Japanese Tales from Times Past
Japanese Tales from Times Past

Author:

Publisher: Tuttle Publishing

Published: 2015-08-04

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1462917216

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This collection of translated tales is from the most famous work in all of Japanese classical literature--the Konjaku Monogatari Shu. This collection of traditional Japanese folklore is akin to the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer or Dante's Inferno--powerfully entertaining tales that reveal striking aspects of the cultural psychology, fantasy, and creativity of medieval Japan--tales that still resonate with modern Japanese readers today. The ninety stories in this book are filled with keen psychological insights, wry sarcasm, and scarcely veiled criticisms of the clergy, nobles, and peasants alike--suggesting that there are, among all classes and peoples, similar failings of pride, vanity, superstition and greed--as well as aspirations toward higher moral goals. This is the largest collection in English of the Konjaku Monogatari Shu tales ever published in one volume. It presents the low life and the high life, the humble and the devout, the profane flirting, farting and fornicating of everyday men and women, as well as their yearning for the wisdom, transcendence and compassion that are all part and parcel of our shared humanity. Stories Include: The Grave of Chopsticks Robbers Come to a Temple and Steal Its Bell The Woman Fish Peddler at the Guardhouse Fish are Turned into the Lotus Sutra A Dragon is Caught by a Tengu Goblin The Monk Tojo Predicts the Fall of Shujaku Gate Wasps Attack a Spider in Revenge

Tales of Moonlight and Rain
Tales of Moonlight and Rain

Author: Akinari Ueda

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2008-12-24

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 0231511248

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First published in 1776, the nine gothic tales in this collection are Japan's finest and most celebrated examples of the literature of the occult. They subtly merge the world of reason with the realm of the uncanny and exemplify the period's fascination with the strange and the grotesque. They were also the inspiration for Mizoguchi Kenji's brilliant 1953 film Ugetsu. The title Ugetsu monogatari (literally "rain-moon tales") alludes to the belief that mysterious beings appear on cloudy, rainy nights and in mornings with a lingering moon. In "Shiramine," the vengeful ghost of the former emperor Sutoku reassumes the role of king; in "The Chrysanthemum Vow," a faithful revenant fulfills a promise; "The Kibitsu Cauldron" tells a tale of spirit possession; and in "The Carp of My Dreams," a man straddles the boundaries between human and animal and between the waking world and the world of dreams. The remaining stories feature demons, fiends, goblins, strange dreams, and other manifestations beyond all logic and common sense. The eerie beauty of this masterpiece owes to Akinari's masterful combination of words and phrases from Japanese classics with creatures from Chinese and Japanese fiction and lore. Along with The Tale of Genji and The Tales of the Heike, Tales of Moonlight and Rain has become a timeless work of great significance. This new translation, by a noted translator and scholar, skillfully maintains the allure and complexity of Akinari's original prose.

Tales of Old Edo - Kaiki
Tales of Old Edo - Kaiki

Author: Robert Weinberg

Publisher:

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 9784902075083

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Japan has a long history of weird and supernatural literature, but it has been introduced into English only haphazardly until now. The first volume of a 3-volume anthology covering over two centuries of kaiki literature, including both short stories and manga, from Ueda Akinari's Ugetsu Monogatari of 1776 to Kyogoku Natsuhiko's modern interpretations of popular tales. Selected and with commentary by Higashi Masao, a recognized researcher and author in the field, the series systemizes and introduces the scope of the field and helps establish it as a genre of its own. This first volume presents a variety of work focusing on pre-modern Japan, and includes one manga.

