Remembering Tanizaki Jun’ichiro and Matsuko
Diary Entries, Interview Notes, and Letters, 1954-1989
by Anthony H. Chambers
An essential companion for Tanizaki scholars and aficionados alike, providing a glimpse of the man from those closest to him. Remembering Tanizaki Jun’ichiro and Matsuko provides previously unpublished memories, anecdotes, and insights into the lives, opinions, personalities, and writings of the great novelist Tanizaki Jun’ichiro (1886–1965) and his wife Matsuko (1903–1991), gleaned from the diaries of Edward Seidensticker and two decades of Anthony Chambers’s conversations with Mrs. Tanizaki and others who were close to the Tanizaki family.
Childhood Years: A Memoir
by Tanizaki Jun'ichiro; Translated by Paul McCarthy
Set against the modernization of Japan, this memoir offers a moving look at famed novelist Tanizaki Jun'ichiro’s early years. In Childhood Years, originally published serially in a literary magazine between 1955 and 1956, Tanizaki Jun’ichiro (1886–1965) takes a meandering look back on his early life in Tokyo. He reflects on his upbringing, family, and the capital city with a conversational—and not necessarily honest—eye, offering insights into his later life and his writing.
The Culture of the Quake
The Great Kanto Earthquake and Taishô Japan
by Alex Bates
The Great Kanto Earthquake is an understudied event that has only recently caught the attention of scholars. By focusing on the way it was represented in high and low culture, The Culture of the Quake gives insight into how people experienced the disaster and how they interpreted it in the years following. This book should be of interest to scholars of Japanese and Asian literature, film, culture, and history, and scholars of disaster studies.
Going to Court to Change Japan
Social Movements and the Law in Contemprary Japan
Edited by Patricia G. Steinhoff
Going to Court to Change Japan examines the relationship between social movements and the law in bringing about social change in Japan. Six fascinating case studies take us inside movements dealing with causes as disparate as death by overwork, the rights of the deaf, access to prisoners on death row, consumer product safety, workers whose companies go bankrupt, and persons convicted of crimes they did not commit. Each of the case studies stands on its own as a detailed account of how a social movement has persisted against heavy odds to pursue a cause through the use of the courts.
