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The Legend of Gold and Other Stories
The four stories and novella translated in this volume represent the best short fiction by Ishikawa Jun (1899-1987), one of the most important modernist writers to appear on the Japanese literary stage during the years before and after World War II. Throughout his career, Ishikawa resisted the tide of popular opinion to address issues of political and artistic significance and thereby paved the way for a generation of Japanese internationalists and experimentalists, including Abe Kobo and Oe Kenzaburo. Highly acclaimed and respected in Japan, Ishikawa remains little known in the West-in part because of the tendency of Western critics and readers of Japanese literature to focus on writers concerned with aesthetic issues. Combining a strong interest in politics with a brilliant use of modernist techniques, Ishikawa's work defies easy categorization.
Banned in 1938, Mars' Song has been called the finest example of anti-war fiction written during Japan's march to war in China and the Pacific. In it Ishikawa denounces the chorus of jingoism that swept Japan, and via a metafictional tale within a tale, he warns against the suicidal destruction to which complicity in warmongering will lead. The allegorical Moon Gems, written in the spring of 1945, further explores the tenuous position of the writer moving against the current in a country not only still at war but very near defeat. In The Legend of Gold and The Jesus of the Ruins, both from 1946, Japan has been reduced to a charred wasteland yet Ishikawa envisions destruction as fertile ground for rebirth and resurrection. Finally, the semi-surrealistic novella The Raptor plumbs the meanings and possibilities of peace in the post-Occupation era. William Tyler's eminently readable translations are faithfully expressive of stylistic and tonal nuances in the original works.
In a perceptive introduction and the critical essays that follow, Tyler emphasizes Ishikawa's importance as an anti-establishment--even resistance--writer and argues that the writer's political iconoclasm goes hand-in-hand with the modanizumu of his literary experimentation. The Legend of Gold will be of tremendous importance in enlarging a Western understanding of the development of the writer's role as social critic and the evolution of the modernist movement in postwar Japan.
Banned in 1938, Mars' Song has been called the finest example of anti-war fiction written during Japan's march to war in China and the Pacific. In it Ishikawa denounces the chorus of jingoism that swept Japan, and via a metafictional tale within a tale, he warns against the suicidal destruction to which complicity in warmongering will lead. The allegorical Moon Gems, written in the spring of 1945, further explores the tenuous position of the writer moving against the current in a country not only still at war but very near defeat. In The Legend of Gold and The Jesus of the Ruins, both from 1946, Japan has been reduced to a charred wasteland yet Ishikawa envisions destruction as fertile ground for rebirth and resurrection. Finally, the semi-surrealistic novella The Raptor plumbs the meanings and possibilities of peace in the post-Occupation era. William Tyler's eminently readable translations are faithfully expressive of stylistic and tonal nuances in the original works.
In a perceptive introduction and the critical essays that follow, Tyler emphasizes Ishikawa's importance as an anti-establishment--even resistance--writer and argues that the writer's political iconoclasm goes hand-in-hand with the modanizumu of his literary experimentation. The Legend of Gold will be of tremendous importance in enlarging a Western understanding of the development of the writer's role as social critic and the evolution of the modernist movement in postwar Japan.
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First published November 1, 1998
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October 25, 2021Do people read Ishikawa in Japan? I get the feeling yes. Do people read him outside Japan? Definitely not. But you should.
Because he is a writer, who, in these stories stands with the finest and weirdest of his mid-century Japanese fine weirdo colleagues -- Oe, Abe, and maybe even the divine Mishima. I would also say that he's the strongest precursor to Murakami out of all of those, given the way his stories are grounded the dull background noise of everyday life (The Raptor is basically 1Q84, written decades before), and the ongoing fallout (forgive the tasteless pun) of Japanese involvement in the Second World War and the various atrocities committed in the name of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. I honestly don't know why he's fallen out of the conversation.
Because he is a writer, who, in these stories stands with the finest and weirdest of his mid-century Japanese fine weirdo colleagues -- Oe, Abe, and maybe even the divine Mishima. I would also say that he's the strongest precursor to Murakami out of all of those, given the way his stories are grounded the dull background noise of everyday life (The Raptor is basically 1Q84, written decades before), and the ongoing fallout (forgive the tasteless pun) of Japanese involvement in the Second World War and the various atrocities committed in the name of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. I honestly don't know why he's fallen out of the conversation.
