Acknowledgements and Sources
In the thirteen lucky years I have lived in Tokyo, many, many people have helped me and, in many, many ways, contributed to this book, most of all my family: Izumi, George, Emi, Shigeko and Daisuke.
However, in the preparation and research for the actual writing of this book, I would like to pay particular thanks to the following people for their help, their knowledge and their time:
Firstly, my dear agent William Miller, along with Sawa Junzo, Hamish Macaskill, Peter Thompson, and all the staff of the English Agency Japan. Also Koyama Michio, Hayakawa Hiroshi, Chida Hiroyuki, Yoshida Tomohiro, Hamaguchi Tamako, Nagayoshi Yuki, Edward Seidensticker, Donald Richie, David Mitchell, Mark Schreiber, Michael Gardiner, Justin McCurry, Koizumi Atsuko and Matsumura Sayuri.
In London, I would like to thank Stephen Page, Lee Brackstone, Angus Cargill, Anna Pallai, Anne Owen, Trevor Horwood, and all the staff of Faber and Faber; in Yorkshire, my mother and father; in New York, Sonny Mehta, Diana Coglianese, and Leyla Aker; in Paris, François Guérif, Agnès Guery, Jeanne Guyon, Daniel Lemoine, and all the staff of Payot & Rivages, and Jean-Pierre Deloux; in Milan, Luca Formenton, Marco Tropea, Cristina Ricotti, Marco Pensante, Seba Pezzani, and all the staff of il Saggiatore, and Elio De Capitani; in Munich, Juergen Kill and Susanne Fink of Liebeskind, Markus Naegele of Heyne, and Peter Torberg.
I would also like to thank Shimoyama Susumu of my Japanese publisher Bungei Shunju for his advice and support, and finally, but most of all, my editor Nagashima Shunichiro, who gave me the confidence and help to finally begin writing this book. Shunichiro provided and translated materials which otherwise would have been beyond me and then diligently and incisively edited both the English and Japanese manuscripts. In short, any qualities this book might have, are his. The faults, as ever, are all mine.
FICTION
An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro (Faber, 1986)
‘The Camelia’ by Satomi Ton, translated by Edward Seidensticker, from Modern Japanese Stories (Charles E. Tuttle, 1962)
Childhood Years by Tanizaki Jun’ichiro, translated by Paul McCarthy (Kodansha International, 1988)
The Essential Akutagawa Ryunosuke, edited by Seiji M. Lippit (Marsilio Publishers, 1999)
The Girl I Left Behind by Endo Shusaku, translated by Mark Williams (New Directions, 1994)
A Gray Moon by Shiga Naoya, translated by Lane Dunlop (Charles E. Tuttle, 1992)
‘The Hole’ by Kuroshima Denji, from A Flock of Swirling Crows & Other Proletarian Writings, edited and translated by Zeljko
Cipris (University of Hawaii Press, 2005)
‘The Idiot’ by Sakaguchi Ango, translated by George Saito, from Modern Japanese Stories (Charles E. Tuttle, 1962)
The Journey by Osaragi Jiro, translated by Ivan Morris (Knopf, 1960)
The Legend of Gold and Other Stories by Ishikawa Jun, edited and translated by William J. Tyler (University of Hawaii Press, 1998)
‘Militarized Streets’ by Kuroshima Denji, from A Flock of Swirling Crows & Other Proletarian Writings, edited and translated by Zeljko Cipris (University of Hawaii Press, 2005)
Musashi by Yoshikawa Eiji, translated by Charles S. Terry (Kodansha International, 1981)
Nonresistance City’ by Maruo Suehiro, from Ultra-Gash Inferno, translated by James Havoc and Shinkado Takako (Creation Books, 2001)
Occupation by John Toland (Doubleday, 1987)
One Man’s Justice by Yoshimura Akira, translated by Mark Ealey (Canongate, 2003)
Palm-of-the Hand Stories by Kawabata Yasunari, translated by Lane Dunlop and J. Martin Holman (North Point Press, 1988)
‘A Quiet Obsession’ by Kyoka Izumi, from In Light of Shadows, edited and translated by Charles Shiro Inouye (University of Hawaii Press, 2005)