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The Sound of Waves 59 reviews
Yukio Mishima
Vintage, 1994
The Sound of Waves reveals the genius of Yukio Mishima
+ A Wonderful Story About Love and Hope
+ sound of waves , a story of simple life on a Japanese fishing island
+ Mishima's unseen solitude
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Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan: Second Series
Lafcadio Hearn
BiblioBazaar, 2006
MY little two-story house by the Ohashigawa, although dainty as a bird-cage, proved much too small for comfort at the approach of the hot seasonthe rooms being scarcely higher than steamship cabins, and so narrow that an ordinary mosquito-net could not be suspended in them.
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Thousand Cranes 20 reviews
Yasunari Kawabata
Vintage, 1996
Evanescent Eroticism and Death, the Japanese Forte
+ Subtle prose, powerful content
+ Kawabata rocks!
+ Essence of sublime
+ Tea without Sympathy
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The Key & Diary of a Mad Old Man
Junichiro Tanizaki
Vintage, 2004
These two modern classics by the great Japanese novelist Junichiro Tanizaki, both utilize the diary form to explore the authority that love and sex have over all. In The Key , a middle-aged professor plies his wife of thirty years with any number of stimulants, from brandy to a handsome young lover, in order to reach new heights of pleasure. Their alternating diaries record their separate ...
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The Sound of the Mountain19 reviews
Yasunari Kawabata
Vintage, 1996
This too, shall pass
+ Heaven knows I'm miserable now
+ The Sound of the Mountain
+ sarah sounds of the mountain
+ Good Book But Not So Good Idea !!!
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Beauty and Sadness13 reviews
Yasunari Kawabata
Vintage, 1996
Revenge
+ A bleak study of intertwined sexual relationships
+ Art and suffering
+ Beauty and Sadness
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The Woman in the Dunes55 reviews
Kobo Abe
Vintage, 1991
Scary, but somehow comforting.
+ Images cascaded in my mind
+ The World Takes a Psychological Shape
The sand pit in Kobo Abe's The Woman In The Dunes is a completely artificial construct, but it never feels that way. In reality, sand doesn't behave the way described in the book. When the director Hiroshi Teshigahara made the film adaptation ("Woman In The Dunes," recently reissued by Criterion, ...
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The Decay of the Angel11 reviews
Yukio Mishima
Vintage, 1990
Staggering
+ A fine last volume leading up to a nihilistic but utterly fascinating ending.
+ A fine last volume leading up to a nihilistic but utterly fascinating ending.
+ Sea of Silence ...
+ brilliant
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Secret Rendezvous6 reviews
Kobo Abe
Vintage, 2002
The labyrinth of a Hospital
+ weird, but good
+ A Japanese "Kafka" at His Best
+ A sort of pseudo-Freudian sex nightmare...
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Five Women Who Loved Love: Amorous Tales from 17th-century Japan 4 reviews
Ihara Saikaku
Tuttle Publishing, 1989
Lovely
+ Life is short. Love is long
+ Loved to death
+ The Price of Love
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The Obituary Arrives at Two O'Clock1 review
Shizuko Natsuki
Ballantine Books, 1988
Murder in Modern Japan
So many goodies of modern Japan are here: golf courses, greed, love, debt, family honor, Western style consumerism, fraud, and murder. I enjoyed this mystery of a golf course scheme gone really bad. The creepy little twist at the end wasn't half bad. I understand this author is very popular in ...
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The Kabuki Theatre of Japan
A. C. Scott
Dover Publications, 1999
One of the most comprehensive handbooks available on Kabuki theatre provides readers with all the information they need to understand and appreciate this exciting amalgam of dramatic and musical arts. A clear and thoughtfully written text describes the theater’s development in the context of Japanese history, with detailed analyses of actors’ techniques, music and dance, plays and ...
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Chushingura (The Treasury of Loyal Retainers): A Puppet Play6 reviews
Takeda Izumo, Miyoshi Shoraku
Columbia University Press, 1997
The virtue of blind loyalty
+ The Japanese Vendetta story to rival The Count of Monte Cristo
+ Kill Moronao: Revenge is a Dish Best Served Cold, with Te-uchi noodles
+ Wonderful, interesting book. good translation~~
+ Keeneŭs translation brings a puppet play to life
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The Narrow Road to Oku (Illustrated Japanese Classics)4 reviews
Matsuo Basho
Kodansha International, 1997
...lovely...
+ A True Work of Art
+ Simply beautiful
+ "The Narrow Road To Oku"
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The Box Man: A Novel9 reviews
Kobo Abe
Vintage, 2001
It's hip to be square...
+ Soul of the Minimalistic Realism
Having put off reading this book until I moved back to Tokyo I'd say the box man mentality fits nicely with foreigners trying to understand Japan. Someone first descibed living in Tokyo to me like floating in a warm bubble. Unless you speak the language or fit in culturally you'll always be a ...
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Ark Sakura 6 reviews
Kobo Abe
Vintage, 1989
Expert modern fable
+ Kobo Abe, Japanese Beckett
Thematically, this novel is similar to Abe's more famous book, 'The Woman in the Dunes;' it emphasizes a sense of community and connection with others. What I like about it (among other things) is that it's hardly a sledgehammer philosophical message; it allows for vaguery. The main character is a ...
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The Tale of Genji20 reviews
Murasaki Shikibu, Edward G. Seidensticker
Knopf, 1978
The purple wisteria blooms only for me
+ The best Genji yet
+ Ketrice Evans review
+ The Tale of Genji
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Snow Country47 reviews
Yasunari Kawabata
Vintage, 1996
Multi-layered thematic subtlety
+ Exploration of futile emotion
+ A Beautiful Story Set In Snow Country
+ Book Order
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The Ruined Map: A Novel5 reviews
Kobo Abe
Vintage, 2001
One of Kobo Abe's finest writings
+ Truly mind-bending!
Kobo Abe, one of the greatest surrealistic novelists, liked to depict, with the precise calculation and unconstrained freedom of mind that Picasso gave his work, entangled and precarious relatiionships between an individual and the society to which he "belongs". In "The Ruined Map", Kobo Abe casts ...
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The Face of Another8 reviews
Kobo Abe
Vintage, 2003
Great!
+ A face to meet the faces that we meet...
+ The absurdity is almost a character.
+ 5-stars for the eerie film version by master director Hiroshi Teshigahara
+ Suspenseful with a mind boggling affect!
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