Languages

Mutsuo Takahashi admires the ancient Greeks’ innocence and lack of shame about their bodies in this short poem. In Olympia, young men do not wear a single thread In Pythia, in Isthmia, and in Nemea too In every gymnasium in every small town They’re as naked as the day they were born It’s because they were born this way They’re honest and upright, not the least bit lewd Like the Greek summer sky, Pure and fresh, a model of health itself What made them so obscene...

A man wanders through Tokyo’s gay and lesbian district in this poem by Mutsuo Takahashi. Not lustful Socrates, nor Plato Not Xenophon, just a plain pederast I wandered through the nighttime labyrinth of Ni-Chōme’s1 Athens Sharing with young men encountered there, not dialogues, not sweet nothings Not delirious ravings, just plain hot breath—however The wisdom gathered from those wanderings is far deeper Than that of ancient Greece, or at least, it is filled With far...

Introduction: Megacity Lockdown Coronavirus has thrived in megacities, determined to make it in the big smoke of the world’s densest urban hubs. It was in industrial Wuhan, now the most infamous megacity of them all, where tightly packed tower-block residents first showed signs of a new lung infection. New York and London, superstar cities, meccas for tourists, are now epicenters not of culture but mortality. The virus spread easily on their densely packed transport networks, their...

This twist on a traditional fairy tale features a reclusive witch and an inventive young woman. A war raged on for years. Witches had little choice but to protect themselves. Some gave up magic and passed as humans; others fled to the mountains and severed all contact with villages and towns. Still others, hoping for compensation, became castle witches and fought alongside lords of the realm at the battlefront. Through all of the fighting, the witches’ ways of coping were as varied...

A cheating husband, a jealous wife, and a suspicious bottle of wine turn a celebratory dinner into a tragedy in this excerpt from Shōko Egawa’s “The Sixth Victim.” At the border between Mie and Nara prefectures is an area called Kuzuo. Kuzuo had once been a single village, but it was split in two when Japan’s feudal domains came to an end during the Meiji period. The part of Kuzuo now located in Mie is called Nabari. It’s also known as Iga Kuzuo....

In this excerpt from Yu Miri's Tokyo Ueno Station, forthcoming in 2019 from Tilted Axis Press, a homeless man remembers a parental failure.     There’s that sound again. That sound— I hear it. But I don’t know if it’s in my ears or in my mind. I don’t know if it’s inside me or outside. I don’t know when it was, or who it was either. Is that important? Was it important? Who was it? *** I used to think life was like...

Rainbow Bird tells the story of Katsuya, a young Okinawan man longing to escape his life in the criminal underworld of the island where he grew up. Set in 1995 shortly after three U.S. servicemen stationed in Okinawa kidnapped and raped a twelve-year-old girl, the story unfolds against a backdrop of protests and mass demonstrations. Katsuya’s job is to force women to prostitute themselves while he photographs the transaction, then blackmails the clients. When his newest girl,...

When a lawyer and his interpreter visit a Hazara woman in a Japanese prison, they discover there are questions she can't—or won't—answer.   Mr. Tanaka filled in two copies of the visitors’ application form and passed them to the man on the other side of the small reception window. A few minutes later, a heavy iron door opened in front of us, and a tall, sturdy policeman appeared. He was almost too well built to be Japanese, his muscles bursting out...

Japanese poet Hiromi Itō meditates on dislocation, violence, and shifting terrains of language in this narrative poem.  It was the year the Persian Gulf War started and came to an end I came on my own to California I had no roots, no family with me, I felt like I could do no wrong One day someone bewildered me by asking What brought you here? Translating it literally, the question sounded like What transported you to this place? It wasn’t someone specific from somewhere,...

Recently, I heard a story from a friend. Apparently my friend’s boyfriend had a bad habit that bothered her so much that finally one day she begged him to stop. Her boyfriend had agreed, resolving not to do it anymore, and then told her that there was something he wanted her to stop doing as well. My friend said she could comply with his request but, knowing how difficult it would be for her boyfriend to stop doing the thing she had asked, she wondered with trepidation what he would...

