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Monkey Brain Sushi: New Tastes in Japanese Fiction
Cyberpunk, sci-fi and erotica all meld together in this collection of cutting-edge short stories. The authors tend towards near-zero emotional chill, stunned urbanity and a shiny kind of violence.
305 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
23 people are currently reading
979 people want to read
About the author
Alfred Birnbaum
28 books41 followersAlfred Birnbaum is an American born in 1957, living in Myanmar when he is not traveling elsewhere.
He has spend many years in Japan since childhood, and has been actively involved in the visual and performing arts there. He is also one of the leading translators of contemporary Japanese fiction, with three major novels by Haruki Murakami, and the award-winning A Burden of Flowers by Natsuki Izekawa, among his translations.
-from the back cover of Monkey Brain Sushi: New Tastes in Japanese Fiction
He has spend many years in Japan since childhood, and has been actively involved in the visual and performing arts there. He is also one of the leading translators of contemporary Japanese fiction, with three major novels by Haruki Murakami, and the award-winning A Burden of Flowers by Natsuki Izekawa, among his translations.
-from the back cover of Monkey Brain Sushi: New Tastes in Japanese Fiction
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
June 19, 2015
Alfred Birnbaum's introduction to this book downplays the fiction in this volume as neither serious literature nor pulpy trash; rather, he tells us it finds its stride in the middle of the road. The stories are artfully displayed, hence the sushi, and bounce frenetically between a variety of subjects, much like the unmindful "monkey brain" of Buddhism. To put less metaphorically, these stories are enjoyable, possibly escapist realities.
This really downplays the content of this anthology. There is a lot of serious literature to contemplate here. There is forbidden love, symbolic parody, and satire, just to name a few examples.
Even when the stories seem boring, they end up attacking the reader's palate with a thick piece of gristle, as in Osamu Hashimoto's Peony Snowflakes of Love in which a housewife leaves her husband and daughter for a female truck driver. You can see where the story is headed based upon the first interaction of the two women, and the detailed description of the bored housewife who is chronically unappreciated by her family. What you don't see coming is the violent familial interaction that serves as the catalyst to her abandonment, jarring you out of a haze of tedium.
The same goes for Amy Yamada's Kneel Down and Lick My Feet, in which an S&M queen relays to the reader her daily interactions with men desperate for under-the-counter love. Nothing here is shocking in the age of Fifty Shades of Grey (though I'm sure for 1988, the year of publication, it was) and I found myself drifting away during the description of unusual sexcapades. However, when a man arrives with an unusual request denied by all but one dominant and it is described in exquisite, gag-inducing details, I was caught a bit off guard. Not so much like this:
More like this:
Somehow, though, Yamada makes this bit of shocksploitation relevant to the story. The man, like the women, has something to hide. It is something deep seated and relevant to his previous love, which is now completely removed from his life. Perhaps our main character's motivations are deep seated too, but I’ll never know, which brings me to a major qualm about this book. Quite a few of the stories are novel excerpts.
This is a common complaint in other reviews, but I do not mind novel excerpts. Many argue it destroys the integrity of a work, but it certainly does not. Reader’s Digest Condensed Books destroy a work’s integrity. Audio abridgements destroy a work’s integrity. An excerpt does not. An excerpt drives the reader to seek out the rest of the work, which I did, only to find that the rest of Kneel Down and Lick My Feet is unavailable in English.
Nor is this the only excerpt where the rest of the text is only available in Japanese. Kyoji Kobayashi’s Mazelife is the second half of an untranslated novella. In fact, the “maze” referred to in the title is largely the focus of the first half of the novella, so without access to this, you’re left with an intriguing work about a rule-obsessed man seeking to hide from emotion and create his own god. Fascinating plot, no? Too bad you’ll never finish the story if you do not speak Japanese.
