Mrs. Amino, a wealthy widow, asks Maiko Rokujo, a securities broker, to act as a private detective and find her son, whom she hasn't seen in twenty-five years

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This text presents a searching study of Shimao Toshio and his work. It is not only a thorough assessment of his literary legacy, but also aims to consider the broader issues relating to the emergence and nature of the postwar Japanese sense of identity. The book contextualizes Toshio's "dream stories" as a literary expression of wartime trauma, and argues that Shimao's powerful narration of guilt and victimization challenges standard readings of Japanese war literature. The author links all of the seemingly disparate strands in Toshio's stories, and shows that together they represent a consistent attempt to depict the existence of "the other". (view table of contents)

This text surveys the accomplishments of Nobel Prize winner Oe Kenzaburo and other writers of the post-war generation, while looking further to examine the literary parameters of the post-Oe generation. It includes essays on Endo Shusaku, Hayashi Kyoko, Kanai Mieko, Kurahashi Yumiko, Murakami Haruki, Murakami Ryu, Nakagami Kenji, Oe Kenzaburo, Ohba Minako, Shimada Masahiko, Takahashi Takako and Yoshimoto Banana. (view table of contents)

Product Description: "Spirit Matters" is a ground-breaking work, the first to explore a broad range of writings on spirituality in contemporary Japanese literature. It draws on a variety of literary works, from enormously popular fiction (Miura Ayako's "Hyoten" and "Shirokari Pass" and the novels of Murakami Haruki) to more problematic "serious" fiction (Oe Kenzaburo's "Somersault") to nonfiction meditations on martyrdom and miracles (Sono Ayako's "Kiseki") and the dynamics of religious cults (Murakami's interviews with members of Aum Shinrikyo in "Underground")...read more

An unrequited love for a woman devoted to Kerouac and the writer's life leads a man on a quest to uncover the mysteries of love and human longing after the woman disappears without a trace during her odyssey from parochial Japan through Europe to a Greek island, leaving behind only computer accounts of bizarre events and stories within stories. 30,000 first printing.

An unrequited love for a woman devoted to Kerouac and the writer's life leads a man on a quest to uncover the mysteries of love and human longing after the woman disappears without a trace during her odyssey from parochial Japan through Europe to a Greek island, leaving behind only computer accounts of bizarre events and stories within stories. Reprint.

Covers the 1995 Tokyo Gas Attack, during which agents of a Japanese cult released a gas deadlier than cyanide into the subway system, as documented in interviews with its survivors, perpetrators, and victim family members. Original. 15,000 first printing. (view table of contents)