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Hanakatsura: The Works Of Famous Literary Women In Japan, Tei Fujiu (Trans.), Kaho Miyake, Ichiyo Higuchi, Usurai Kitada, Otsuka Kusuo, Paul Royster (Ed.)

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Originally published in Tokyo in 1903, Hanakatsura (literally “garland of flowers”) features a biographical sketch of the activist and author Kishida Toshiko (Baroness Nakajima) plus four short stories by Japanese women writers of the Meiji era:

Akebonozome: A Cloth Dyed in Rainbow Colors, by Kaho Miyake

Ōtsugomori: The Last Day of the Year, by Ichiyo Higuchi

Onisenbiki: The Thousand Devils, by Usurai Kitada (Mrs. Kajita)

Shinobine, by Otsuka Kusuo

Compiled and translated by Tei Fujiu, four memorable and affecting stories depict women experiencing the frustrations of traditional family roles within an emergent commercial society at the turn of the century. …

Nami-Ko: A Realistic Novel, Kenjiro Tokutomi

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Nami-Ko, also called The Cuckoo (不如帰, Hototogisu), is a tragic story of love and devotion, through sickness, war, oppression, and vengeance. Eighteen-year-old Nami Kataoka hoped her marriage to Baron Takeo Kawashima would bring freedom from her overbearing stepmother. But the couple’s happiness is spoiled by her illness, her mother-in-law’s jealousy, and the schemes of Chijiwa, her husband’s cousin and her own disappointed suitor. Takeo’s naval career takes him away for long periods, and when war breaks out between Japan and China (in 1894), his mother takes advantage of his absence to break up the marriage, sending Nami back …

When I Was A Boy In Japan, Sakae Shioya

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Japanese children in the 1870s and 1880s were offspring of a centuries-old traditional order who faced a world suddenly dominated by foreign science and commerce. As a child in Meiji Japan, Sakae grew up among survivors of the shogunate and observed their samurai culture displaced by Western morals and practices. Meanwhile the traditional values of Japanese life still exerted a strong influence over his family and education and played a large part in shaping his experience, as recounted with charm and tenderness in this simple and reflective reminiscence.

Sakae Shioya (1873–1961) attended Tokyo’s First Imperial College and came to the …

The Pagoda, Rohan Kōda, Nariyuki Koda

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This novel is a landmark in Japanese literature, widely known, read, and beloved. Sometimes known as “The Five-Story Pagoda,” it tells the story of Jubei, a carpenter and craftsman, who dreams of building a pagoda for the Abbot of the Kannoji Temple. Despite his poverty, low station, and poor reputation—he is known as “the slouch”— Jubei’s determined and uncompromising allegiance to his own vision bring him the possibility of raising a great work for the ages … but will it stand against the howling demons of a tropical typhoon?

Rohan Kōda’s The Pagoda (Gojūnotō, 五重塔) first appeared in …

A Daughter Of The Samurai, Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto

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Born in 1874 the youngest daughter of a samurai and former daimyo—a feudal prince under the Takugawa shogunate—Etsu Inagaki grew up surrounded by ghosts of an aristocratic military lineage. Having fought on the losing side in the wars that installed the Meiji emperor, the ­Inagaki family was reduced in power, status, and wealth but not in pride or ­devotion to its traditional roles and customs. Etsu’s upbringing and education were conservative and old-fashioned, guided by the Shinto and Buddhist beliefs her family held. The samurai virtues of honor, ­stoicism, and sacrifice applied to daughters and wives as well as sons …

Ten Nights' Dreams And Our Cat's Grave, Natsume Soseki

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Ten Nights’ Dreams (夢十夜, Yume Jūya) is a classic written work from the Japanese master Natsume Soseki. Originally published in 1908, it announced the emergence in Japanese literature of a modernist and impressionistic mode. Short ­vignettes with fantastic, tragic, or magical events convey an exquisite sensibility compounded with stark realism. Love, honor, duty, artistry, desire, despair, and regret all shape events in the dream-world. The stories themselves suggest echoes of meanings beyond the failures of rational sense-making. Ten dreams—each unique and arresting—form a panorama of life and feeling, at once universal and intensely present.

“Our Cat’s Grave” is a brief …

I Am A Cat, No. Ii, Natsume Sōseki, Kan-Ichi Ando

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What would the neighbors say about you if they didn’t know your cat was listening?

What if it was “The Cat With No Name”? The one who claims “I have, as a cat, attained the highest pitch of evolution imaginable. … My tail is filled with all sorts of wisdom and, above all, a secret art handed down in the cat family, which teaches how to make fools of mankind. … I am a cat, it is true, but remember I am one who keeps in the house of a scholar who reads the Moral Discourses of Epictetus and bangs …

Reminiscences Of Lafcadio Hearn, Setsuko Koizumi, Paul Kiyoshi Hisada, Frederick Johnson

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Setsuko Koizumi (1868–1932) was the daughter of a Japanese samurai family in Matsué. In 1891 she married a foreigner — Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904) — and their union lasted 13 years and produced three children. Hearn adopted her family name, becoming Koizumi Yakumo 小泉八雲,and spent those years in Japan writing, teaching, and achieving international recognition. Setsuko’s Reminiscences tells something of the couple’s moves and travels, but focuses mostly on the character, habits, and eccentricities of her husband. The book is a heartfelt and intimate portrait of a marriage that brought Lafcadio the home and family he had never before enjoyed. This …

Botchan, Natsume Sōseke, Yasotaro Morri , Trans.

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This English translation of 坊っちゃん (1906) was published in Tokyo by Ogawa Seibundo in 1918. It is a first-person narrative of a young man’s two-month tenure as assistant mathematics teacher at a provincial middle school in 1890s Japan. A native son of Tokyo, with all its traits and prejudices, he finds life in a narrow country town unappealing — with its dull and mischievous students, scheming faculty, bland diets, stifling rules, and gossipy inhabitants. Impulsive, combative, committed to strict ideals of honesty, honor, and justice, he is quickly enmeshed in the strategems of the head teacher, “Red Shirt.” His sufferings …

Japanese Fairy Tales, Lafcadio Hearn

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• Chin-Chin Kobakama • The Goblin-Spider • The Old Woman Who Lost Her Dumplings • The Boy Who Drew Cats • The Silly Jelly-Fish • The Hare of Inaba • Shippeitarō • The Matsuyama Mirror • My Lord Bag-o’-Rice • The Serpent with Eight Heads • The Old Man and the Devils • The Tongue-Cut Sparrow • The Wooden Bowl • The Tea-Kettle • Urashima • Green Willow • The Flute • Reflections • The Spring Lover and the Autumn Lover • Momotaro

The versions of the first four tales in this volume are by Lafcadio Hearn. The others are …

Kokoro: Hints And Echoes Of Japanese Inner Life, Lafcadio Hearn, Koizumi Yakumo

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The works of Lafcadio Hearn (Koizumi Yakumo) played a critical role in introducing his adopted Japan to a worldwide audience. In Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life, he writes, “The papers composing this volume treat of the inner rather than of the outer life of Japan, — for which reason they have been grouped under the title Kokoro (heart). This word signifies also mind, in the emotional sense; spirit; courage; resolve; sentiment; affection; and inner meaning, — just as we say in English, ‘the heart of things.’” After centuries of isolation Meiji-era Japan was forced to adjust …