Translator: Powell, Allison Markin
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The Art of Simple Living
100 Daily Practices from a Zen Buddhist Monk for a Lifetime of Calm and Joy
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Strange Weather in Tokyo
Tsukiko, thirty-eight, works in an office and lives alone. One night, she happens to meet one of her former high school teachers, “Sensei,” in a local bar. Tsukiko had only ever called him “Sensei” (“Teacher”). He is thirty years her senior, retired, and presumably a widower. Their relationship develops from a perfunctory acknowledgment of each…
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Last winter, we parted
A young writer is assigned a difficult task by his editor: he is to write an investigative biography of a death row inmate named Yudai Kiharazaka, a thirty-five-year-old photographer who has been convicted of the murders of two women. Kiharazaka’s victims—or his “models”—had been burned alive while the photographer tried to capture the perfect picture…
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The briefcase
Tsukiko, thirty-eight, works in an office and lives alone. One night, she happens to meet one of her former high school teachers, “Sensei” in a local bar. Tsukiko had only ever called him “Sensei” (“Teacher”). He is thirty years her senior, retired, and presumably a widower. Their relationship-traced by Kawakami’s gentle hints at the changing…
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Schoolgirl
The novella that first propelled Dazai into the literary elite of post-war Japan. Essentially the start of Dazai’s career, Schoolgirl gained notoriety for its ironic and inventive use of language. Now it illuminates the prevalent social structures of a lost time, as well as the struggle of the individual against them–a theme that occupied Dazai’s…