Jay Rubin

A major new collection of Japanese short stories, many appearing in English for the first time, with an introduction by Haruki Murakami, author of Killing Commendatore A Penguin Classics Hardcover This fantastically varied and exciting collection celebrates the art of the Japanese short story, from its origins in the nineteenth century to the remarkable practitioners writing today. Edited by acclaimed translator Jay Rubin, who has himself freshly translated some of the stories, and with an introduction by Haruki Murakami, this book is a revelation. Stories by writers already well known to English-language readers are included--like Tanizaki, Akutagawa, Murakami, Mishima, Kawabata, and Yoshimoto--as well as many surprising new finds. From Yuko Tsushima's "Flames" to Yuten Sawanishi's "Filling Up with Sugar" to Shin'ichi Hoshi's "Shoulder-Top Secretary" to Banana Yoshimoto's "Bee Honey," The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories is filled with fear, charm, beauty, and comedy.

The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories

Sōseki Natsume

This book, My Life: Living, Loving, and Fighting, is an interview with Sumii Sue conducted by her daughter, Masuda Reiko, a reporter and editorialist for the Mainichi Shimbun and a well-known writer. Masuda succeeds in eliciting details of daily life and personal relationships that give us a wonderful picture of this courageous woman and her fighting temperament, her pride in her achievements, and her self-effacement. My Life is also a fascinating document of social history, describing the conditions of life in twentieth-century Japan as Sumii experienced it: the poverty of sharecroppers, the political movements of the 1920s, the Great Kanto Earthquake, and life on the home front during World War II. The interview was conducted in 1994, when Sumii was ninety-two years old and starting to work on volume eight of The River with No Bridge.

A Novel

Sanshiro

REVISED AND UPDATED WITH NEW MATERIAL ON AFTER DARK AND MURAKAMI'S FORTHCOMING WORKSAs a young man, Haruki Murakami played records and mixed drinks at his Tokyo Jazz club, Peter Cat, then wrote at the kitchen table until the sun came up. He loves

Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words

Making Sense of Japanese is the fruit of one foolhardy American's thirty-year struggle to learn and teach the Language of the Infinite. Previously known as Gone Fishin', this book has brought Jay Rubin more feedback than any of his literary translations or scholarly tomes, "even if," he says, "you discount the hate mail from spin-casters and the stray gill-netter." To convey his conviction that "the Japanese language is not vague," Rubin has dared to explain how some of the most challenging Japanese grammatical forms work in terms of everyday English. Reached recently at a recuperative center in the hills north of Kyoto, Rubin declared, "I'm still pretty sure that Japanese is not vague. Or at least, it's not as vague as it used to be. Probably." The notorious "subjectless sentence" of Japanese comes under close scrutiny in Part One. A sentence can't be a sentence without a subject, so even in cases where the subject seems to be lost or hiding, the author provides the tools to help you find it. Some attention is paid as well to the rest of the sentence, known technically to grammarians as "the rest of the sentence." Part Two tackles a number of expressions that have baffled students of Japanese over the decades, and concludes with Rubin's patented technique of analyzing upside-down Japanese sentences right-side up, which, he claims, is "far more restful" than the traditional way, inside-out. "The scholar," according to the great Japanese novelist Soseki Natsume, is "one who specializes in making the comprehensible incomprehensible." Despite his best scholarly efforts, Rubin seems to have done just the opposite. Previously published in the Power Japanese series under the same title and originally as Gone Fishin' in the same series.

What the Textbooks Don't Tell You

Making Sense of Japanese

Haruki Murakami

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle

Rakuko Sakai

This poignant novel by Haruki Murakami's main translator depicts the unusual relationship between a strong Japanese woman and her erstwhile American son. Arriving in Seattle before the outbreak of World War II, Mitsuko Fukai falls in love with a widowed clergyman. Though their relationship does not survive wartime, she and his blond-haired child are evacuated to an internment camp with other Japanese and Japanese Americans. Eventually separated from Michiko at the end of the war, the American son reunites with his estranged father and journeys to war-ravaged Japan to rekindle dim memories of the past and to find his okaasan. Jay Rubin is one of the foremost English-language translators of Japanese literature. He has translated seven works of fiction and nonfiction by Haruki Murakami, Japan's most popular contemporary novelist. Most recently, he was a main translator of IQ84. Rubin received his PhD in Japanese literature from the University of Chicago and taught at Harvard University and the University of Washington.

The Sun Gods

Seiji Ozawa

Conversations

Absolutely on Music

Traditional Chinese edition of Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words

Besides being the distinguished translator of Murakami's work, Professor Jay Rubin is a self-confessed fan. He has now written a book for other fans who want to know more about the reclusive author of "Norwegian Wood, the Wind-up Bird Chronicle" and "The Elephant Vanishes."

Penguin Classics Introduction to Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa (Penguin Classics)

ジェイルービン

『ノルウェイの森』『ねじまき鳥クロニクル』などの翻訳者として名高い著者による村上春樹論!英語オリジナル版に「アフターダーク」「東京寄譚集」論を新たに加えた決定版。

ハルキ・ムラカミと言葉の音楽

Haruki Murakami i muzyka słów

Writers and the Meiji State

Injurious to Public Morals

J. Philip Gabriel

1Q84

This is the first encyclopedia in the Scribner Writers Series to focus on Asian writers and genres. It highlights 25 of the most widely translated Japanese authors, such as Yukio Mishima, Kobo Abe, Junichiro Tanizaki and Fumiko Enchi.

Modern Japanese Writers

New Angles on Perennial Problems

Gone Fishin'

die Geschichte eines Autors

Murakami und die Melodie des Lebens

村上春樹

Philip Gabriel

めくらやなぎと眠る女

Arriving in Seattle on the eve of World War II, Japanese-born Mitsuko falls for Tom, a widowed pastor, and becomes surrogate mother to his fair-haired American toddler, Bill. But the bombing of Pearl Harbor strains the newly formed family as U.S. government mandates and Tom’s growing discomfort with all things Japanese force Mitsuko and young Bill to leave Seattle and Tom behind for the Minidoka Internment Camp, unsure if they will ever return. Two decades later, memories of Minidoka and long-lost Mitsuko haunt Bill, sparking an arduous journey that leads him from Seattle’s International District to newly reconstructed Japan to find his Japanese mother and learn the truth about their shared past. Jay Rubin is one of the foremost English-language translators of Japanese literature. He is best known for his numerous translations of works by Haruki Murakami, Japan’s leading contemporary novelist, and the study Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words. Most recently, he has translated the first two books of Murakami’s bestselling novel, 1Q84. In addition, Rubin’s Making Sense of Japanese remains one the widely used guides to Japanese language studies. Jay Rubin received his PhD in Japanese literature from the University of Chicago and taught at Harvard University and the University of Washington. He lives near Seattle with his wife.

Jay Rubin

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