Amy Yamada takes notes as a young woman recalls an early lesson Every one of our bodies gives off some sexual scent. Whether you are beautiful or ugly, it doesn’t matter. There is no denying it. But whether or not you make others aware of it, it changes how you appear. What's more, whether or not you see it as a useful tool changes how often you pause for others. And how often others do for you. At what age does a woman, if she is sexually attracted to men, for example,...

Japanese poet Takako Arai conjures an unvanquishable ghost, who literally left work undone. Video: Takako Arai and Jeffrey Angles read “Wheels” (credits below) A fire’s coming! It’ll be here soon! A female snake kept warning us For ages it lived in the storage above the closet We grew up hearing its voice Each time we laid out the bedding My sister and I could hardly stand it We’d lie anxiously in wait, temples pounding It’s coming! It’ll be...

Translator’s Note: As everyone knows, the March 11, 2011, earthquake that shook northeastern Japan also released a devastating tsunami that devastated the northeastern Tōhoku coast of Japan and precipitated the worst nuclear meltdown since Chernobyl. By the time that the dust had cleared, the losses were staggering. A tally from the Japanese National Police Agency stated that 15,886 people had been killed, 6,148 people had been injured, and 2,620 people were still missing as of...

After Félix Valloton's Le Ballon There is a reason for her beauty. She has a secret that she can tell nobody, and it is that secret which makes her beautiful. She has no mother. Her mother died when she was very young, and she was raised by her father. Her father now has a new family. He got married again the year she turned fifteen. She knew, too, that he had been seeing this other woman while her mother was still alive. She never once criticized him for it. Don't worry...

This is an official report based on the firsthand accounts of interviewees A through Z. Each entry has been abstracted and the subjects’ names have been redacted. Various fruits appear in the report. Here, the term “various” is synonymous with “many kinds.” Examples are: apple; banana; blueberry; cherry; fig; grape; kiwi; lemon; lime; lychee; mango; melon; navel orange; papaya; peach; pear; pineapple; pomegranate; strawberry; sudachi; watermelon; and yuzu. In...

Omwet. No, no. Omelet. Omwet. Not omwet, omelet. Omwet. Omwet? What about this? Sweet. Sweet? And this? Green. Green, is it? Well, what about this? Clam. That’s right, clam. And this? Shiitako. Almost—shiitake. Shiitake. On a cold day seven years ago, just two days into his retirement, Taihei’s wife died.  When she still wasn’t up at noon, he’d gone to the bedroom to wake her, cracking a joke, is this how lazy you get when the head of the...

A pane of glass shatters. I open my bedroom window and look up and down the street. A man is running away. Under the kitchen table I find a rock the size of a baby’s fist. I push the larger fragments of glass into a pile by the wall with the toe of my slipper, then get a broom and sweep up the smaller shards. I don’t want to run the vacuum cleaner in the middle of the night, so I leave it at that and go back to bed. Did you see who it was? My wife asks, lying with her back to...

Running in a daze through the city’s dreamlike darkness. I’m all alone. Gasping for air. And I can’t go home with my school uniform filthy like this. I’m soaked to the skin, my body is cold, but there’s an uncomfortable dull heat hanging around my neck. The late rainy season deluge pounds down on me. I wipe my face. I push my hair back again. Racked with unhappiness and thirsty for blood, like a beast with a splinter dug deep in its paw. My heart has bared a...

The place had opened for business at eleven a.m. but no one showed up. The old man wasn’t surprised, though, since Thursdays were often like this. But when nine p.m. came and went and there were still no customers, he decided to close up, and switched off the wall lights. With no games being played, he could hear the cooling compressor of the Coke machine humming noisily. It was the kind of vending machine with glass bottles, the kind of old-fashioned dispenser his maintenance man had...

