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Once and Forever: The Tales of Kenji Miyazawa (New York Review Books Classics) Paperback – October 2, 2018
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Kenji Miyazawa is one of modern Japan’s most beloved writers, a great poet and a strange and marvelous spinner of tales, whose sly, humorous, enchanting, and enigmatic stories bear a certain resemblance to those of his contemporary Robert Walser. John Bester’s selection and expert translation of Miyazawa’s short fiction reflects its full range from the joyful, innocent “Wildcat and the Acorns,” to the cautionary tale “The Restaurant of Many Orders,” to “The Earthgod and the Fox,” which starts out whimsically before taking a tragic turn. Miyazawa also had a deep connection to Japanese folklore and an intense love of the natural world. In “The Wild Pear,” what seem to be two slight nature sketches succeed in encapsulating some of the cruelty and compensations of life itself.
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Print length288 pages
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LanguageEnglish
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PublisherNYRB Classics
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Publication dateOctober 2, 2018
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Dimensions5.15 x 0.65 x 8 inches
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ISBN-109781681372600
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ISBN-13978-1681372600
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"I can’t say there’s a Miyazawa story for everything—the writer died young and lived nearly a century ago in rural northern Japan—but he had stories for many of our basic human vices, and for our basic forms of goodness, too. And this only scratches the surface of his work’s appeal. . . The stories have a timeless quality and a resemblance to fairy tales or children’s literature. . . Everything in Miyazawa’s work seethes with life. Each leaf, flower, blade of grass, and berry seems to have its own special action." —Valerie Stivers, The Paris Review
"These tales turn familiar fairy-tale rhythms on their hands, balancing chaos and kindness, the natural and the supernatural, the unsettling and the inspiring. It will be right at home in any library of short stories or modern folklore.” —Genevieve Valentine, NPR, "Best Books of 2018"
“Kenji Miyazawa fables are international-class.” —David Mitchell
"In the transcendent stories of Miyazawa, Earth teems with magic and wonder....While Miyazawa does not eschew the tropes of folktales—his forests teem with talking animals, magic stones, and moral lessons—this collection proves his poetic voice and craft transcend the genre." —Publishers Weekly
“Miyazawa moves you to sorrow, to laugh, chuckle, marvel—he makes you live the things he describes.” —Hiroaki Sato
"A marvelous writer who deserves to be much better known in English." —Kirkus
"Miyazawa seems to have been something of a genius." —The Observer
"A humble and gifted writer." —Time
"Miyazawa's tales beg to be read and reread slowly and out loud." —Asiaweek
"Readers who haven't outgrown imaginative stories ... will enjoy Miyazawa no less than Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll, Dickens and Dr. Seuss." —Asahi Evening News
"The work of a truly good man and a great writer." —Insight Japan
About the Author
John Bester (1927–2010) was a renowned translator of Japanese fiction, including Masuji Ibuse’s Black Rain, Kenzaburo Oe’s The Silent Cry, and Yukio Mishima’s Acts of Worship: Seven Stories, for which he received the Noma Award for the Translation of Japanese Literature.
Product details
- ASIN : 1681372606
- Publisher : NYRB Classics; Reissue edition (October 2, 2018)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 288 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9781681372600
- ISBN-13 : 978-1681372600
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.15 x 0.65 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #416,479 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #946 in Fantasy Anthologies
- #4,287 in Short Stories Anthologies
- #8,407 in Short Stories (Books)
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Notwithstanding the subject of the book, it merits a classic literature aisle in nationwide booksellers because it contains all the characteristics of profound yet catholic themes of nature of humanity that are illustrated in the works of Hans Christian Anderson, The Grimm Brothers, and Aesop. In fact, this book is strikingly scarcely a false or childish note but strangely not depressing. If Miyazawa does not provide the reader with a sense of jostling braggadocio or a promise of ever optimistic view on reality of the world that are accustomed to and taken for granted as literary license in the Western minds, he presents a prospect of innocence, so ethereal and quaint that it almost feels physical when reading. This tangible feeling of the visions is delivered by Miyazawa’s wonderful story-telling skills enveloped in poetic expressions devoted to evoking the images of a rural Japan prior to the Meiji Restoration in the mid- 19th century that no longer exists.
Kenji Miyazawa (1897-1933) was a Japanese writer who was first and foremost poet at heart concerned with particular beauties and universal truths transcending time and culture. This book, translated by the late renowned English professor John Bester, is collection of short folk tales of the bygone eras that Miyazawa seems to fantastically incorporate with his contemporary world of reality in which whims, inconsistencies, and follies of humans are everyday occurrence. The tale of “The Earth God and the Fox” shows how love and friendship are destroyed by betrayal and misunderstanding in a blight of jealousy and fury, which then eventually leads to destruction. In the case of “Wildcat and the Acorns,” Miyazawa pokes fun at parvenus and upstarts who suddenly found themselves in the wealth of western-influenced cultural artifacts in denigration of the traditional Japanese customs and values regarded as outdated and culturally backward. However, even such acerbic, poignant criticism of the Nouveau Japan is enticingly swiveled in poetic prose with musicality and choice of the language – simple but visionary- he employs.
The tales seem to speak to our world of confused syllogism bloated with inordinate wantonness and inflated egotism, decorated with selfies in Facebook and Instagram, and vehement subjectivities, all fragmented and adrift, full of sound and fury. The tales bring the reader to another time out of this evolutionary scale and 24-hour clock, and they can take the reader to a different place of innocence that seems to be out of touch in this existential world of reality. In this regard, this book is a quaint pretty – or twee even – marionette play, fusing Miyazawa’s poetic words with his cast of interesting characters ranging from a beautiful birch tree to wise foxes, to graceful fawns, to talking acorns, and to deities living in streams and mountains and everywhere, all in the beautiful rural landscapes as picturesque stage backgrounds. It is a fascinating read that matches its fanciful title.