Modern Japanese Stories: An Anthology

I love this book. It is exactly the book I wanted my older son to bring me back from his first trip to Japan a year ago. This book was eventually gifted to me by a friend of my son's who was moving to Japan. It was part of a book collection that he was clearing out from his parents' house.

This is a magnificent collection of short stories by some of the best contemporary Japanese writers starting from the period following World War II. The book has an extensive introduction to explain about the trends in this type of fiction but cautions the reader to not view these stories through any sort of "classification.". Each story is prefaced by a sizable biography of its author and information about the author's style of writing. This adds very show more much to the experience of reading each story. The stories are illustrated by magnificent woodcuts, each beautiful
in its own way.

I am planning to keep this book for my permanent collection...which I don't often do these days. show less

These stories were possibly 'modern' when this collection was first published in 1962. In 2025, 'modern' is not the best way to describe them. I rated this book 3 stars, but only the last third deserve that rating; two stars for the first two thirds of the book. Still, several stories near the end held my attention: The Hateful Age, The Courtesy Call, The Idiot, The Priest and His Love, maybe a few more.

If anyone needs a brief introduction to Japanese literature, this is a good place to start.

This anthology series focuses mainly on Japan's post-war literary period, featuring authors such as Dazai Osamu, Tanizaki Junichiro and Yukio Mishima (I borrowed this book because of Mr Mishima but I found lots of good authors in here too :-) )