Now was the time to leave. She could go anywhere, as long as there were streets. Just had to walk to get there. These feet would take her. Though they weren’t as good as they used to be. Oh Hagar, slave-girl of Sarai! Where have you come from, and where are you going? I am running from my mistress Sarai, she answered. This road was here before they paved it. The rain left it muddy, pockmarked by puddles. She had walked this street every day, ever since she was a girl. Quite a few...

When the three days and nights for which it is said the dead return each year came around, the containers of light that it was the custom to hang as waymarkers were brought out from the morning room and, translucent like souls, swayingly gave off a similar amount of coolness. Those paleish objects, were they five or six at first, either way numbered in excess for the small house moved to after the death; but while the death was recent, so were the gifts, and rather than deliberate over...

I was lying in bed when I learned of the novelist's death. Awaking from a long dream filled only with incoherent darkness, my mind was still a blur as I reached out for my iPhone next to the pillow to check the time. As my eyes rested on the little screen, I found the news in the Top Stories section. It was a single sentence made up of tiny characters. I understood the words but couldn't quite grasp the meaning. I tried saying aloud "Hmmm"—then again, "So he died." I felt...

“Here comes the air.” “Now water.” “Now I'm going to insert the cotton.” That's what my dentist, who looked like Misaki Ito, said. I looked up at the woman, in her late twenties, and her long, curling eyelashes, and wondered, “Did she get an eyelash perm?” A towel was spread over my fishnet stockings. I was leaning back, looking up. She blasted air into my mouth, washed it out with a small jet of water, and stuffed the space between...

The next time we met, Yoko pretended that the Shikoku conversation had never happened. Following her lead, I didn’t bring it up either. After the summoning job was done, Yoko turned to me. “I’m going to your house today. I promised your mother I would stop by.” So that was it. She’d obviously decided that it would be easier to convince my mother than it would be to try to change my mind. Mother greeted Yoko at the door and led her into the room with the...

In provincial towns, the hotel staff usually slides the hometown paper under the door in the morning. Unfamiliar with local news, most guests from cities barely glance through the main sections. But when your business meeting has gone well, and you wake up invigorated after a pleasant night of drinking, it's a different story. Perhaps because you feel a certain fondness for your host town and begin to feel attached, you want to read the paper from cover to cover. That’s exactly...

Yoko asked my name. Usually I’d stop and think about it, make a point of recalling the name. This time I decided not to. I didn’t think, didn’t search for the name. Didn’t try to respond. I wanted to see what would happen. Yoko grew annoyed as I just sat there. If I kept it up much longer it would kill the atmosphere of the summoning. Just as that thought crossed my mind, my mouth started to move. “Ito,” it said. “Ito? The spirit’s name is...

“You do want to go up on the roof, don’t you?” Emi hurried after me. I climbed the stairs and, copying Emi’s technique, unraveled the chain. When I opened the hatch, once again the sky stretched out as far as I could see. It seemed as though the school had been flung into the sky. I marched over to the wooden crates and Emi sat down across from me. She looked like she wanted to ask me something. “My mother seems to have taken a real liking to you. She talks...

My mother’s always been selfish and immature. She could be frustrating and drive me crazy from time to time but even I knew that there’s no such thing as a “perfect parent.” In any case, she always managed to keep her behavior within forgivable limits. I didn’t start to think there was anything really strange about her until last autumn, when funny rumors began to spread through the neighborhood. They started when a neighbor’s cat was found floating in...

My mother was sitting in front of the Buddhist altar as usual. She picked the habit up last winter and now spent most of each day there. “I’m home!” She turned, a vacant expression on her face. “You’re late. I was starting to get worried. What would I do if I lost you as well? I’d be all on my own.” “I was just talking with Yoko.” “Yuki, can you talk to Natsuki for me again next time? I’m taking all my medicine just like...

