Brings together some of the best and most historically significant works of short fiction written in China in this century -including such important figures in the development of Chinese modernism as Lu Hsun, Mao Tun, Ting Ling, and Shen Ts' ung-wen. The companion volume to the highly acclaimed (Columbia, 1978), this new volume presents modernist short fiction from the thirty-year period leading up to the Communist revolution of 1949, after which Chinese literature entered a new phase of development. The stories range in setting from the late Ch'ing dynasty through the Sino-Japanese War and...

This deft translation of a classic Chinese novel tells the story of a man, now an itinerant healer, who wanders through the towns and countryside of North China in the last years of the Manchu dynasty.

Three plays by one of contemporary Japan's most prominent writers -- Involuntary Homicide, The Green Stockings, The Ghost is Here -- translated for this volume reveal Kobo Abe's deep love of absurdity in the face of universal concerns.

Tanka, a clasical Japanese verse form like haiku, has experienced a resurgence of interest among twentieth-century poets and readers. Arguably the central genre of Japanese literature, the 31-syllable lyric made up the great majority of Japanese poetry from the ninth to the nineteenth century and was the inspiration for such poetry as haiku and renga. Tanka has begun to attract considerable attention in North America in recent years. Modern Japanese Tanka is the first comprehensive collection available in English.

Tanka retains the aesthetic sensibilities that circumscribe Japanese...

Writing Women in Modern China is the first major anthology in English to highlight the contributions of women to modern literary culture with respect to the heated gender debates of early twentieth-century China. Featuring examples of fiction, drama, autobiography, essays, and poetry by eighteen writers, many of whom have been neglected by mainstream literary history, this collection demonstrates the creative diversity in modern women's writing.

The editors' introduction charts key developments in the study of gender, literature, and women's writing in modern China and provides an...

Here are graceful and timeless poems by one of Japan's greatest modern writers, rendered by a master translator. Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) is credited with modernizing Japan's two traditional verse forms, haiku and tanka. Born at a time of social and cultural change in Japan, Shiki welcomed the new influences from the West and responded to them by reinvigorating the native haiku and tanka forms. He freed them from outdated conventions, made them viable for artistic expression in modern Japan, and paved the way for the haiku to become one of his nation's most influential cultural exports....

No modern Japanese writer was more idolized than Shiga Naoya. The Paper Door and Other Stories showcases the concise, delicate art of this writer who is often called "the god of the Japanese short story." Doyen of Japanese letters Donald Keene ranks some of Shiga's stories "among the most brilliant achievements in this genre by any twentieth-century Japanese writer." Shiga's unique style is concise and simple, with no unnecessary words. With the subtlest of gestures, he evokes the fullness of experience.

Lane Dunlop's masterly translation of seventeen of Shiga's finest stories has...

In April 1926, the Japanese poet Taneda Santoka (1882-1940) set off on the first of many walking trips, journeys in which he tramped thousands of miles through the Japanese countryside. These journeys were part of his religious training as a Buddhist monk as well as literary inspiration for his memorable and often painfully moving poems. The works he wrote during this time comprise a record of his quest for spiritual enlightenment.

Although Santoka was master of conventional-style haiku, which he wrote in his youth, the vast majority of his works, and those for which he is most admired,...

Though best known for his novels, Yukio Mishima published more than sixty plays, almost all of which were produced during his lifetime. Among them are kabuki plays and others inspired by No dramas--two types used in classical Japanese theater. Of play-writing Mishima once observed, "I started writing dramas just as water flows toward a lower place. In me, the topography of dramas seems to be situated far below that of novels. It seems to be in a place which is more instinctive, closer to child's play." For English readers, these plays have been one of Japan's best-kept secrets--until now....