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A hundred years and a day: 34 stories
Shibasaki, Tomoka; Barton, Polly
MONKEY
, 2025
; English
; 224 Pages
This ground-breaking collection from Tomoka Shibasaki, author of the acclaimed novel Spring Garden, pushes the short story to a new level.
In these stories of human connection in a contemporary, alienated world, people come together to share pieces of their lives, then part. We meet the women who share a house after the outbreak of war before going their separate ways once it is over
the man who lives in a succession of rooftop apartments
the diverging lives of two brothers who are raised as latch-key kids by factory workers
the old ramen restaurant that endures despite the demolition of all surrounding buildings
people who watch a new type of spaceship lift off from a pier that once belonged to an island resort
and more.
These 34 tales from all over the planet have the compulsive power of news reports, narrated in a crisp yet allegorical style.
Shibasaki, Tomoka; Barton, Polly
MONKEY
, 2025
; English
; 224 Pages
This ground-breaking collection from Tomoka Shibasaki, author of the acclaimed novel Spring Garden, pushes the short story to a new level.
In these stories of human connection in a contemporary, alienated world, people come together to share pieces of their lives, then part. We meet the women who share a house after the outbreak of war before going their separate ways once it is over
the man who lives in a succession of rooftop apartments
the diverging lives of two brothers who are raised as latch-key kids by factory workers
the old ramen restaurant that endures despite the demolition of all surrounding buildings
people who watch a new type of spaceship lift off from a pier that once belonged to an island resort
and more.
These 34 tales from all over the planet have the compulsive power of news reports, narrated in a crisp yet allegorical style.
eBook
Illusory dwellings : aesthetic meditations in Kyoto
Weiss, Allen S.
Stone Bridge Press
, 2024
; English
; 223 Pages
Essays on the nature, production, and presentation of art, craft, and architecture in Japan, inspired by the author's experiences in Kyoto.
Illusory Dwellings is not a guide concerning what to see in Kyoto, but a philosophical meditation on how to travel and observe in this capital of traditional Japanese art.
Both intimate and scholarly, the book accompanies the reader on visits to famed gardens like Ryōan-ji, investigates the complex symbolism of the tea ceremony and the important role of the tea room, reveals the beauty of Japanese cuisine, and delves into the world of contemporary ceramics. It also provides context for the tensions and harmony between traditional and modern forms of art and craft in Kyoto and throughout Japan, and contrasts these with how they are received at home versus their treatment by Western museums in modernist contexts.
Altogether this is an erudite and provocative analysis of artist and observer, a book to shape the reader's aesthetic worldview and provide numerous occasions for discussion and debate. With over 50 black and white photographs.
Weiss, Allen S.
Stone Bridge Press
, 2024
; English
; 223 Pages
Essays on the nature, production, and presentation of art, craft, and architecture in Japan, inspired by the author's experiences in Kyoto.
Illusory Dwellings is not a guide concerning what to see in Kyoto, but a philosophical meditation on how to travel and observe in this capital of traditional Japanese art.
Both intimate and scholarly, the book accompanies the reader on visits to famed gardens like Ryōan-ji, investigates the complex symbolism of the tea ceremony and the important role of the tea room, reveals the beauty of Japanese cuisine, and delves into the world of contemporary ceramics. It also provides context for the tensions and harmony between traditional and modern forms of art and craft in Kyoto and throughout Japan, and contrasts these with how they are received at home versus their treatment by Western museums in modernist contexts.
Altogether this is an erudite and provocative analysis of artist and observer, a book to shape the reader's aesthetic worldview and provide numerous occasions for discussion and debate. With over 50 black and white photographs.
eBook
Shibusawa, Tatsuhiko; Boyd, David
MONKEY
, 2024
; English
; 152 Pages
Introducing Tatsuhiko Shibusawa—Japan’s Italo Calvino—in this fantastical tale of a Japanese prince who encounters both beauty and danger on a pilgrimage to India.
A fantasy set in the ninth century, Takaoka’s Travels recounts the adventures of a Japanese prince-turned-monk on a pilgrimage to India. As Prince Takaoka and his companions pass through faraway lands, the rules of the ordinary world are upended, and they find curiosities and miracles wherever they go.
The travelers encounter strange creatures--a white ape who guards a harem of bird-women, beasts who feed on dreams, a dog-headed man who can see hundreds of years into the future. On the high seas, their ship is boarded by ghostly pirates and driven back by supernatural winds, and still they push on.
At every turn, Prince Takaoka is drawn to the beauty around him, whether it takes the form of a perfectly shaped pearl or a giant blood-red flower, but such beauty proves to be extremely dangerous. Seductive and mysterious, offering high adventure yet deeply human, this is a novel that transcends all expectations.
With an afterword by translator David Boyd.
eBook
Shibusawa, Tatsuhiko; Boyd, David
MONKEY
, 2024
; English
; 152 Pages
Introducing Tatsuhiko Shibusawa—Japan’s Italo Calvino—in this fantastical tale of a Japanese prince who encounters both beauty and danger on a pilgrimage to India.