How much longer until we got there? The road was ridiculously wide. Empty but for a thick carpet of weeds, the plains on either side stretched into the distance with not so much as a single house to be seen. I was starting to get worried. Could this really be the way to the client? For once Yoko was quiet as she drove. She was usually full of unwanted advice after our meetings, but not today. Today the car was filled with the low hum of the engine and an oppressive silence. Having said...

 1 “Nine hundred thousand?” Aiko leaned forward and blinked in disbelief. The doctor before her gave an offhanded nod. She felt as though she’d been conned. “But the other doctor I to spoke to said 250,000.” She stuck out her lip, dissatisfied. Dr. Arai smiled politely. The badge on his chest read "Director" in small print just below his name. At first, when she realized that she was consulting with the director of the clinic himself, Aiko felt reassured...

Someday, sometime in the distant future, I wonder how my wife and I will look back on the month of March 2011. Obviously we’ll remember it as the month of the massive earthquake, but I suspect we’ll also think of it as a period during which we fought day in and day out. Perhaps it will even turn out to have been the beginning of the end of our marriage. Of course, things might have started moving toward the end much earlier, and we—or at least I—had simply failed...

I’ve long been aware of the many parallels between Mieko Kawakami’s home city of Osaka, Japan, and my own hometown, Manchester in the UK. The third largest cities in their respective countries, they were each central to the industrial revolution, and are still major industrial centers today. Tokyo is Japan’s capital, but Osaka dominates the country’s Western half. So Manchester, the biggest city of England’s North, is to London. The inhabitants of both cities...

I left school early that day and promptly became a truancy case. Conked out as soon as I got home and slept like the dead. I woke up in the evening after a bad dream, but struggled against a mild sleep paralysis for a long time first, so by the time I fully awoke my head was heavy and aching, as if I had a hangover. I sat up and peered out through my sweaty hair to find it was the precise moment when the sun was setting, glimmering and boiling hellishly. As it wavered and sank, it tinted...

Tokyo Metropolitan Highway No. 14 is less congested at 4 a.m. than it is during the day. And with fewer lights to get stuck behind at this hour, people tend to drive fast too. As I inhaled the smog-infected air, I debated which way to go after walking out of the building, then decided to go left, in the direction of Chōfu. It had been less than a year since I moved into his apartment, and I didn’t really know the area too well, but I figured if I followed this metro highway...

. . . and so my timing was thrown off. And so a space opened in my emotions. I became proud because I was so happy, and then, at the exact moment I had wished would last forever, before I could even ask, in about a second or so, I dove into the sea, ahead of Hiro. If only I had held on to his hand and we had gone under at same time, we could easily have made our way through the most massive of waves. What a shame, when Hiro had held out his hand, to share the joy of the sea with me....

"Kawanae" (Riverwilt) is the title poem from my first collection. It was written when I was about thirty—at the end of my youth—and I worked hard in the poem to bring together a number of themes and images that I had developed up to that point. It is a poem that is full of memories for me. Kawanae is a word I coined myself—in ordinary Japanese the words kawa (river) and naeru (to wither/droop/wilt) do not combine. I was born in the countryside near Tokyo and played a lot...

I was spending the better part of each day in a state of vaporization. In part this was to reduce physical strain on my lower back, which often pained me. The main reason, though, was because my mind was much more at ease while I was a vapor than when I wasn’t. To be in that state was to be free of anxiety over external events; I was able to simply float about indoors, comfortably and without a worry in the world. That’s how it felt. Escaping the spell of various physical...

It was a pleasant evening in late autumn. I was taking my usual shortcut home through the wooded campus of my university with its many tall ginkgo and zelkova trees. Strolling along, I came to a spot where the sunlight streamed through the branches of some ginkgos, which were especially beautiful at that time of year. Their yellow leaves flashed like cymbals, seemingly filling the air with their golden music. They danced to the ground in profusion, accompanied in my head by...

Just when you think you’ve figured out what is going on in “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Galactic Empire,” you trip on another oblique reference to some bit of the outside world. It’s a story that bears up to—and in fact, requires—multiple readings, as EnJoe takes pieces of pop and folk culture and replaces the original subject with his “Galactic Empire.” EnJoe’s science background (he started out as a physicist) means...

