num_pages: 428
description: These 25 stories, translated by almost as many scholars, mostly of the younger generation, and billed as the first collection of its kind to appear in over eight years, demonstrate not only that short fiction in Japan is alive and well but that it has adapted to the winds of change, notably in the form of war, foreign literary influence, and technology by cultivating its roots in tradition. Although some of the writers represented are well known in the West--for example, Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata; Osamu Dazai, a literary legend in Japan since his suicide in 1948; Kobo Abe ("scientific rationalist"); and Shusako Endo ("the Japanese Graham Greene")--most are little known outside Japan or hitherto untranslated, among them six women: one the daughter of Dazai, another described as having perhaps "the most fertile literary imagination in Japan today." There's a striking diversity of moods and modes, the narratives being variously lyric, comic, tragic, satiric, fantastic, and experimental. Some are gemlike exercises in the famous "I-novel" tradition; in others, strains of Stendhal, Sartre, and Kafka mingle with indigenous traditions going back to the 10th century. All of the stories shine, and each is a telling vignette of the human condition.
language: English
title: The Showa Anthology 2: Modern Japanese Short Stories 1961-1984
titlecomplete: The Showa Anthology 2: Modern Japanese Short Stories 1961-1984
genres: Japanese Literature
ratings_count: 7
publisher: Kodansha International Ltd.