At first, Tokyo appears in these stories as it does to many outsiders: a city of bewildering scale, awe-inspiring modernity, peculiar rules, unknowable secrets and, to some extent, danger. Characters observe their fellow citizens from afar, hesitant to stray from their daily routines to engage with them. But Tokyo being the city it is, random encounters inevitably take place - a naive book collector, mistaken for a French speaker, is drawn into a world he never knew existed; a woman seeking psychiatric help finds herself in a taxi with an older man wanting to share his own peculiar revelations; a depressed divorcee accepts an unexpected lunch invitation to try Thai food for the very first time... The result in each story is a small but crucial change in perspective, a sampling of the unexpected yet simple pleasure of other people's company. As one character puts it, 'The world is full of delicious things, you know.'
Osamu Hashimoto graduated from the University of Tokyo and worked as an illustrator before becoming a writer. He first made it into print after receiving an honourable mention in the 1977 Shosetsu Gendai Prize for New Writers competition for Momojiri musume (Restless Rena). Since then he has published not only fiction but literary criticism and essays as well as modern Japanese translations of classics such as The Tale of Genji, turning out numerous bestsellers. His critical acumen, breadth of knowledge, and versatile command of the written word have earned him the name of genius among many of his writer colleagues. Hashimoto received the Kobayashi Hideo Prize in 2002 for Mishima Yukio to wa nanimono datta no ka (Who Was Yukio Mishima?), a work of criticism. His first fiction prize came in 2005, when he won the Shibata Renzaburo Award for his short-story collection Cho no yukue (Where Butterflies Go); in 2008 he was awarded the Mainichi Publishing Culture Award for his modern Japanese translation of The Tale of Heike. His more recent works include the novels Junrei (Pilgrimage, 2009), Hashi (Bridge, 2010), Ria ke no hitobito (The House of Lear, 2010), and Saiwai wa furu hoshi no gotoku (Happiness Is Like Falling Stars, 2012).
Title: The Book of Tokyo: A City in Short Fiction (Reading the City)
Author: Hitomi Kanehara, Mitsuyo Kakuta, Banana Yoshimoto, Osamu Hashimoto, Kaori Ekuni, Toshiyuki Hori, Shuichi Yoshida, Nao-Cola Yamazaki, Hiromi Kawakami
ISBN: 9781905583577
Binding:
Publisher: Comma Press
Publication Date: 2015-03-26
Number of Pages: 224
Weight: 0.5036 kg
'The characters' habit of introspection gives these tales a hazy, dreamlike quality; the physical environment of Tokyo is rarely described directly. What gives them their sense of place is, rather, their shared sense of the ephemeral aspect to life in the big city - and the various pleasures and sadnesses it brings.' - The Independent