One December morning, Yonekura received an announcement for a farewell show by the celebrated Japanese-style illusionist Kyokujitsusai Tenka. Holding the mica-flecked invitation, Yonekura recalled visiting the performer backstage years earlier. He remembered Tenka’s eldritch skin, wrinkled beneath a heavy layer of face powder, and the otherworldly glow in Tenka’s eyes that seemed to draw him elsewhere. Onstage, Tenka appeared as a young woman, his hair coiffed in the shimada...

Horse What was that itch on my back, I wondered. And then I realized: the night was nibbling into me. It wasn't that late yet, still only dusk, but the darkness appeared to be collecting just above my shoulders. A particularly black clump of it had fastened onto my back, and a part of the area where it was touching me had been eaten away. I wriggled and tried to shake it off, but the night clung fast. Even when I tried to rip it off with my hands, this was impossible—it...

Flowers Toward the end of March, along the side street that runs parallel to Park Avenue, the golden trumpet flowers started to bloom. People talk about how yellow the blossoms can get, but it was even more vivid than I had imagined. I’d just moved to Koza. I ambled back and forth beneath the rows of trees in full bloom. The golden trumpet is the national flower of Brazil, and its color reminded me of the Brazilian team’s World Cup uniform. I remember being surprised by the...

“Fish Variations” presents very interesting challenges to the translator in its play with linguistic form. The poem involves a very high degree of phonetic engineering, with some verses grouped together by vowels and some by consonants. For more detail, see the translator's blog.     A fish Swims its way Through the deep dark sea Ah! There is nothing Now left undone  Letting out a little breath I start to walk across the endless ...

I know you. Your name is Kanashii. Sadness. You used to be called Shiina Kana—that’s the Japanese way, with family name first. In junior high your classmates shortened it to Shii Kana, and after moving to Tokyo you switched it around to make Kanashii. You’ve only been back to your hometown twice. The first time was to see your best friend after she was in an accident. The second was for the funeral of a classmate you loathed. It was summer, and you were twenty-two. You...

Mrs. Okada seemed much thinner when I saw her at the next PTA meeting. Even from a distance I could see that she looked unwell. As we gathered in the meeting room some people made a point of not meeting her gaze while others seemed to stare avidly at her. Mrs. Kawai was the first person to speak to her. “Mrs. Okada! Youʼve lost weight, havenʼt you?” Mrs. Okada grinned back at her. “You can tell?” “Yes. I mean, itʼs not that you were fat...

“Hello?” There was no answer. I put the phone back down. I turned to go back to the kitchen and it rang again. I picked it up, wordlessly this time. Again nothing. As soon as I hung up it rang again. After this happened a few more times I just unplugged the phone. Quiet at last. I took the leftovers from the freezer and put them in the microwave. I didnʼt bother trying to figure out who might have been calling or why. Maybe it was a telemarketer, bitter because I had...

The woman showed up exactly one month to the day after the pigʼs arrival. I had just finished cleaning the house and was thinking about feeding the pig before I started waxing the floors when the doorbell rang. The woman on the intercom video screen looked like she was some kind of salesperson. I decided to pretend I wasnʼt home. Then, however, she leaned forward and brought her lips—caked thick with lipstick—up to the microphone. “Iʼm Hanamura, I work...

It trembles It is trembling again today I did not know that the earth Is an unruly cradle  A cruel cradle that lets Neither adult nor child sleep   It is March, it is spring It should be a gentle season of vernal sleep  When one sleeps so deeply there is no dawn But spring this year Shakes us to keep us From falling asleep   Earth, it is enough For you simply to  Keep spinning happily Leave the trembling To windblown flowers and Laundry hanging in...

