Exploring Japanese Literature

Author: Giles Murray
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1568365411
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Yasunari Kawabata, Yukio Mishima and Junichiro Tanizaki are all giants of world literature. It stands to reason that students of Japanese would long to read them in their original language. Exploring Japanese Literature enables them to do just that. Featuring one each of these writers’ most characteristic stories—plus linguistic support in the form of a built-in dictionary—the book picks up where the author’s previous bestselling text, Breaking into Japanese Literature, left off. The poignancy of romance between a wealthy Tokyoite and a provincial geisha in Yasunari Kawabata’s "Snow Country"; the ecstatic frenzy of a couple committing ritual suicide in Mishima’s "Patriotism"; the amoral antics of a playboy aesthete trying to fire up his flagging zest for life in Tanizaki’s "The Secret" — Exploring Japanese Literature is a reader’s entrée into the uniquely rich and exotic world of modern Japanese fiction. On each two-page spread, the original Japanese is printed in large type on the left-hand page, with the corresponding English translation on the right and the dictionary running along the bottoms of both. Everything the student needs to read the stories and understand them is right there. To enrich students’ experience even further, Exploring Japanese Literature also features biographies of the three novelists, mini-prefaces that set the scene for the individual stories, and evocative illustrations. In addition, there is a dedicated website at www.speaking-japanese.com where learners have the chance to put forward their own interpretations of the Japanese and engage in debate with the author, the editor and, of course, other readers of the book. Exploring Japanese Literature is recommended for upper-intermediate and advanced level students.

The Moon in the Water

Author: Gwenn Boardman Petersen
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824814762
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 388

Book Description

The Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories

Author: Theodore William Goossen
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0192803727
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 486

Book Description
Beginning with the first writings to assimilate and rework Western literary traditions, through the flourishing of the short story genre in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the Taisho era, to the new breed of writers produced under the constraints of literary censorship, and the current writings reflecting the pitfalls and paradoxes of modern life, this anthology offers a stimulating survey of the entire development of the Japanese short story.

The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories

Author: Jay Rubin
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 014139563X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 472

Book Description
This fantastically varied and exciting collection celebrates the great Japanese short story, from its modern origins in the nineteenth century to the remarkable works being written today. Short story writers already well-known to English-language readers are all included here - Tanizaki, Akutagawa, Murakami, Mishima, Kawabata - but also many surprising new finds. From Yuko Tsushima's 'Flames' to Yuten Sawanishi's 'Filling Up with Sugar', from Shin'ichi Hoshi's 'Shoulder-Top Secretary' to Banana Yoshimoto's 'Bee Honey', The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories is filled with fear, charm, beauty and comedy. Curated by Jay Rubin, who has himself freshly translated several of the stories, and introduced by Haruki Murakami, this book will be a revelation to its readers.

House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

Author: Yasunari Kawabata
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0525434143
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 126

Book Description
Three surreal, erotically charged stories from Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata. In the three long tales in this collection, Yasunari Kawabata examines the boundaries between fantasy and reality in the minds of three lonely men. Piercing examinations of sexuality and human psychology—and works of remarkable subtlety and beauty—these stories showcase one of the twentieth century’s great writers—in any language—at his very best.

Five Modern Japanese Novelists

Author: Donald Keene
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231507496
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 127

Book Description
The New Yorker has called Donald Keene "America's preeminent scholar of Japanese literature." Now he presents a new book that serves as both a superb introduction to modern Japanese fiction and a memoir of his own lifelong love affair with Japanese literature and culture. Five Modern Japanese Novelistsprofiles five prominent writers whom Donald Keene knew personally: Tanizaki Jun'ichiro, Kawabata Yasunari, Mishima Yukio, Abe Kobo, and Shiba Ryotaro. Keene masterfully blends vignettes describing his personal encounters with these famous men with autobiographical observations and his trademark learned literary and cultural analysis. Keene opens with a confession: before arriving in Japan in 1953, despite having taught Japanese for several years at Cambridge, he knew the name of only one living Japanese writer: Tanizaki. Keene's training in classical Japanese literature and fluency in the language proved marvelous preparation, though, for the journey of literary discovery that began with that first trip to Japan, as he came into contact, sometimes quite fortuitously, with the genius of a generation. It is a journey that will fascinate experts and newcomers alike

Modern Japanese Fiction

Author: John W. Morrison
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781258893170
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Book Description
This is a new release of the original 1955 edition.

Rivalry

Author: Kafū Nagai
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023114119X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 182

Book Description
Komayo is a former geisha who, upon the death of her husband, returns to the "world of flower and willow" to escape poverty. A chance encounter with an old patron, Yoshioka, leads to a potentially profitable relationship: Yoshioka believes Komayo can restore his lost innocence; Komayo uses Yoshioka's patronage to compete in elaborate music and dance performances. As Komayo considers Yoshioka's offer, she falls in love with Segawa, a young actor who promises to turn the talented geisha into the finest dancer in the Shimbashi quarter. Komayo is eager to become the lead performer among her peers. Her ambition even tempts her to assume a third patron known as the "Sea Monster," a repellent but wealthy antiques dealer. As she grows to realize a glittering career, Komayo becomes the target of her three lovers' bitter rivalry, which leaves her both thrilled and exhausted, brutalized and redeemed. Nagai Kafu's captivating tale moves from the intimate corners of the geisha house to the back rooms of assignation, from the dressing areas of the great kabuki theaters to the lonely country villa of a theater critic and connoisseur of Shimbashi women, detailing one woman's absorbing quest to find fame, affection, and financial security.

The Temple of Dawn

Author: Yukio Mishima
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307834328
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Book Description
The third novel in the masterful tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility, in which a brilliant lawyer will go to nearly any length to discover whether a young Thai princess is in fact the reincarnated spirit of his childhood friend. • “Surpassingly chilling, subtle, and original.” —The New York Times Here, Shigekuni Honda continues his pursuit of the successive reincarnations of Kiyoaki Matsugae, his childhood friend. Travelling in Thailand in the early 1940s, Shigekuni Honda, now a brilliant lawyer, is granted an audience with a young Thai princess—an encounter that radically alters the course of his life. In spite of all reason, he is convinced she is the reincarnated spirit of his friend Kiyoaki. As Honda goes to great lengths to discover for certain if his theory is correct, The Temple of Dawn becomes the story of one man’s obsessive pursuit of a beautiful woman and his equally passionate search for enlightenment.

Dandelions

Author: Yasunari Kawabata
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811224104
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 138

Book Description
A fascinating discovery, Kawabata’s unfinished final novel Dandelions is a great master’s last word A fascinating discovery, Dandelions is Kawabata's final novel, left incomplete when he committed suicide in 1972. Beautifully spare and deeply strange, Dandelions explores love and madness and consists almost entirely conversations between a woman identified only as Ineko's mother, and Kuno, a young man who loves Ineko and wants to marry her. The two have left Ineko at the Ikuta Clinic, a mental hospital, which she has entered for treatment of somagnosia, a condition that might be called “seizures of body blindness.” Although her vision as a whole is unaffected, she periodically becomes unable to see her lover Kuno. Whether this condition actually constitutes madness is a topic of heated discussion between Kuno and Ineko’s mother: Kuno believes Ineko's blindness is actually an expression of her love for him, as it is only he, the beloved, she cannot see. In this tantalizing book, Kawabata explores the incommunicability of desire and carries the art of the novel, where he always suggested more than he stated, into mysterious and strange new realms. Dandelions is the final word of a truly great master, the first Japanese winner of the Nobel Prize.