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In these two novellas, Kimura Yusuke explores human and animal life
in northern Japan after the natural and nuclear disasters of March
11, 2011. Kimura inscribes the "Triple Disaster" into a rich
regional tradition of storytelling, incorporating far-flung voices
and experiences to testify to life and the desire to represent it
in the aftermath of calamity. In Sacred Cesium Ground, a woman from
Tokyo travels to volunteer at a cattle farm known as the "Fortress
of Hope," tending irradiated animals abandoned after the reactor
meltdown. The farm closely resembles an actual ranch that has been
widely covered in Japan, and the story's portrayal of those who
stubbornly care for animals in spite of the danger speaks to the
sense of futility and meaningfulness in the wake of traumatic
events. Isa's Deluge depicts a family of fishermen whose crotchety
patriarch draws on old tales of the floods that have plagued the
region to fashion himself as the father of the tsunami. Together,
the novellas present often-unheard voices of one of Japan's
peripheral regions and their anger toward the government and Tokyo
for mishandling and forgetting their part of the country. Kimura's
command of dialect and conversational language is masterfully
translated by Doug Slaymaker. Postapocalyptically surreal yet
teeming with life, Kimura's stories will be a revelation for
readers looking for a new perspective on the disaster's
consequences for Japan and on the interrelated meanings of human
and animal lives and deaths.
In these two novellas, Kimura Yusuke explores human and animal life
in northern Japan after the natural and nuclear disasters of March
11, 2011. Kimura inscribes the "Triple Disaster" into a rich
regional tradition of storytelling, incorporating far-flung voices
and experiences to testify to life and the desire to represent it
in the aftermath of calamity. In Sacred Cesium Ground, a woman from
Tokyo travels to volunteer at a cattle farm known as the "Fortress
of Hope," tending irradiated animals abandoned after the reactor
meltdown. The farm closely resembles an actual ranch that has been
widely covered in Japan, and the story's portrayal of those who
stubbornly care for animals in spite of the danger speaks to the
sense of futility and meaningfulness in the wake of traumatic
events. Isa's Deluge depicts a family of fishermen whose crotchety
patriarch draws on old tales of the floods that have plagued the
region to fashion himself as the father of the tsunami. Together,
the novellas present often-unheard voices of one of Japan's
peripheral regions and their anger toward the government and Tokyo
for mishandling and forgetting their part of the country. Kimura's
command of dialect and conversational language is masterfully
translated by Doug Slaymaker. Postapocalyptically surreal yet
teeming with life, Kimura's stories will be a revelation for
readers looking for a new perspective on the disaster's
consequences for Japan and on the interrelated meanings of human
and animal lives and deaths.
"As we passed from the city center into the Fukushima suburbs I
surveyed the landscape for surgical face masks. I wanted to see in
what ratios people were wearing such masks. I was trying to
determine, consciously and unconsciously, what people do in
response. So, among people walking along the roadway, and people on
motorbikes, I saw no one with masks. Even among the official
crossing guards outfitted with yellow flags and banners, none. All
showed bright and calm. What was I hoping for exactly? The guilty
conscience again. But then it was time for school to start. We
began to see groups of kids on their way to school. They were
wearing masks." Horses, Horses, in the End the Light Remains Pure
is a multifaceted literary response to the earthquake, tsunami, and
nuclear meltdown that devastated northeast Japan on March 11, 2011.
The novel is narrated by Hideo Furukawa, who travels back to his
childhood home near Fukushima after 3/11 to reconnect with a place
that is now doubly alien. His ruminations conjure the region's
storied past, particularly its thousand-year history of horses,
humans, and the struggle with a rugged terrain. Standing in the
morning light, these horses also tell their stories, heightening
the sense of liberation, chaos, and loss that accompanies
Furukawa's rich recollections. A fusion of fiction, history, and
memoir, this book plays with form and feeling in ways reminiscent
of Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory and W. G. Sebald's The Rings of
Saturn yet draws its own, unforgettable portrait of personal and
cultural dislocation.
This collection draws from scholars across different languages to
address and assess the scholarly achievements of Tawada Yoko. Yoko,
born in Japan (1960) and based in Germany, writes and presents in
both German and Japanese. The contributors of this volume recognize
her as one of the most important contemporary international
writers. Her published books alone number more than fifty volumes,
with roughly the same number in German and Japanese. Tawada's
writing unfolds at the intersections of borders, whether of
language, identity, nationality, or gender. Her characters are all
travelers of some sort, often foreigners and outsiders, caught in
surreal in-between spaces, such as between language and culture, or
between species, subjectivities, and identities. Sometimes they
exist in the spaces between gendered and national identities;
sometimes they are found caught between reality and the surreal,
perhaps madness. Tawada has been one of the most prescient and
provocative thinkers on the complexities of travelling and living
in the contemporary world, and thus has always been obsessed with
passports and trouble at borders. This current volume was conceived
to augment the first edited volume of Tawada's work, Yoko Tawada:
Voices from Everywhere, which appeared from Lexington Books in
2007. That volume represented the first extensive English language
coverage of Tawada's writing. In the meantime, there is increased
scholarly interest in Tawada's artistic activity, and it is time
for more sustained critical examinations of her output. This
collection gathers and analyzes essays that approach the complex
international themes found in many of Tawada's works.