Language is the first disaster that humanity experiences. Language is the violence that we, as people, continue to experience everyday.  We experience this disaster, this violence, and, still babies, begin to speak, unable to keep quiet.  They repeat somebody’s words just as they are, reproducing the form of someone else’s experience with disaster.  As a result, I do not know where “this disaster” begins, nor where it ends.—Author's...

I stared up at the moon, large and round in the sky, clenching a fistful of pebbles. I donʼt know what time it was. I suppose it must have been around midnight. Just beyond the cinder-block wall all the second-story windows in our neighborʼs house were dark. Just as the windows of our house were dark behind me. I stood in the back garden. I say “garden” but in fact it was nothing more than a narrow strip of dirt separating the rear of the house from the high wall....

The Navidad Incident takes place in the fictional South Sea island republic of Navidad. The novel opens as a delegation of Japanese war veterans pays an official visit to the ex-World War II colony, only to see the Japanese flag burst into flames. The following day, the tour bus, and its passengers, simply vanish. BUS REPORT 1 At 6:00 A.M., lowest ebb tide, a bus was sighted crossing the lagoon between Gaspar and Baltasár islands, sending ripples across the surface. The yellow...

I know who I am Now I am here I might disappear at any moment But even if I do I am still I The truth is that not being I would be fine too I am to some extent a blade of grass Perhaps to some extent a fish A dully gleaming crystal too Whose name I do not know And of course I am mostly you            Because even after being forgotten I cannot fade away I am a repeating melody Hesitating, I am a faint wave-particle that came...

I based my first film on a dream. A dream also inspired my second film, made three years later. Through a gloomy thicket in the shadows of a tree bathed in white light, I witnessed a scene still clearly etched in my mind. A man knelt alone on the edge of a cliff, staring down at the pool of a waterfall far below. A woman had sunk in its depths. I think she had been his friend. As he gazed at the stately waterfall in the mountains, he had whooped and hollered. Suddenly, wantonly, he...

I’d just come up to Tokyo from a Kyushu port town that had a U.S. military base and was living with some friends in a crummy little apartment in a wooden building north of Inokashira Park. These friends had formed a blues band back home and hoped to find success in the big city. I played drums but wasn’t really passionate about carrying on with a blues band from the hinterlands of Kyushu. My main priority had been to get away from my parents, and they’d agreed to send me...

I read “On the Conduct of Lord Tadanao” when I was thirteen or fourteen, and though I’ve not had an opportunity to reread it since, I still remember the plot some twenty years later. It’s a strangely poignant tale. A young feudal lord, an excellent swordsman, is in the habit of challenging his retainers to fencing matches. One night, after defeating all comers, he is strolling complacently through the garden when he overhears the following disconcerting words,...

You know, Karuizawa at the time was a veritable ghost town. It was autumn of Meiji 24 (1891), and the area appeared to be at the height of decline. At any rate, the once thriving post town on the Nakasendo was now utterly desolate. The land was unsuited to farming, and it was hardly possible even to make a living any more—indeed, many people had moved elsewhere. Father and I alighted from the train at Yokogawa, and took the stagecoach along the old road over the Usui Pass, rattling...

As usual, the boy missed the fly ball that anyone else would have caught with his eyes closed, and it rolled into a thicket of reeds by the river.  The audible sighs of the other kids were like knives in the boy’s back as he trudged after it, reeds wrapping themselves around his shins while he searched for the ball amid the empty cigarette boxes and candy wrappers scattered on the ground. Of course he didn’t find it. It wasn’t like these kids had a bunch of extra...

Called Ai no Monogatari (AI's Story) in Japanese, Hiroshi Yamamoto's The Stories of Ibis is a grand tour of science fiction and an excellent example of how science fiction as a genre is collectively self-aware. The Stories of Ibis is a framed narrative; in a world where artificial intelligences rule and humans are a minority, a wandering storyteller is captured by Ibis and told seven science-fiction stories about the development of AI in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries....