Overall, though, each of these short stories is well-worth a read, even if you sometimes might not know what the hell the author bios are trying to convey. Here is an excerpt from Osamu Hashimoto’s:
“Japanese reader’s of Peony Snowflakes of Love would immediately recognize this story as a sexual inversion on the classic Toei truckdriver-genre films scenario.>”
How’s that for esoteric? Luckily, it doesn’t impede the emotional resonance of the story.
There’s a wonderful satire piece by Yoshinori Shimizu entitled Japanese Entrance Exams for Earnest Young Men which skewers standardized testing. The work might have been published in 1988, but it is more-than-relevant to American public schools. I started having flashbacks to my days as an Exam Preparation Coordinator where I taught students how to take tests, not how to advance or appreciate their knowledge. Check out this gem of a paragraph:
“Ichiro loved to study now. He even came to like Japanese, which he had hated so much before. When he saw through the traps that the test writers had set for him and sidestepped them with ease, he felt the same exhilaration he felt when he dodged and outran a pursuer on the soccer field.” (253)
This is easily one of the best stories in the book.
There is even a manga by Michio Hisauchi called Japan’s Junglest Day that is based on the true story of soldiers discovered on a remote island in the 1970’s who still believed WWII raged. The manga involves a philosophical discussion of misery moderated by a giant, talking mess kit and a space alien dedicated to collecting money for needy children on his home planet.
Okay, so a few story elements might not have actually happened.
There is something in each of these stories to love, and quite a few things that disgust, but everything it has to offer is highly thought-provoking (and not in a faux, attempting depth kind of way) and entertaining.
This really downplays the content of this anthology. There is a lot of serious literature to contemplate here. There is forbidden love, symbolic parody, and satire, just to name a few examples.
Even when the stories seem boring, they end up attacking the reader's palate with a thick piece of gristle, as in Osamu Hashimoto's Peony Snowflakes of Love in which a housewife leaves her husband and daughter for a female truck driver. You can see where the story is headed based upon the first interaction of the two women, and the detailed description of the bored housewife who is chronically unappreciated by her family. What you don't see coming is the violent familial interaction that serves as the catalyst to her abandonment, jarring you out of a haze of tedium.
The same goes for Amy Yamada's Kneel Down and Lick My Feet, in which an S&M queen relays to the reader her daily interactions with men desperate for under-the-counter love. Nothing here is shocking in the age of Fifty Shades of Grey (though I'm sure for 1988, the year of publication, it was) and I found myself drifting away during the description of unusual sexcapades. However, when a man arrives with an unusual request denied by all but one dominant and it is described in exquisite, gag-inducing details, I was caught a bit off guard. Not so much like this:
More like this:
Somehow, though, Yamada makes this bit of shocksploitation relevant to the story. The man, like the women, has something to hide. It is something deep seated and relevant to his previous love, which is now completely removed from his life. Perhaps our main character's motivations are deep seated too, but I’ll never know, which brings me to a major qualm about this book. Quite a few of the stories are novel excerpts.
This is a common complaint in other reviews, but I do not mind novel excerpts. Many argue it destroys the integrity of a work, but it certainly does not. Reader’s Digest Condensed Books destroy a work’s integrity. Audio abridgements destroy a work’s integrity. An excerpt does not. An excerpt drives the reader to seek out the rest of the work, which I did, only to find that the rest of Kneel Down and Lick My Feet is unavailable in English.
Nor is this the only excerpt where the rest of the text is only available in Japanese. Kyoji Kobayashi’s Mazelife is the second half of an untranslated novella. In fact, the “maze” referred to in the title is largely the focus of the first half of the novella, so without access to this, you’re left with an intriguing work about a rule-obsessed man seeking to hide from emotion and create his own god. Fascinating plot, no? Too bad you’ll never finish the story if you do not speak Japanese.
Overall, though, each of these short stories is well-worth a read, even if you sometimes might not know what the hell the author bios are trying to convey. Here is an excerpt from Osamu Hashimoto’s:
“Japanese reader’s of Peony Snowflakes of Love would immediately recognize this story as a sexual inversion on the classic Toei truckdriver-genre films scenario.>”
How’s that for esoteric? Luckily, it doesn’t impede the emotional resonance of the story.
