Nagai Kafu is one of the greatest modern Japanese writers, but
until now his classic collection, "American Stories, " based on his
sojourn from Japan to Washington State, Michigan, and New York City
in the early years of the twentieth century, has never been
available in English. Here, with a detailed and insightful
introduction, is an elegant translation of Kafu's perceptive and
lyrical account.
Like de Tocqueville a century before, Kafu casts a fresh, keen
eye on vibrant and varied America -- world fairs, concert halls,
and college campuses; saloons, the immigrant underclass, and
red-light districts. Many of his vignettes involve encounters with
fellow Japanese or Chinese immigrants, some of whom are poorly paid
laborers facing daily discrimination. The stories paint a broad
landscape of the challenges of American life for the poor, the
foreign born, and the disaffected, peopled with crisp individual
portraits that reveal the daily disappointments and occasional
euphorias of modern life.
Translator Mitsuko Iriye's introduction provides important
cultural and biographical background about Kafu's upbringing in
rapidly modernizing Japan, as well as literary context for this
collection. In the first story, "Night Talk in a Cabin," three
young men sailing from Japan to Seattle each reveal how poor
prospects, shattered confidence, or a broken heart has driven him
to seek a better life abroad. In "Atop the Hill," the narrator
meets a fellow Japanese expatriate at a small midwestern religious
college, who slowly reveals his complex reasons for leaving behind
his wife in Japan. Caught between the pleasures of America's cities
and the stoicism of its small towns, he wonders if he can ever
return home.
Kafu plays with the contradictions and complexities of early
twentieth-century America, revealing the tawdry, poor, and mundane
underside of New York's glamour in "Ladies of the Night" while
celebrating the ingenuity, cosmopolitanism, and freedom of the
American city in "Two Days in Chicago." At once sensitive and
witty, elegant and gritty, these stories provide a nuanced
outsider's view of the United States and a perfect entrance into
modern Japanese literature.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!