Offering the first systematic examination of five modern Japanese fictional narratives, all of them available in English translations, Atsuko Sakaki explores Natsume Soseki's Kokoro and The Three-Cornered World; Ibuse Masuji's Black Rain; Mori Ogai's Wild Geese; and Tanizaki Jun'ichiro's Quicksand, Her close reading of each text reveals a hitherto unexplored area of communication between narrator and audience, as well as between implied author and implied reader. By using this approach, the author situates each of these works not in its historical, cultural, or economic contexts but in the...

This is an English-language anthology dedicated to the short stories of Kurahashi Yumiko (1935-), a Japanese novelist of profound intellectual powers. The eleven stories included in this volume suggest the breadth of the author's literary production, ranging from parodies of classical Japanese literature to cosmopolitan avant-garde works, from quasi-autobiography to science fiction. Her subversive fiction defies established definitions of "literature," "Japan," "modernity" and "femininity," and represents an important intellectual aspect of modern Japanese women's literature.