There’s a wonderful satire piece by Yoshinori Shimizu entitled Japanese Entrance Exams for Earnest Young Men which skewers standardized testing. The work might have been published in 1988, but it is more-than-relevant to American public schools. I started having flashbacks to my days as an Exam Preparation Coordinator where I taught students how to take tests, not how to advance or appreciate their knowledge. Check out this gem of a paragraph:
“Ichiro loved to study now. He even came to like Japanese, which he had hated so much before. When he saw through the traps that the test writers had set for him and sidestepped them with ease, he felt the same exhilaration he felt when he dodged and outran a pursuer on the soccer field.” (253)
This is easily one of the best stories in the book.
There is even a manga by Michio Hisauchi called Japan’s Junglest Day that is based on the true story of soldiers discovered on a remote island in the 1970’s who still believed WWII raged. The manga involves a philosophical discussion of misery moderated by a giant, talking mess kit and a space alien dedicated to collecting money for needy children on his home planet.
Okay, so a few story elements might not have actually happened.
There is something in each of these stories to love, and quite a few things that disgust, but everything it has to offer is highly thought-provoking (and not in a faux, attempting depth kind of way) and entertaining.
March 8, 2007
(Original pub date: 1991)
This is a collection of "modern" (compiled in 1991) Japanese short stories. Except, many of them aren't even short stories, I discovered, but excerpts from novellas. What the heck was the editor thinking?!? It destroys the integrity of the work if you cut half of it out; there's almost no point in reading it at all. It's like a sampler of various author's writing styles, presented without any possibility of deriving some meaning from the work.
Some of it was ok, and most of it was really out there, but the realization that a lot of them weren't actually short stories killed it for me. Murakami's The TV People was a for-real short story, but I was not impressed. It was kind of just random, and I couldn't figure out the point. Maybe it's been too long since I thought critically about serious literature? The freakiest one, about a dominatrix, I actually liked because it seemed to have a few interesting things to say, and drew an intriguing portrait of the narrator. The Yamada Diary, essentially a tale of a boy for whom the line between reality and a video game world starts to blur, actually takes that cliche premise and handles it with subtle deftness. Japanese Entrance Exams for Earnest Young Men was possibly the most accessible and fun story, with its skewering of the whole standardized test game.
Bonus hilarity points for this collection go to Momotaro in a Capsule, in which the author doesn't even bother to coyly introduce phallic symbols (for instance, a motorcycle). The main character blatantly calls each phallic symbol exactly what it is, and neatly reverses narrative conventions by framing everything he does explicitly and consciously in terms of maleness and phallic obsessions (rather than having that become a hidden message running through a more normal story). Not that I really liked this tale much, either, but the gimmick was interesting.
This is a collection of "modern" (compiled in 1991) Japanese short stories. Except, many of them aren't even short stories, I discovered, but excerpts from novellas. What the heck was the editor thinking?!? It destroys the integrity of the work if you cut half of it out; there's almost no point in reading it at all. It's like a sampler of various author's writing styles, presented without any possibility of deriving some meaning from the work.
Some of it was ok, and most of it was really out there, but the realization that a lot of them weren't actually short stories killed it for me. Murakami's The TV People was a for-real short story, but I was not impressed. It was kind of just random, and I couldn't figure out the point. Maybe it's been too long since I thought critically about serious literature? The freakiest one, about a dominatrix, I actually liked because it seemed to have a few interesting things to say, and drew an intriguing portrait of the narrator. The Yamada Diary, essentially a tale of a boy for whom the line between reality and a video game world starts to blur, actually takes that cliche premise and handles it with subtle deftness. Japanese Entrance Exams for Earnest Young Men was possibly the most accessible and fun story, with its skewering of the whole standardized test game.