A fantasy set in the ninth century, Takaoka’s Travels recounts the adventures of a Japanese prince-turned-monk on a pilgrimage to India. As Prince Takaoka and his companions pass through faraway lands, the rules of the ordinary world are upended, and they find curiosities and miracles wherever they go.
The travelers encounter strange creatures--a white ape who guards a harem of bird-women, beasts who feed on dreams, a dog-headed man who can see hundreds of years into the future. On the high seas, their ship is boarded by ghostly pirates and driven back by supernatural winds, and still they push on.
At every turn, Prince Takaoka is drawn to the beauty around him, whether it takes the form of a perfectly shaped pearl or a giant blood-red flower, but such beauty proves to be extremely dangerous. Seductive and mysterious, offering high adventure yet deeply human, this is a novel that transcends all expectations.
With an afterword by translator David Boyd.
eBook
Joiner, David
Stone Bridge Press
, 2023
; English
; 215 Pages
The Heron Catchers is an intimate, understated look at an American and his attempt to recover his life after his marriage to a Japanese woman has failed. It is the author's second novel set in and around the fabled city of Kanazawa in western Japan. After Nozomi abandons Sedge and their marriage, taking all their money and leaving him with a ceramics shop he can't manage alone, her brother and his wife offer him a lifeline at their Japanese hot spring inn until he can get back on his feet. As he proceeds forward from this devastation in his life, he becomes involved with the wife of the man Nozomi ran off with as well as her stepson, a troubled 16-year-old whose jealousy and potential for violence contrasts with his interest in birds, origami, and the haiku of Matsuo Basho. What unfolds in the shadow of 'the immortal mountain of cranes' will change their lives forever.
Joiner, David
Stone Bridge Press
, 2023
; English
; 215 Pages
The Heron Catchers is an intimate, understated look at an American and his attempt to recover his life after his marriage to a Japanese woman has failed. It is the author's second novel set in and around the fabled city of Kanazawa in western Japan. After Nozomi abandons Sedge and their marriage, taking all their money and leaving him with a ceramics shop he can't manage alone, her brother and his wife offer him a lifeline at their Japanese hot spring inn until he can get back on his feet. As he proceeds forward from this devastation in his life, he becomes involved with the wife of the man Nozomi ran off with as well as her stepson, a troubled 16-year-old whose jealousy and potential for violence contrasts with his interest in birds, origami, and the haiku of Matsuo Basho. What unfolds in the shadow of 'the immortal mountain of cranes' will change their lives forever.
eBook
The four immigrants manga : a Japanese experience in San Francisco, 1904-1924
Kiyama, Henry (Yoshitaka); Schodt, Frederik L.
Stone Bridge Press
, 2023
; English
; 154 Pages
From servanats in fancy homes to workers in the fields, through earthquakes, riots, a World's Fair, war, and Prohibition--the true story of four young Japanese men who pursued their dreams in the rough and tumble of American history.
Kiyama, Henry (Yoshitaka); Schodt, Frederik L.
Stone Bridge Press
, 2023
; English
; 154 Pages
From servanats in fancy homes to workers in the fields, through earthquakes, riots, a World's Fair, war, and Prohibition--the true story of four young Japanese men who pursued their dreams in the rough and tumble of American history.
eBook
Kanji box : Japanese character collection
Oketani, Shogo; Lowitz, Leza
Stone Bridge Press
, 2023
; English
; 150 Pages
Bold, visual, profound, symbolic: Japanese kanji characters communicate powerful graphic messages that look great on skin, walls, stationery, T-shirts, and more. Here are dozens of edgy, targeted characters hand-picked to help you find the inner you and express yourself in a distinctive stylish way. With cultural clues, readings, font varieties, and ideas for proper use. Don't embarrass yourself with bad ink!
Oketani, Shogo; Lowitz, Leza
Stone Bridge Press
, 2023
; English
; 150 Pages
Bold, visual, profound, symbolic: Japanese kanji characters communicate powerful graphic messages that look great on skin, walls, stationery, T-shirts, and more. Here are dozens of edgy, targeted characters hand-picked to help you find the inner you and express yourself in a distinctive stylish way. With cultural clues, readings, font varieties, and ideas for proper use. Don't embarrass yourself with bad ink!
eBook
Off the beaten tracks in Japan : a journey by train from Hokkaido to Kyushu
Dougill, John
Stone Bridge Press
, 2023
; English
; 307 Pages
Observations on the people, culture, and history of Japan from a long-time resident riding the rails along the less-traveled western coastline. This journey the length of Japan takes the reader off the beaten tracks to explore some of the country's remoter regions along the Japan Sea--from Wakkanai in northern Hokkaido to Ibusuki in southern Kyushu--in a fascinating mix of travelogue, anecdote, and personal memoir. At each of the thirty stops along the journey the author, who has lived in Japan for thirty years, goes in quest of the spirit of place, determined to highlight what makes it special. Mixing comments on landscape and culture, the author was inspired by Alan Booth and Donald Richie and brings a contemporary perspective to his writing. The text provides some practical information on travel by rail and railway lines, but goes into far more depth and personal observation than a conventional guidebook for tourists.
