Recommendations based on "Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman"

Yasuko hanaoka accidentally kills her ex-husband, when circumstances rose to an unendurable level of ghastly behaviour from him. What follows is an elongated and witty brain-game between the investigator and her accomplice, ishigami, who aided yasuko in covering up the murder. The devotion of suspect x is the story about an ingenious plotter, and clever dr manabu yukawa, who helps in solving the case. Yasuko hanaoka works in a restaurant. She is divorced, and is a single mother to misato. Her ex-husband, togashi, was an abusive man, stalking and extorting money from her. With similar intentions, he showed up at yasuko’s home, this time threatening to kill her and her daughter if she refused to lend him money. What started from denial, reached to a heated argument, and within a short span of time, turned to a nasty fight. In the spur of the moment, yasuko killed togashi. Hearing the commotion in their apartment, tetsuya ishigami came into the picture. Ishigami was a middle-aged, singl

Fourteen tales selected from the breadth of Dazai’s fabled career, some never before seen in EnglishNo one really understands how we suffer. One day, when we’re adults, we may come to recall this suffering, this misery, as silly and laughable, but how are we to get through the long, hateful period until then? No one bothers to teach us that.Osamu Dazai was a master raconteur who plumbed―in an addictive, easy style―the absurd complexities of life in a society whose expectations cannot be met without sacrificing one's individual ideals on the altar of conformity. The gravitational pull of his prose is on full display in these stories. In “Lantern,” a young woman, in love with a well-born but impoverished student, shoplifts a bathing suit for him―and ends up in the local newspaper indicted as a crazed, degenerate communist. In “Chiyojo,” a high-school girl shows early promise as a writer, but as her uncle and mother relentlessly push her to pursue a literary career, she must ask herself: is this what I really want? Or am I supposed to fulfill their own frustrated ambitions? In “Shame,” a young reader writes a fan letter to a writer she admires, only to find out, upon visiting him, that he’s a bourgeoise sophisticate nothing like the desperate rebels he portrays, and decides (in true Dazai style): “Novelists are human trash. No, they’re worse than that; they’re demons. . . They write nothing but lies.”This collection of 14 tales―a half-dozen of which have never before appeared in English―is based on a Japanese collection of, as Dazai described them, “soliloquies by female narrators.” No One Knows includes the quietly brilliant long story “Schoolgirl” and shows the fiction of this 20th-century genius in a fresh light.

When Hana worked up the courage to speak to the mysterious loner in her college class, she never expected the encounter would blossom into true lovenor that he was secretly a wolf living in human form. Their relationship was far from ordinary, but she wouldn’t have had it any other way. Her joy only grows with the births of Ame and Yuki, who have inherited their father’s unique ability to transform. But life is full of both joy and hardship, and Hana is left to bring up her little wolves on her own. Raising human children is hard enough…but how will she handle their wild side, too? In this novelization of his award-winning Wolf Children film, acclaimed director Mamoru Hosoda provides a deeper look at the emotional trials and triumphs of a very unique little family.

A tetralogy containing "Spring Snow", a love story, "Runaway Horses", with a protagonist a right-wing terrorist, "The Temple of Dawn", where a Thai princess is mystically linked with the heroes of the preceding works and, written under the shadow of the author's death, "The Decay of the Angel".

These translated poems were written by 2 ladies of the Heian court of Japan between the ninth and eleventh centuries A.D. The poems speak intimately of their authors' sexual longing, fulfillment and disillusionment.

'Was it death he was now waiting for? Or a wild ecstasy of the senses?' For the young army officer of Yukio Mishima's seminal story, 'Patriotism, ' death and ecstasy become elementally intertwined. With his unique rigor and passion, Mishima hones in on the body as the great tragic stage for all we call social, ritual, political.

Maeda Ai was a prominent literary critic and an influential public intellectual in late-twentieth-century Japan. Text and the City is the first book of his work to appear in English. A literary and cultural critic deeply engaged with European critical thought, Maeda was a brilliant, insightful theorist of modernity for whom the city was the embodiment of modern life. He conducted a far-reaching inquiry into changing conceptions of space, temporality, and visual practices as they gave shape to the city and its inhabitants. James A. Fujii has assembled a selection of Maeda’s essays that question and explore the contours of Japanese modernity and resonate with the concerns of literary and cultural studies today. Maeda remapped the study of modern Japanese literature and culture in the 1970s and 1980s, helping to generate widespread interest in studying mass culture on the one hand and marginalized sectors of modern Japanese society on the other. These essays reveal the broad range of Maeda’s cultural criticism. Among the topics considered are Tokyo; utopias; prisons; visual media technologies including panoramas and film; the popular culture of the Edo, Meiji, and contemporary periods; maps; women’s magazines; and women writers. Integrally related to these discussions are Maeda’s readings of works of Japanese literature including Matsubara Iwagoro’s In Darkest Tokyo, Nagai Kafu’s The Fox, Higuchi Ichiyo’s Growing Up, Kawabata Yasunari’s The Crimson Gang of Asakusa, and Narushima Ryuhoku’s short story “Useless Man.” Illuminating the infinitely rich phenomena of modernity, these essays are full of innovative, unexpected connections between cultural productions and urban life, between the text and the city.

Eleventh-century Japan: After a difficult but successful assignment as provisional governor of Eichigo, Akitada Sugawara is finally allowed to return to Heian Kyo. But instead of a triumphant homecoming accompanied by his beautiful wife and young son, Akitada must ride ahead of his entourage to the sickbed of his dying mother. Fading light and a steady downpour interrupt his journey, forcing him to take refuge in a temple where a brilliantly illustrated hell screen and a piercing cry disturb his restless sleep.Upon his arrival, Akitada finds his mother, sick and bitter, cursing his return, while his youngest sister, Yoshiko, forsakes her own happiness to serve as the old woman’s nurse and maid. Only his sister Akiko seems fortunate---married to a wealthy nobleman, Toshikage, and expecting their first child. But appearances prove to be deceptive, for it is not long before Akitada is asked to help clear his brother-in-law’s name. In the course of his investigation Akitada learns that his night at the temple was disturbed by more than a terrible scream. A woman has been murdered, and because of his reputation for detective work, Akitada must solve another mystery. Personal and professional interests begin to merge as Akitada becomes ensnared in a tangled web of deceit and malevolence that will, in the end, strike very close to home.

"The danger posed by nuclear weapons is as great as ever, yet few people survive who witnessed their horror. Nakazawa's manga illustrates the true impact of nuclear weapons when used against a civilian population. It is vital reading for people of all ages, and especially for today's youth. By keeping this tragedy in our collective consciousness, we can strive to never repeat it and guide humanity towards a course of peace. Cartoonist Keiji Nakazawa was seven years old and living in Hiroshima in the early days of August 1945 when the city was destroyed by an atomic bomb dropped by the U.S.A. Starting a few months before that event, his ten- volume saga shows life in Japan after years of war and privations, as seen through the eyes of seven-year-old Gen Nakaoka." --

"Guri and Gura accidentally trip over a piece of yarn while out on a picnic one fine day. In true-to-themselves fashion, they unravel this mystery with a new friendship and a good meal. The two field mice Guri and Gura are the beloved companions of generations of Japanese children; now translated into English, the Guri and Gura series can enchant a new audience."