Bonus hilarity points for this collection go to Momotaro in a Capsule, in which the author doesn't even bother to coyly introduce phallic symbols (for instance, a motorcycle). The main character blatantly calls each phallic symbol exactly what it is, and neatly reverses narrative conventions by framing everything he does explicitly and consciously in terms of maleness and phallic obsessions (rather than having that become a hidden message running through a more normal story). Not that I really liked this tale much, either, but the gimmick was interesting.
April 11, 2017
I stumbled across "Monkey Brain Sushi" (what a title, right?) on the shelves of the local Half Price Books back in the mid-90s. "New tastes in Japanese fiction" the cover declared. Well hey, I enjoy manga and anime, so why not? Plus it was five bucks--can't go wrong there.
I'll echo the comments of several other reviewers here in that I was disappointed to discover that many of what I thought were stand-alone short stories were, in fact, just chapters or excerpts from longer novels. That's not to say those stories are bad, just that at the end you're often left with a feeling of something missing. It's like reading those excerpts of literature in your textbook: you can get a sense of the story and the style, but the overall effect is diminished slightly.
That said, it's still a fun collection despite the fact a few years have passed since its publication in 1991.
Many people mention Murakami's "TV People" and Kobayashi's "Mazelife" as the standouts of the collection, and they're right. But while these two may be the strongest entries, my own personal favorite has always been Gen'ichiro Takahashi's "Christopher Columbus Discovers America" for reasons I've never quite been able to put my finger on. Its opening is certainly one of the most humorous, with a group of young schoolchildren informing their exasperated teacher that they'd all like to be Christopher Columbus when they grow up, and if that won't work, then being physically handicapped ("having a handicap in your phys" as one of them states in all seriousness) would be just fine too.
While it was fresh in the early 90s, this isn't a book I'd choose to give someone aching to break into Japanese literature today. Instead it's one I'd give them after they've already developed an interest in the subject and wanted to see what the scene looked like in the late 80s. A good collection, not great, but not for the uninitiated at this point.
I'll echo the comments of several other reviewers here in that I was disappointed to discover that many of what I thought were stand-alone short stories were, in fact, just chapters or excerpts from longer novels. That's not to say those stories are bad, just that at the end you're often left with a feeling of something missing. It's like reading those excerpts of literature in your textbook: you can get a sense of the story and the style, but the overall effect is diminished slightly.
That said, it's still a fun collection despite the fact a few years have passed since its publication in 1991.
Many people mention Murakami's "TV People" and Kobayashi's "Mazelife" as the standouts of the collection, and they're right. But while these two may be the strongest entries, my own personal favorite has always been Gen'ichiro Takahashi's "Christopher Columbus Discovers America" for reasons I've never quite been able to put my finger on. Its opening is certainly one of the most humorous, with a group of young schoolchildren informing their exasperated teacher that they'd all like to be Christopher Columbus when they grow up, and if that won't work, then being physically handicapped ("having a handicap in your phys" as one of them states in all seriousness) would be just fine too.
While it was fresh in the early 90s, this isn't a book I'd choose to give someone aching to break into Japanese literature today. Instead it's one I'd give them after they've already developed an interest in the subject and wanted to see what the scene looked like in the late 80s. A good collection, not great, but not for the uninitiated at this point.
November 13, 2010
I have a thing for short stories. I love writing them. I love reading them.
I also am somewhat of an (un?)closeted Japanophile.
Thus Monkey Brain Sushi caught my eye at a discount book store.
I have to admit that a handful of these stories were somewhat too odd/creepy/oversexualized for my taste, but this collection houses a few real gems.
My personal favorite was Mazelife by Kyoji Kobayashi. It's a beautifully crafted story about a man seeking God, who quickly becomes disappointed with all the available options and decides to create one of his own.
Perhaps because the story serves as a vivid allegory to humankind's search for security, perhaps because Kobayashi's writing style reminds me of Ray Bradbury, I loved it to bits.
Overall, a great collection.
I also am somewhat of an (un?)closeted Japanophile.
Thus Monkey Brain Sushi caught my eye at a discount book store.