This volume of essays and translations analyzes the prodigious and
wide-ranging output of Keijiro Suga. Based in Japan, Keijiro Suga's
works are wide-ranging and multilingual. His volumes of poetry have
been shortlisted for a range of poetry prizes, and he was awarded
the 2011 Yomiuri Shinbun Prize for Travel writing. He has
translated dozens of books and has authored or co-authored more
than fifteen other books across various genres. He is, by his own
introduction, a poet first, but is also a prolific book reviewer,
an astute theorist, and an insightful critic. His presence and
contributions have been profound in many countries around the
globe.
This seminal book is the first sustained critical work that engages
with the varieties of literature following the triple disasters-the
earthquake, tsunami, and meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear plant.
This collection draws from scholars across different languages to
address and assess the scholarly achievements of Tawada Yoko. Yoko,
born in Japan (1960) and based in Germany, writes and presents in
both German and Japanese. The contributors of this volume recognize
her as one of the most important contemporary international
writers. Her published books alone number more than fifty volumes,
with roughly the same number in German and Japanese. Tawada's
writing unfolds at the intersections of borders, whether of
language, identity, nationality, or gender. Her characters are all
travelers of some sort, often foreigners and outsiders, caught in
surreal in-between spaces, such as between language and culture, or
between species, subjectivities, and identities. Sometimes they
exist in the spaces between gendered and national identities;
sometimes they are found caught between reality and the surreal,
perhaps madness. Tawada has been one of the most prescient and
provocative thinkers on the complexities of travelling and living
in the contemporary world, and thus has always been obsessed with
passports and trouble at borders. This current volume was conceived
to augment the first edited volume of Tawada's work, Yoko Tawada:
Voices from Everywhere, which appeared from Lexington Books in
2007. That volume represented the first extensive English language
coverage of Tawada's writing. In the meantime, there is increased
scholarly interest in Tawada's artistic activity, and it is time
for more sustained critical examinations of her output. This
collection gathers and analyzes essays that approach the complex
international themes found in many of Tawada's works.
This volume of essays and translations analyzes the prodigious and
wide-ranging output of Suga Keijiro. Based in Japan, Suga Keijiro's
(b. 1958-) works are wide-ranging and multilingual. His volumes of
poetry have been shortlisted for a range of poetry prizes, and he
was awarded the 2011 Yomiuri Shinbun Prize for Travel writing. He
has translated dozens of books and has authored or co-authored more
than fifteen other books across various genres. He is, by his own
introduction, a poet first, but is also a prolific book reviewer,
an astute theorist, and an insightful critic. His presence and
contributions have been profound in many countries around the
globe.
Sakaguchi Ango (1906-1955) was a writer who thrived on iconoclasm
and agitation. He remains one of the most creative and stimulating
thinkers of twentieth-century Japan. Ango was catapulted into the
public consciousness in the months immediately following Japan's
surrender to the Allied Forces in 1945. The energy and iconoclasm
of his writings were matched by the outrageous and outsized antics
of his life. Behind that life, and in the midst of those tumultuous
times, Ango spoke with a cutting clarity. The essays and
translations included in Literary Mischief probe some of the most
volatile issues of culture, ideology, and philosophy of postwar
Japan. Represented among the essayists are some of Japan's most
important contemporary critics (e.g., Karatani K?jin and Ogino
Anna). Many of Ango's works were produced during Japan's wars in
China and the Pacific, a context in which words and ideas carried
dire consequences for both writers and readers. All of the
contributions to this volume consider this dimension of Ango's
legacy, and it forms one of the thematic threads tying the volume
together. The essays use Ango's writings to situate his
accomplishment and contribute to our understanding of the
potentials and limitations of radical thought in times of cultural
nationalism, war, violence, and repression. This collection of
essays and translations takes advantage of current interest in
Sakaguchi Ango's work and makes available to the English-reading
audience translations and critical work heretofore unavailable. As
a result, the reader will come away with a coherent sense of Ango
the individual and the writer, a critical apparatus for evaluating
Ango, and access to new translations of key texts.
"As we passed from the city center into the Fukushima suburbs I
surveyed the landscape for surgical face masks. I wanted to see in
what ratios people were wearing such masks. I was trying to
determine, consciously and unconsciously, what people do in
response. So, among people walking along the roadway, and people on
motorbikes, I saw no one with masks. Even among the official
crossing guards outfitted with yellow flags and banners, none. All
showed bright and calm. What was I hoping for exactly? The guilty
conscience again. But then it was time for school to start. We
began to see groups of kids on their way to school. They were
wearing masks." Horses, Horses, in the End the Light Remains Pure
is a multifaceted literary response to the earthquake, tsunami, and
nuclear meltdown that devastated northeast Japan on March 11, 2011.
The novel is narrated by Hideo Furukawa, who travels back to his
childhood home near Fukushima after 3/11 to reconnect with a place
that is now doubly alien. His ruminations conjure the region's
storied past, particularly its thousand-year history of horses,
humans, and the struggle with a rugged terrain. Standing in the
morning light, these horses also tell their stories, heightening
the sense of liberation, chaos, and loss that accompanies
Furukawa's rich recollections. A fusion of fiction, history, and
memoir, this book plays with form and feeling in ways reminiscent
of Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory and W. G. Sebald's The Rings of
Saturn yet draws its own, unforgettable portrait of personal and
cultural dislocation.
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