The woman gave birth to a baby girl at the maternity hospital and then disappeared the very same day. Located not far from downtown Isezaki-cho, the maternity hospital was well known as a place where many of the girls who worked as hostesses in Yokohama went for abortions. The woman arrived at the hospital alone, gave birth to the child alone, and then left alone. She never once held her baby in her arms, nor did she give her a name. When she left the hospital room, she tried not to...

I walked on, and something followed. Enough distance still lay between us that I couldn't tell if it was male or female. It made no difference, I ignored it, kept walking. I had set out before noon from the guest house on the inlet, headed for the tip of the cape. I stayed there last night, in that small building set amid an isolated cluster of private houses, run by a man and woman who, judging from their ages, were mother and son. It was nearly nine when I arrived, two hours on a...

Mr. Twisted When I returned home as usual from yet another ridiculously mind-numbing day at school, I noticed a linen sack on my desk. In the blink of an eye my grandmother, who looked as though she'd been around for several hundred years, appeared behind me and said, "Look what I found." "What?" "Open it and see," she said. I opened it. Dust danced out of the sack, trailed by an unhealthy stink of mold. From deeper inside, I pulled out a frighteningly ancient stack of notebooks. I...

For the past two months, I've been dreaming the same dream over and over. It only dawned on me recently. We forget most dreams, so why should I dream this again and again? It begins in the Osaka alley where I lived as a child. The military had destroyed houses along a four-kilometer stretch to create a fifty-meter-wide emergency road. This served both as an evacuation route and as a defense against the U.S. firebombings. A small alley off the evacuation road ended at an old fence of...

When I first met Mr. Masaomi Chikamatsu in the town of Y, I must say he was not exactly friendly toward me. True, I was just a writer on the lookout for a story. I interview many people in the course of my work, and find the level of respect accorded me inevitably depends on the subject's image of a writer—and as you may imagine, older people generally tend to be more respectful than the young. Yet they all, without exception, wear an expression of distaste, as if gazing upon...

"Itoyama's sharp eye and sly wit set her apart from other Japanese women writers. Her writing style is intellectually controlled, and often glows with wisdom."--Kenzaburo Oe "My hiccups won't stop." Makihara Futoshi was standing in his stocking feet just inside the door with a woebegone look on his face. When I stop to think about it, that somewhat troubled expression quite suited him. It hadn't been my intention to go to Gotanda. After all, I live in Saitama City and...

Good morning, students. Today ends our intensive course. These past ten days we have discussed specific methodologies in applied astrophysics: initial long-distance sighting, probe selection, plotting orbits, principles of space simulation programming, various recent developments in the field—I believe I glossed all the main technical aspects. Both this institution and I myself expect you chosen few will go on to great things with the knowledge and skills you have acquired here. Best...

1 He later recalled that it had been a strange, sleepless night. Sanogawa Shinsha had fallen asleep in bed with a script propped on his chest when word arrived that his younger brother, Tojaku, had just died in a car accident. Shinsha and his wife, Chisa, slept side by side on low matching beds placed in a bedroom decorated in a mixture of Japanese and foreign styles. Because Shinsha had a habit of reading scripts, memorizing parts, and planning roles late into the night, an antique...

This story is set in the time when monsters were still living up there in the mountains and down here in the forests. Granny Long Tongue and Red Ban the Ogre lived high up on Mt. Okuyama, at Okumata Pass. The woman's tongue was longer than a snakevine, stronger than a stable boy's whip. Red Ban's face was broader than a cottage window, and when he bared his tusks and moved his face up close to yours, he was so scary that even the mountain bears rolled their eyes in fright....

Whenever I sit at a bar drinking like this, I always think what a sacred profession bartending is. The bartender, with the stained-glass shelves of many-colored bottles behind him, moves precisely about in a shining crystal vestibule, like a priest conducting a ritual. Pouring the holy liquid into a glass, he listens with a reverent, sympathetic smile as the customers recite their woes. At the far end of the bar is a pair of unattractive Mesdames with coarse skin and too much makeup....