I have to admit that a handful of these stories were somewhat too odd/creepy/oversexualized for my taste, but this collection houses a few real gems.
My personal favorite was Mazelife by Kyoji Kobayashi. It's a beautifully crafted story about a man seeking God, who quickly becomes disappointed with all the available options and decides to create one of his own.
Perhaps because the story serves as a vivid allegory to humankind's search for security, perhaps because Kobayashi's writing style reminds me of Ray Bradbury, I loved it to bits.
Overall, a great collection.
September 28, 2012
This anthology was an amazing surprise. It was full of the kind of contemporary Japanese writing I've always suspected existed, but haven't seen much of since so little of it is translated. I originally came across this book hunting for obscure translations of Genichiro Takahashi (his piece alone is worth checking the book out), but there some other great finds as well, especially Kyoji Kobayashi and Masahiko Shimada.
February 3, 2021
I had somehow gotten it into my head that this was a cyberpunk anthology; it is not. Although it has some stories with some cyberpunk-ish elements, it is exactly what it says on the tin: "new tastes" -- in other words, Japanese stories from the 80s that felt fresh and shocking to the editor in the early 90s. Because culture doesn't move terribly fast (and because these stories do not seem to have been influential on pop culture in Japan or abroad), they still feel fresh today.
With the exception of Murakami (whose story is first and, by far, weakest), I was not familiar with these authors. Their bio blurbs come after the stories, in a genius move: many of these are actually excerpts from much larger works, themselves experiments in genres that while fringe in Japan are basically completely unknown in the anglophone literary world, and so we have layers upon layers of cognitive estrangement -- thrust into the middle of a piece, in translation, commenting on unfamiliar tropes of a genre you have never heard of, with no knowledge of the author's previous works. If there were clunkers, this would be a dangerous technique, but aside from Murakami's (a slightly more surreal take on a kind of Twilight Zone thing that Pat Cadigan also riffed on), all these stories shine.
The content is also interesting. We have a lesbian age gap domestic drama take on the romantic long-haul trucker toei microgenre. We have a very New Wave infused far-future gender-bending glam romantic love story. We have some very incisive satires and pastiches.
To say that these are fully "new tastes" is a little bit misleading. Japanese speculative fiction lives under the shadow of Edogawa Ranpo and the "irregular detective" genre -- imagine if anglophone science fiction still considered Olaf Stapledon relevant -- and so Japanese science fiction was doing stuff that looked a lot like New Wave in the 50s, and was primed for the import of american and british New Wave in the 60s and south american magical realism later. Japanese speculative fiction has been more radical and formally experimental for longer than the anglophone world, and while these folks were at the bleeding edge, it is unfair to imply (as the editor's introduction does) that everything was I-novels and other basically medieval literary forms until suddenly a new generation popped up in 1979 and started writing sci fi. This is a country whose popular culture from 1913 to 1930 adopted for itself the term "erotic grotesque nonsense" and wore that badge happily. It is unclear how much of the literary radicalism apparent in this volume comes from poor access to high quality translations of Japanese genre literature from between 1900 and 1980 -- a problem that's still relevant (I can barely find original Ranpo in English outside his juveniles) but was much worse in the early 90s.
All in all, this is a hidden gem and is worth paying new-book prices for a used copy.
With the exception of Murakami (whose story is first and, by far, weakest), I was not familiar with these authors. Their bio blurbs come after the stories, in a genius move: many of these are actually excerpts from much larger works, themselves experiments in genres that while fringe in Japan are basically completely unknown in the anglophone literary world, and so we have layers upon layers of cognitive estrangement -- thrust into the middle of a piece, in translation, commenting on unfamiliar tropes of a genre you have never heard of, with no knowledge of the author's previous works. If there were clunkers, this would be a dangerous technique, but aside from Murakami's (a slightly more surreal take on a kind of Twilight Zone thing that Pat Cadigan also riffed on), all these stories shine.