June 14, 2021
Never having read anything by Ishikawa I was curious to sample his work. While I am not a big fan of short stories, this collection was the only thing readily available via the Internet Archive. So I decided to give it a try.
Unlike most short story collections I found that four of the five pieces in Legend were quite good. Ishikawa proved in one of them to be a perceptive and critical observer of the passivity of Japan’s citizens at the start of its war with China in 1938. In another written in 1945 he noted that ‘nothing is more likely to propel us headlong down the path towards barbarism than a single minded obsession with spiritual purity.’ Two others were critiques of ‘the newly created’ post war society where people were ‘moral delinquents and social outcasts’ only thinking about making money. He also questioned that they were supposed to feel guilty for the brutality of the military during the war.
While all four of these were allegorical depictions in an effort to avoid censorship, they were still relatively straightforward with characters that were impressively engaging despite the brevity of the story. The last one published in 1953 was a more surreal, Kafkaesque like tale of the struggles taking place between the humanitarian strivings of the left wing intelligentsia vs the efforts by the government to gain strict adherence to its capitalist goals. This was harder to follow than the others.
The critical analyses of the stories offered by the translator in the second half of the book provided some much needed literary, historical, social, and political context in which to view these stories. The analyses also furnished bits of helpful biographical information about Ishikawa. Without these I would not have grasped some of points that the author tried to make.
At the conclusion of Legend I was impressed enough to want to read one of Ishikawa’s full length novels. Now I have to find out if any of them have been translated into English.
Unlike most short story collections I found that four of the five pieces in Legend were quite good. Ishikawa proved in one of them to be a perceptive and critical observer of the passivity of Japan’s citizens at the start of its war with China in 1938. In another written in 1945 he noted that ‘nothing is more likely to propel us headlong down the path towards barbarism than a single minded obsession with spiritual purity.’ Two others were critiques of ‘the newly created’ post war society where people were ‘moral delinquents and social outcasts’ only thinking about making money. He also questioned that they were supposed to feel guilty for the brutality of the military during the war.
While all four of these were allegorical depictions in an effort to avoid censorship, they were still relatively straightforward with characters that were impressively engaging despite the brevity of the story. The last one published in 1953 was a more surreal, Kafkaesque like tale of the struggles taking place between the humanitarian strivings of the left wing intelligentsia vs the efforts by the government to gain strict adherence to its capitalist goals. This was harder to follow than the others.
The critical analyses of the stories offered by the translator in the second half of the book provided some much needed literary, historical, social, and political context in which to view these stories. The analyses also furnished bits of helpful biographical information about Ishikawa. Without these I would not have grasped some of points that the author tried to make.
At the conclusion of Legend I was impressed enough to want to read one of Ishikawa’s full length novels. Now I have to find out if any of them have been translated into English.
December 7, 2025
Five stories from before, during, and after the war. Most interesting of them are the first two set during a streak of repressive nationalism and the fire bombing of Tokyo. Ishikawa suffers from bad titles and a tendency after the war to slip into genre fiction tropes that don’t land as well as other works from roughly the same period (1984 and Alphaville come to mind). My favorite— I had to reread it the day after I read it to be sure i wasn’t just in a period of mania— is Mars’ Song. The story of a useless writer called in to find his missing nephew-in-law after his niece’s shocking suicide. The mood is complex: elegiac, angry, self-mocking. And the ending left me breathless. Do you identify with someone watching their country sink into shocking displays of thoughtless violence where their only recourse is to recede completely from the outside world? I sure have lately!
November 30, 2007
My favorite story was 'Song of Mars.' Mostly because I was feeling very antiwar when I read it and something with me connected with him even though it was a different culture and a different time entirely.
May 19, 2010
With his combination of great storytelling, philosophical complication, and quirky surrealism, Ishikawa was the predecessor of the now popular author Haruki Murakami. If you like Murakami, definitely check out this book.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews