Breaking Into Japanese Literature

Author: Giles Murray
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781568364155
Category : Japanese language
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
This is a graded reader for Japanese literature. There are 7 stories, 4 by Soseki and 3 by Akutagawa, representing 3 different reading levels. In each case the story is presented in Japanese and English with a running dictionary of terms used. An audio version of the stories is available as MP3 files on the Internet.

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 Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature

Author: Susan Napier
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134803354
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
Modern Japan's repressed anxieties, fears and hopes come to the surface in the fantastic. A close analysis of fantasy fiction, film and comics reveals the ambivalence felt by many Japanese towards the success story of the nation in the twentieth century. The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature explores the dark side to Japanese literature and Japanese society. It takes in the nightmarish future depicted in the animated film masterpiece, Akira, and the pastoral dream worlds created by Japan's Nobel Prize winning author Oe Kenzaburo. A wide range of fantasists, many discussed here in English for the first time, form the basis for a ground-breaking analysis of utopias, dystopias, the disturbing relationship between women, sexuality and modernity, and the role of the alien in the fantastic.

Japanese Stories for Language Learners

Author: Anne McNulty
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462920128
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 197

Book Description
A great story can lead a reader on a journey of discovery—especially if it's presented in two languages! Beautifully illustrated in a traditional style, Japanese Stories for Language Learners offers five compelling stories with English and Japanese language versions appearing on facing pages. Taking learners on an exciting cultural and linguistic journey, each story is followed by detailed translator's notes, Japanese vocabulary lists, and grammar points along with a set of discussion questions and exercises. The first two stories are very famous traditional Japanese folktales: Urashima Taro (Tale of a Fisherman) and Yuki Onna (The Snow Woman). These are followed by three short stories by notable 20th century authors: Kumo no Ito (The Spider's Thread) by Akutagawa Ryunosuke (1892-1927) Oborekaketa Kyodai (The Siblings Who Almost Drowned) by Arishima Takeo (1878-1923) Serohiki no Goshu (Gauche the Cellist) by Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933) Reading these stories in the original Japanese script--and hearing native-speakers read them aloud in the accompanying free audio recording--helps students at every level deepen their comprehension of the beauty and subtlety of the Japanese language. Learn Japanese the fun way—through the country's rich literary history.

Short Stories in Chinese

Author: John Balcom
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101666862
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Book Description
A dual-language edition of Chinese stories—many appearing in English for the first time This new volume of eight short stories offers students at all levels the opportunity to enjoy a wide range of contemporary literature from the world’s most spoken language, without having to constantly to refer back to a dictionary. The stories—many of which appear here in English for the first time—are by well-known writers as well as emerging voices. From a story by Li Rui about the honest simplicity of a Shanxi farmer to one by Ma Yuan exposing the seamy underside of contemporary urban society, they are infused with both rural dialect and urban slang and feature a wide range of styles and points of view. Complete with notes, the stories make excellent reading in either language. Note: For each short story in this eBook edition, the full English translation is followed by its original Chinese text.

The Breaking Jewel

Author: Makoto Oda
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231518870
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 133

Book Description
Set on an island in the South Pacific during the final days of World War II, when the tide has turned against Japan and the war has unmistakably become one of attrition, The Breaking Jewel offers a rare depiction of the Pacific War from the Japanese side and captures the essence of Japan's doomed imperial aims. The novel opens as a small force of Japanese soldiers prepares to defend a tiny and ultimately insignificant island from a full-scale assault by American forces. Its story centers on squad leader Nakamura, who resists the Americans to the end, as he and his comrades grapple with the idea of gyokusai (translated as "the breaking jewel" or the "pulverization of the gem"), the patriotic act of mass suicide in defense of the homeland. Well known for his antiestablishment and antiwar sentiments, Makuto Oda gradually and subtly develops a powerful critique of the war and the racialist imperial aims that proved Japan's undoing.

Studies in the Comic Spirit in Modern Japanese Fiction

Author: Joel Ralph Cohn
Publisher: Harvard Univ Asia Center
ISBN: 9780674847118
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
Unlike traditional Japanese literature, with its rich tradition of comedy, modern Japanese literature is commonly associated with high seriousness. Cohn analyzes works by three writers--Ibuse Masuji (1898-1993), Dazai Osamu (1909-1948), and Inoue Hisashi (1934- )--that assault the notion that comedy cannot be part of serious literature.

Spirit Matters

Author: Philip Gabriel
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824864433
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Book Description
Spirit Matters is a ground-breaking work, the first to explore a broad range of writings on spirituality in contemporary Japanese literature. It draws on a variety of literary works, from enormously popular fiction (Miura Ayako’s Hyôten and Shirokari Pass and the novels of Murakami Haruki) to more problematic "serious" fiction (Ôe Kenzaburô’s Somersault) to nonfiction meditations on martyrdom and miracles (Sono Ayako’s Kiseki) and the dynamics of religious cults (Murakami’s interviews with members of Aum Shinrikyô in Underground). The first half of the volume focuses on the work of two women Christian writers, Miura Ayako and Sono Ayako. Combining a decidedly evangelistic bent with the formulas of the popular novel, Miura’s 1964 novel Hyôten (Freezing Point) and its sequel are entertaining perennial bestsellers but also treat spiritual issues—like original sin—that are largely unexplored in modern Japanese literature. Sono’s Kiseki (Miracles) and Miura’s Shiokari Pass focus on the meaning of self-sacrifice and the miraculous and survey both the paths by which people come to faith and the spiritual doubts that assail them. Perhaps most striking for Western readers, Gabriel reveals how Miura’s novel shows the lingering resistance to Christianity and its oppositional nature in Japan, and how in Kiseki Sono considers the kind of spiritual struggles many Japanese Christians experience as they try to reconcile their belief in a minority faith.

Short Stories in Japanese

Author: Michael Emmerich
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101667486
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
A dual-language edition of Japanese stories—many appearing in English for the first time This volume of eight short stories, with parallel translations, offers students at all levels the opportunity to enjoy a wide range of contemporary literature without having constantly to refer back to a dictionary. The stories—many of which appear here in English for the first time—are by well-known writers like Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto, as well as emerging voices like Abe Kazushige, Ishii Shinji, and Kawakami Hiromi. From the orthodox to the cutting-edge, they represent a range of styles and themes, showcasing the diversity of Japanese fiction over the past few decades in a collection that is equally rewarding for beginning, intermediate, and advanced students of English or Japanese. Complete with notes, the stories make excellent reading in either language.

Breaking Barriers

Author: Constantine Nomikos Vaporis
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 1684173035
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Book Description
"Travel in Tokugawa Japan was officially controlled by bakufu and domainal authorities via an elaborate system of barriers, or sekisho, and travel permits; commoners, however, found ways to circumvent these barriers, frequently ignoring the laws designed to control their mobility, in this study, Constantine Vaporis challenges the notion that this system of travel regulations prevented widespread travel, maintaining instead that a “culture of movement” in Japan developed in the Tokugawa era.Using a combination of governmental documentation and travel literature, diaries, and wood-block prints, Vaporis examines the development of travel as recreation; he discusses the impact of pilgrimage and the institutionalization of alms-giving on the freedom of movement commoners enjoyed. By the end of the Tokugawa era, the popular nature of travel and a sophisticated system of roads were well established: Vaporis explores the reluctance of the bakufu to enforce its travel laws, and in doing so, beautifully evokes the character of the journey through Tokugawa Japan."