The content is also interesting. We have a lesbian age gap domestic drama take on the romantic long-haul trucker toei microgenre. We have a very New Wave infused far-future gender-bending glam romantic love story. We have some very incisive satires and pastiches.
To say that these are fully "new tastes" is a little bit misleading. Japanese speculative fiction lives under the shadow of Edogawa Ranpo and the "irregular detective" genre -- imagine if anglophone science fiction still considered Olaf Stapledon relevant -- and so Japanese science fiction was doing stuff that looked a lot like New Wave in the 50s, and was primed for the import of american and british New Wave in the 60s and south american magical realism later. Japanese speculative fiction has been more radical and formally experimental for longer than the anglophone world, and while these folks were at the bleeding edge, it is unfair to imply (as the editor's introduction does) that everything was I-novels and other basically medieval literary forms until suddenly a new generation popped up in 1979 and started writing sci fi. This is a country whose popular culture from 1913 to 1930 adopted for itself the term "erotic grotesque nonsense" and wore that badge happily. It is unclear how much of the literary radicalism apparent in this volume comes from poor access to high quality translations of Japanese genre literature from between 1900 and 1980 -- a problem that's still relevant (I can barely find original Ranpo in English outside his juveniles) but was much worse in the early 90s.
All in all, this is a hidden gem and is worth paying new-book prices for a used copy.
February 26, 2022
Short fiction from the 1980s onward, even including a short manga, translated (and I assume also selected) by Murakami-translator Alfred Birnbaum. So we find cyberpunk, science-fiction and erotic tales. By far the best story is of course by Murakami Haruki, his "TV People," but as that is also included in the large Murakami short story collection The Elephant Vanishes you don't have to buy "Monkey Brain Sushi" to read it. Although translated with his usual flair by Birnbaum, I have trouble finding other stories I like. A few writers are well-known (and still publishing), such as Shimada Masahiko, Yamada Amy and Takahashi Gen'ichiro, but the other names were unknown to me, although I do follow new Japanese fiction. The only conclusion can be that they didn't really break through as major writers - this book published in 1991 is a sort of snapshot of new, young writers of the 1980s.
August 21, 2017
bah: alla fine "fiocchi di neve di peonia" sa essere toccante (ed è di gran lunga la cosa migliore qua in mezzo), "il giorno più buio del giappone" fa alzare un sopracciglio per la curiosità (ma è roba di un attimo)e "il diario di yamada" sorprende nel suo anticipare (1988!) i videogiochi alla "the sims" (ma poco altro: la solita storia di adolescenza buttata via). peccato che tutto il resto non si lasci ricordare...
March 19, 2024
Слово "new" с расстояния в три с лишним десятка лет выглядит наивно, но как ни странно, с тех пор ничего не заржавело. Образцы прозы (и даже один комикс), которые японофил-энтузиаст и английский переводчик Харуки Мураками Альфред Бирнбаум собрал под одной обложкой в 90-м году, по-прежнему легки и свежи. Fuikkoshon на любой вкус, и даже жаль, что некоторые из авторов так и не пробились на международный рынок.
dnf
July 21, 2025DNF: I certainly didn’t hate this anthology at all. I liked reading an assortment of new (at the time) authors and their unique styles, but there was a lot of references/info that I didn’t understand. Ordinarily I’d be able to keep reading through that, but I wasn’t really having fun while reading either so I decided to just put the book down and read another book instead.
Date Stopped: 07/20/25
Date Stopped: 07/20/25
October 24, 2024
Only read “Girl” by Ōhara Mariko as part of a follow up on a GR Japanese Literature forum discussion. That short story was 5*. Excellent. Has Ōhara stopped writing? Hybrid Child was finally translated and released in English June 15, 2018 by University of Minnesota Press.
October 8, 2017
Read this years - decades - ago. It really expanded my then young mind as to what short stories could be.
March 1, 2020
cuốn này ko hay như em kỳ vọng, có thể do em đọc ko tập trung sao đó. có thể một lúc khác đọc lại em sẽ thấy cái hay khác của những truyện trong này.
