptic and some are more straight to the point. One of the bigger names in this collection is that of Niikuni Seiichi, who has six pieces in this book, he was a leading figure in Japan's Concrete poetry movement, his poems are made up of patterns and blocks of repeated Kanji characters, I was lucky enough to catch an exhibition of his poems in Osaka at nmao recently. Another notable name is Ayukawa Nobuo, who in 1947 helped found the magazine Arechi, (The Wasteland). Yamanaka Ryojiro , Yoshizawa Shoji and Ishii Yutaka also used repeated Kanji characters in their work, here's examples of Ishii's work.


Another well known poet included is Shuntaro Tanikawa, who has four pieces, one short poem and also three short pieces of prose, one being 'The Poem Man I Didn't Know', a cryptic piece featuring a poet with walnuts for eyes , with words on his back, which bleed a little. Tanikawa has collaborated in the past with film director Kon Ichikawa on a number of projects, and has been sometimes tipped for the Nobel Prize.


The subjects covered in this collection are multifarious, everything from love, family, drowning, memory, poets & poetry, holidays,hope, despair, some poems are about the poets concerns about the direction Japan was heading at the time, so some have a historic intrest, and as Harry Guest points out in his preface alot of the poems deal with what it means to exist in modern society, and how the influence of modern poetry from abroad was begining to affect Japanese poets, especially poets who were begining to make the break from the more traditional forms of poetry, although that was a process started in the pre-war period with poets like Sakutaro Hagiwara and Akiko Yosano. Some of my favorite poems in this collection are Yamazaki Eiji's 'The Sods!',where a man instead of being rescued is photographed whilst drowning, think this is a poem about the Japanese obsession of photographing everything, the man's drowning is seconded to getting a good picture. Another favourite is Kuroda Saburo's 'The Stake' aka 'The Bet',which uses the scenario of a man contemplating a marriage based only on the size of the dowry but devoid of love, which Harry Guest in his preface, mentions is a meditation on Japan's economic expansion. Another poem that grabbed my attention is Nakagiri Masao's 'This Bloody-Awful Country', a poem about isolation and not joining or fitting in. But all these poems have a uniqeness about them.


Penguin are about to reprint 'The Penguin Book Of Japanese Verse' edited by Geoffrey Bownas & Anthony Thwaite, a book I keep meaning to buy. My copy of 'Post War Japanese Poetry' has some pages getting loose, I might have to get another copy, it's going for silly money on abe books at the moment, I mean single figures, not triple figures!.


Edit: Looking back over this first post, I have come to notice that maybe Niikuni Seiichi might not be as well known as some of the other poets featured in this collection, I guess after seeing an exhibition on him, I came to this rushed conclusion, some of the poets names you can see are on the cover, but I thought I'd list all the poets included in this book here -


AMANO Tadashi
AMAZAWA Taijiro
AYUKAWA Nobuo
FUJITOMO Yasuo
HASEGAWA Ryusei
HORIKAWA Masami
IBARAGI Noriko
IIJIMA Koichi
IRISAWA Yasuo
ISHIHARA Yoshiro
ISHII Yutaka
IWATA Hiroshi
KAJINO Hideo
KAMIMURA Hajime
KAMIMURA Hiro
KISARAGI Makoto
KITAMURA Taro
KURODA Kio
KURODA Saburo
MIYOSHI Toyoichiro
NAKA Taro
NAKAGIRI Masao
Niikuni Seiichi
OOKA Makoto
SEKINE Hiroshi
SUZUKI Shiroyasu
TAKAHASHI Mutsuo
TAKANO Kikuo
TAMURA Ryuichi
TANABU Hiroshi
TANIGAWA Gan
TANIKAWA Shuntaro
TOMIOKA Taeko
WATANABE Takenobou
YAMAMOTO Taro
YAMANAKA Ryojiro
YAMAZAKI Eiji
YOSHIMASU Gozo
YOSHINO Hiroshi
YOSHIOKA Minoru
YOSHIZAWA Shoji