Longing and Other Stories
Longing and Other Stories

Author: Jun'ichirō. Tanizaki

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2022-01-04

Total Pages: 111

ISBN-13: 0231554419

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Jun’ichirō Tanizaki is one of the most eminent Japanese writers of the twentieth century, renowned for his investigations of family dynamics, eroticism, and cultural identity. Most acclaimed for his postwar novels such as The Makioka Sisters and The Key, Tanizaki made his literary debut in 1910. This book presents three powerful stories of family life from the first decade of Tanizaki’s career that foreshadow the themes the great writer would go on to explore. “Longing” recounts the fantastic journey of a precocious young boy through an eerie nighttime landscape. Replete with striking natural images and uncanny human encounters, it ends with a striking revelation. “Sorrows of a Heretic” follows a university student and aspiring novelist who lives in degrading poverty in a Tokyo tenement. Ambitious and tormented, the young man rebels against his family against a backdrop of sickness and death. “The Story of an Unhappy Mother” describes a vivacious but self-centered woman’s drastic transformation after a freak accident involving her son and daughter-in-law. Written in different genres, the three stories are united by a focus on mothers and sons and a concern for Japan’s traditional culture in the face of Westernization. The longtime Tanizaki translators Anthony H. Chambers and Paul McCarthy masterfully bring these important works to an Anglophone audience.

Strange Practice
Strange Practice

Author: Vivian Shaw

Publisher: Orbit

Published: 2017-07-25

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0316434612

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The first book in a delightfully witty fantasy series in which Dr. Greta Helsing, doctor to the undead, must defend London from both supernatural ailments and a bloodthirsty cult. Greta Helsing inherited her family's highly specialized and highly peculiar medical practice. In her consulting rooms, Dr. Helsing treats the undead for a host of ills: vocal strain in banshees, arthritis in barrow-wights, and entropy in mummies. Although she barely makes ends meet, this is just the quiet, supernatural-adjacent life Greta's been groomed for since childhood. Until a sect of murderous monks emerges, killing human and undead Londoners alike. As terror takes hold of the city, Greta must use her unusual skills to stop the cult if she hopes to save her practice and her life. Praise for the Dr. Greta Helsing Novels: "An exceptional and delightful debut, in the tradition of Good Omens and A Night in the Lonesome October."―Elizabeth Bear, Hugo-award winning author "Shaw balances an agile mystery with a pitch-perfect, droll narrative and cast of lovable misfit characters. These are not your mother's Dracula or demons."―Shelf Awareness Dr. Greta Helsing Novels Strange Practice Dreadful Company Grave Importance

Ugetsu Monogatari or Tales of Moonlight and Rain (Routledge Revivals)
Ugetsu Monogatari or Tales of Moonlight and Rain (Routledge Revivals)

Author: Ueda Akinari

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-08-06

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 1136810323

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Ugetsu Monogatari, or Tales of Moonlight and Rain numbers among the best-loved Japanese classics. These nine illustrated tales of the supernatural from eighteenth-century Osaka combine popular appeal with a high literary standard. The author expressed his complex views on human life and society in simple yet poetic language. Akinari questioned the prevailing moral values and standards of his age whilst entertaining his readers with mystery and other-worldly occurrences. This is a reissue of Leon Zolbrod’s definitive English translation of the work, first published in 1974.

Early Modern Japanese Literature
Early Modern Japanese Literature

Author: Haruo Shirane

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2008-04-21

Total Pages: 572

ISBN-13: 9780231516143

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This abridged edition of Haruo Shirane's popular anthology, Early Modern Japanese Literature, retains the essential texts that have made the original volume such a valuable resource. The book introduces English-speaking readers to prose fiction genres, including dangibon, kibyoshi (satiric picture books), sharebon (books of wit and fashion), yomihon, kokkeibon (books of humor), gokan (bound books), and ninjobon (books of romance and sentiment). It also features poetic genres such as waka, haiku, senryu, and kyoka, and plays ranging from Chikamatsu's puppet plays to nineteenth-century kabuki. Readers will continue to benefit from the anthology's selection of significant essays, treatises, literary criticism, folk stories, and other noncanonical works, as well as the numerous prints that accompanied these works. They will also find Shirane's introductions and critical commentary, which guide the reader through the allusive and often elliptical nature of these incredible selections.