Read
March 26, 2020This was a hit or miss for me some of the stories just weren't good or interesting. I think it's still worth a read if you like Japanese fiction.
December 27, 2024
An exquisite introduction into the world of contemporary Japanese literature.
December 26, 2025
What I would give for a full translation of Takeno’s “The Yamada Diary”.
July 1, 2020
As usual, I loved some of these stories, and hated others. It is important to point out, that some of these are not short stories, but rather excerpts from novellas. I particularly enjoyed TV People, Mazelife, Peony Snowflakes of Love, The Yamada Diary.
June 24, 2015
Questa antologia presenta otto racconti ed un fumetto, scritti tutti tra il 1984 ed il 1988.
Tra questi, spiccano per tipologia "La ragazza", unico fantascientifico del lotto, e "Il giorno più buio del Giappone", il fumetto appunto.
Rispetto alla qualità, invece, si fanno notare il geniale ed ironico "Esame di ammissione di giapponese per studenti zelanti", l'originale "Il diario di Yamada" ed il pimpante "Sproing!".
Non è una raccolta eccezionale, anzi: alcuni racconti sono soporifieri e mancano di ritmo; chi avrà la costanza di proseguire, però, verrà ricompensato da pagine scritte comunque bene, che hanno il merito di descrivere un mondo diverso da quello che ci potremmo aspettare. I protagonisti hanno una sensibilità "aliena" per noi, nel vedere ed affrontare le cose, nel gestire le situazioni che gli autori decidono di far loro affrontare. Ed in questa continua scoperta il lettore troverà soddisfazione.
Personalmente, ho trovato molto interessante "Fiocchi di neve di peonia", che racconta con straordinaria raffinatezza il tema dell'omosessualità femminile nel Giappone di oggi.
Invece "Cristoforo Colombo scopre l'America" è per me il più debole tra tutti: noioso, inconcludente e leggermente confusionario.
Consigliato a chi vuol leggere qualcosa che si discosti dai canoni occidentali. A chi è curioso.
Sconsigliato: a chi ha un'immagine stereotipata del Giappone.
Tra questi, spiccano per tipologia "La ragazza", unico fantascientifico del lotto, e "Il giorno più buio del Giappone", il fumetto appunto.
Rispetto alla qualità, invece, si fanno notare il geniale ed ironico "Esame di ammissione di giapponese per studenti zelanti", l'originale "Il diario di Yamada" ed il pimpante "Sproing!".
Non è una raccolta eccezionale, anzi: alcuni racconti sono soporifieri e mancano di ritmo; chi avrà la costanza di proseguire, però, verrà ricompensato da pagine scritte comunque bene, che hanno il merito di descrivere un mondo diverso da quello che ci potremmo aspettare. I protagonisti hanno una sensibilità "aliena" per noi, nel vedere ed affrontare le cose, nel gestire le situazioni che gli autori decidono di far loro affrontare. Ed in questa continua scoperta il lettore troverà soddisfazione.
Personalmente, ho trovato molto interessante "Fiocchi di neve di peonia", che racconta con straordinaria raffinatezza il tema dell'omosessualità femminile nel Giappone di oggi.
Invece "Cristoforo Colombo scopre l'America" è per me il più debole tra tutti: noioso, inconcludente e leggermente confusionario.
Consigliato a chi vuol leggere qualcosa che si discosti dai canoni occidentali. A chi è curioso.
Sconsigliato: a chi ha un'immagine stereotipata del Giappone.
November 10, 2015
Interesante compendio de relatos y extractos de novelas publicados a finales de los 80. Entre los autores se ven algunos que hoy en día son muy populares (o lo han sido) como Haruki Murakami o Amy Yamada. Es interesante descubrir nuevos (para mí) autores. En conjunto me ha parecido una antología irregular y con pocos relatos destacables, pero por aquel entonces esta iniciativa me hubiera parecido excelente. Pero colocar fragmentos de novelas largas que no se han llegado a publicar en inglés me parece un error enorme, pues el lector se queda colgado ante la narración. Por eso he evitado leer estos relatos.
