The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki Shikibu, translated by Royall Tyler [in aMagazine: Inside Asian America]
01 Oct, by in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation
Perhaps the biggest news in translated Asian titles is the rebirth of the world’s first novel, The Tale of Genji, by Lady Murasaki Shikibu, translated for the third time into English, this...
Here's the updated, revised second edition of the bestselling academic classic. Put it together with the two-parter Sources of Japanese Tradition, Volume Two: 1600 to 2000, and you'll have the...
This welcome collection offers a look at some of the later works of the prolific 17th-century Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725), still considered to be Japan’s most famous playwright.
Review: 
Original Japanese Gen-Xer Banana Yoshimoto's Asleep offers a collection of three novellas, each about a young woman disconnected somehow to her present reality, finding relief and release only through sleep. We could all probably use a...
The latest in genius A Wild Sheep-creator Murakami’s repertoire of dreamy, mystical reveries, this time about the disappearance of the narrator’s quirky, unsettled writer friend.
Review: 
The unpredictable Murakami deftly forays into nonfiction with an eerily unput-downable compilation of eyewitness accounts of what happened on March 20, 1995 when members of a religious cult unleashed deadly sarin gas on a crowded rush-hour...
A master of disturbing, psychologically complex stories, Yoshimura's On Parole chronicles the release of a man from a life sentence for having murdered his wife, wounding her lover, and inadvertently killing the lover’s mother.
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One Man's Justice, the third book by bestselling Japanese author Akira Yoshimura to be translated into English, is all about perspective: One man's justice proves to be his condemnation. Takuya, an officer in the Japanese Imperial...
Court Intrigue: An interview with Liza Dalby about her new book, The Tale of Murasaki
Six hundred years before the Western world saw its first novel, Lady Murasaki Shikibu’s brilliant tome, The Tale...
A lovely story about a young Japanese boy who learns about Christmas for the first time from his California-born Japanese American mother as she prepares a special pine tree, decorated with paper...
Taro is known throughout the village as its laziest citizen. When a rich merchant moves into town, he hatches a plan to ensure an easy life by convincing...
Shin so believes in the reality of his friend Tasuke’s dream of finding gold that he "buys" the dream and borrows money before setting off to find the treasure. Arriving...
When the world’s first atomic bomb detonated over the Japanese city of Hiroshima, young Mii was sitting at breakfast with her mother and father. Remarkably, the family survived the blast that day,...
Tiffany and Kevin, two Japanese American children, move to Japan because of their father’s job. While they might look like "chopsticks among other chopsticks," they are American, which proves to be very...
After learning about Sadako Sasaki, a young Hiroshima bomb victim who folded thousands of paper cranes in hopes of prolonging her life, a young American girl folds a crane of her own and wishes...
A lone duck flies into downtown Tokyo and hatches 10 ducklings. People flock to Mitsui Office Park to watch the ducks’ progress, including Mr. Sato, a newspaper photographer who names the tiniest of the ducks, Chibi....
Shy Chibi does not fit in with the rest of his schoolmates. During the last school year, the new teacher takes an interest in Chibi, who amazes the teacher with his knowledge about the...
While her mother goes to run an errand, Anna is left in charge of her younger sister, Katy. Katy wanders off while Anna is not looking and Anna quickly goes about searching....
Mariko wakes up every morning to her mother’s cheerful call. She shares breakfast with her family, then watches the hustle-bustle as her two older sisters and parents prepare to leave,...
Two sisters, Riko and Sachi, are on their way to school when the U.S. B-29 bomber named Enola Gay drops the first atom bomb at 8:15 a.m. on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. History is changed...