Autumn Wind & Other Stories. Lane Dunlop

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      Autumn Wind and Other Stories

      Lane Dunlop has won several awards for translation, including the Japan-US Friendship Award for Literary Translation for both A Late Chrysanthemum and Twenty-four Stories from the Japanese, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Academy Award in Literature. He is co-translator of Yasunari's Kawabata Palm-of-the-Hand Stories and the translator of numerous Japanese novels, including Kafu Nagai's During the Rains & Flowers in the Shade: Two Novellas.

      For Ce Roser

      Acknowledgments are due to the editors of the following magazines, in which these stories first appeared in slightly different form: Translation for "The Fox", "Mount Hiei", "Autumn Wind", "Bamboo Flowers" and "Borneo Diamond"; The Literary Review for "Flash Storm", "Along the Mountain Ridge", and "Ivy Gates"; Prairie Schooner for "The Garden", New England Review for "One Woman and the War" and "Grass"; Mississippi Review for "The Titmouse" and "Ugly Demons"; Michigan Quarterly Review for "Invitation to Suicide."

      Kitsune ©1909 by Nagai Kafu, 1959 Nagai Nagamitsu; Niwaka are ©1916 by Satomi Ton, 1983 Yamauchi Shizuo; Heizan ©1935 by Yokomitsu Riichi, 1947 Yokomitsu Shozo; Akikaze ©1939 by Nakayama Gishu, 1969 Nakayama Himeko; Higara ©1940 by Kawabata Yasunari, 1972 Kawabata Hite; Senso to hitori no onna ©1946 by Hayashi Fumiko, 1951 Hayashi Fukue; Iwa one nite ©1956 by Kita Morio; Shumatachi ©1965 by Kurahashi Yumiko; Take no hana ©1970 by Mizukami Tsutomu; Jisatsu no susume ©1969 by Watanabe Jun'ichi

      Published by Tuttle Publishing, an imprint of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd., with editorial offices at 364 Innovation Drive, North Clarendon, Vermont 05759 U.S.A. and 61 Tai Seng Avenue #02-12, Singapore 534167.

      Copyright © 1994 by Charles E. Tuttle Publishing Company, Inc.

       First Tuttle edition, 1994

      All rights reserved.

       LCC Card No. 94-60314

       ISBN: 978-1-4629-0309-2 (ebook)

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      Contents

      TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 7

      NAGAI KAFU The Fox 11 SATOMI TON Flash Storm 31 AKUTAGAWA RYUNOSUKE The Garden 54 JUICHIYA GISABURO Grass 64 YOKOMITSU RIICHI Mount Hiei 78 OKAMOTO KANOKO Ivy Gates 95 NAKAYAMA GISHU Autumn Wind 109 KAWABATA YASUNARI The Titmouse 127 SAKAGUCHI ANGO One Woman and the War 140 HAYASHI FUMIKO Borneo Diamond 161 KITA MORIO Along the Mountain Ridge 183 KURAHASHI YUMIKO Ugly Demons 201 MIZUKAMI TSUTOMU Bamboo Flowers 222 WATANABE JUN'ICHI Invitation to Suicide 237

      TRANSLATOR'S NOTES 253

      GLOSSARY 263

      Translator's

       Preface

      These stories span sixty years of twentieth-century Japanese literature. Between the bittersweet, nostalgic evocation of childhood in Nagai Kafu's "The Fox," set against a background of a still largely traditional Japan, and the alienated, thoroughly modern world of Watanabe Jun'ichi's "Invitation to Suicide" is a development comparable in range and scope to that of any world-class literature. During these years Japan, after centuries of seclusion, adjusted to its full-scale entry into the world, to the successive traumatic shocks of the Great Earthquake of 1923 and the catastrophic defeat of World War II, and to the phoenix-like revival of its economy.

      Most of the writers represented in this selection are what might be called standard authors. Their work, all or some of it, continues to be in print decade after decade. Kawabata Yasunari, Japan's only Nobel Prize winner for literature, needs almost no introduction to Western readers; on the other hand, Juichiya Gisaburo, who is perhaps remembered for the one story included in this selection, must be all but unknown even to Japanese. The anthology includes the famous and the unfamiliar, writers known to English readers and others whose work has not been translated previously. Most of the stories themselves are new to English. Those that are not exist only in translations that have been out of print for so long as to be well nigh inaccessible to all but the most devoted student.

      It may be said that the dominant tone of Japanese writing is one of characteristically understated sobriety. Whether this is due to the nature of the language, the Japanese temperament, or the realistic mode that has prevailed in the literature is beyond the ambition of this preface. But having once noted it, one must also note the variety of modulations this voice is capable of. In this selection alone are the poignant yearning for the past of Nakayama Gishu's "Autumn Wind," the buoyant cynicism of Sakaguchi Ango's "One Woman and the War," the sexual knowledgeability of Kurahashi Yumiko's "Ugly Demons"—perhaps as many variations as there are writers. It is the translator's sincere hope that some of the pleasure afforded him by the perusal and translation of these stories will be conveyed to, and shared with, the reader.

       _{The sound of dry leaves racing through the garden, the sound of wind rattlingthe paper doors.}

      One afternoon in my winter