Relatos:
-TV People, de Haruki Murakami 4/5
-Sproing!, de Eri Makino 2/5
-Christopher Columbus Discovers America, de Gen'ichiro Takahashi 4/5
-Mazelife, de Kyoji Kobayashi 3/5 Aunque este es el fragmento de una novela.
-Momotaro in a Capsule, de Masahiko Shimada 2/5
-Japan's Junglest Day, de Michio Hisauchi 2,5/5 (Este es un manga)
-Kneel Down and Lick My Feet, de Amy Yamada (No leído debido a ser sólo el 1er capítulo de una novela)
-Peony Snowflakes of Love, Osamu Hashimoto 3/5
-Japanese Entrance Exams for Earnest Young Men, de Yoshinori Shimizu 4/5
-Girl, de Mariko Ohara 3/5 (¡Uno de ciencia ficción!)
-The Yamada Diary, de Masako Takemo 3/5
Relatos:
-TV People, de Haruki Murakami 4/5
-Sproing!, de Eri Makino 2/5
-Christopher Columbus Discovers America, de Gen'ichiro Takahashi 4/5
-Mazelife, de Kyoji Kobayashi 3/5 Aunque este es el fragmento de una novela.
-Momotaro in a Capsule, de Masahiko Shimada 2/5
-Japan's Junglest Day, de Michio Hisauchi 2,5/5 (Este es un manga)
-Kneel Down and Lick My Feet, de Amy Yamada (No leído debido a ser sólo el 1er capítulo de una novela)
-Peony Snowflakes of Love, Osamu Hashimoto 3/5
-Japanese Entrance Exams for Earnest Young Men, de Yoshinori Shimizu 4/5
-Girl, de Mariko Ohara 3/5 (¡Uno de ciencia ficción!)
-The Yamada Diary, de Masako Takemo 3/5
January 13, 2008
Oddly, I was given this book by one of my high school English teachers after expressing an interest in Japan and Japanese literature--and these are a collection of tales I find myself going back and reading over and over again. They are all modern to post modern, and as such have intriguing and often sexual themes from authors who are either quite popular in translation now or have yet to be published otherwise in English. Amy Yamada's Kneel Down and Kiss My Boots remains one of my favorite stories, and I would say this is what propelled my interest for Japan's postmodern literature into what it is today.
August 26, 2012
Ma, non era quello che mi aspettavo. Due o tre bei racconti, il manga ha un bel finale, ma non mi ha coinvolto come altri romanzi o racconti. Forse devo rimanere sulla letteratura giapponese standard.
January 21, 2008
one story actually a comic or graphic story for shonen knife groupies/fantagraphics dandipsters
Read
December 15, 2007Japanese contemporary short stories. Includes Haruki Murakami’s “TV People.” Some amazing stories, some really wacky ones.
January 13, 2008
An excellent introduction to the world of contemporary Japanese fiction... A few stories are less stellar than others but overall an excellent collection of short stories.
Currently reading
October 30, 2008TV People by Haruki Murakami is surreally hilarious and engrossing. Mazelife by Kyoji Kobayahshi is a madcap Stanislaw Lem style take on personal philosophy.
April 2, 2009
Spotty good/bad. Another book I picked up solely for the Murakami short (TV PEOPLE), which upon completion in this case made me feel very uncomfortable.
December 1, 2009
I’m thoroughly enjoying this read. It is bizarre, edgy, hilarious & bold…in other words, it’s so me!
May 18, 2011
A grab-bag, and out of date now, but nonetheless an interesting collection of stories.
December 12, 2011
Well, it's true that excerpting from a book doesn't do any justice to the book. But what can I say, excerpt or no excerpt, I really liked them. They are the edges of edgy.
July 27, 2013
This is the book that got me interested in Japanese fiction. That was a long time ago and I should reread it as I cant remember a single story.
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