Dougill, John
Stone Bridge Press
, 2023
; English
; 307 Pages
Observations on the people, culture, and history of Japan from a long-time resident riding the rails along the less-traveled western coastline. This journey the length of Japan takes the reader off the beaten tracks to explore some of the country's remoter regions along the Japan Sea--from Wakkanai in northern Hokkaido to Ibusuki in southern Kyushu--in a fascinating mix of travelogue, anecdote, and personal memoir. At each of the thirty stops along the journey the author, who has lived in Japan for thirty years, goes in quest of the spirit of place, determined to highlight what makes it special. Mixing comments on landscape and culture, the author was inspired by Alan Booth and Donald Richie and brings a contemporary perspective to his writing. The text provides some practical information on travel by rail and railway lines, but goes into far more depth and personal observation than a conventional guidebook for tourists.
eBook
Kawakami, Hiromi; Goossen, Ted
Stone Bridge Press
, 2023
; English
; 116 Pages
"How can a person resist?"-- The Paris Review Stories from a Japanese master of transformative fiction, where reality, myth, and human foibles meet shifting dimensions of gender, biology, and destiny. From the bestselling author of Strange Weather in Tokyo comes this otherworldly collection of eight stories, each a masterpiece of transformation, infused with humor, sex, and the universal search for love and beauty--in a world where the laws of time and space, and even species boundaries, don't apply. Meet a shape-shifting con man, a goddess who uses sex to control her followers, an elderly man possessed by a fox spirit, a woman who falls in love with her 400-year-old ancestor, a kitchen god with three faces in a weasel-infested apartment block, moles who provide underground sanctuary for humans who have lost the will to live, a man nurtured through life by his seven extraordinary sisters, and a woman who is handed from husband to husband until she is finally able to return to the sea.
eBook
Kawakami, Hiromi; Goossen, Ted
Stone Bridge Press
, 2023
; English
; 116 Pages
"How can a person resist?"-- The Paris Review Stories from a Japanese master of transformative fiction, where reality, myth, and human foibles meet shifting dimensions of gender, biology, and destiny. From the bestselling author of Strange Weather in Tokyo comes this otherworldly collection of eight stories, each a masterpiece of transformation, infused with humor, sex, and the universal search for love and beauty--in a world where the laws of time and space, and even species boundaries, don't apply. Meet a shape-shifting con man, a goddess who uses sex to control her followers, an elderly man possessed by a fox spirit, a woman who falls in love with her 400-year-old ancestor, a kitchen god with three faces in a weasel-infested apartment block, moles who provide underground sanctuary for humans who have lost the will to live, a man nurtured through life by his seven extraordinary sisters, and a woman who is handed from husband to husband until she is finally able to return to the sea.
eBook
Crazy for kanji : a student's guide to the wonderful world of Japanese characters
Kushner, Eve
Stone Bridge Press
, 2023
; English
; 219 Pages
Crack the code of kanji and enjoy the entertaining insights afforded by these dynamic symbols.
Kushner, Eve
Stone Bridge Press
, 2023
; English
; 219 Pages
Crack the code of kanji and enjoy the entertaining insights afforded by these dynamic symbols.
eBook
Discovering Yamaguchi Sake: a taster’s guide to breweries, culture, and terrain
Rion, Jim; Joe, Melinda
Stone Bridge Press
, 2023
; English
; 226 Pages
This book is the first of its kind, a deep-dive into a single sake-producing region to highlight its delicious brews as well as the people, land, and culture behind them. Brewing in Yamaguchi -- in southern Honshu, Japan -- reflects the whole history of sake in Japan, from boom to bust to resurgence, and many of its brands, including the fabled Dassai, are now at izakaya and fine restaurants around the world. Expert Jim Rion takes us on a tour of all 23 Yamaguchi breweries to introduce the character of each and its brewmasters' best picks. Along the way he provides background on such topics as rice farmers, drinkware, brewing methods, and the controversy over sake "terroir" (does it exist?). An added bonus for travelers is a mini sightseeing guide to the region and its many delights. Illustrated with photographs and quick-reference sake labels.
Rion, Jim; Joe, Melinda
Stone Bridge Press
, 2023
; English
; 226 Pages
This book is the first of its kind, a deep-dive into a single sake-producing region to highlight its delicious brews as well as the people, land, and culture behind them. Brewing in Yamaguchi -- in southern Honshu, Japan -- reflects the whole history of sake in Japan, from boom to bust to resurgence, and many of its brands, including the fabled Dassai, are now at izakaya and fine restaurants around the world. Expert Jim Rion takes us on a tour of all 23 Yamaguchi breweries to introduce the character of each and its brewmasters' best picks. Along the way he provides background on such topics as rice farmers, drinkware, brewing methods, and the controversy over sake "terroir" (does it exist?). An added bonus for travelers is a mini sightseeing guide to the region and its many delights. Illustrated with photographs and quick-reference sake labels.
