A novel in the traditional Japanese style. In detailing the affair between a garden designer and his client's wife, it explores art and garden design, human sexuality and passion. 

WIND AND STONE

by Masaaki Tachihara

translated by Stephen W. Kohl

160 pp, 5.5 x 8.5", paper
ISBN 0-9628137-7-x, $14.95

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 THE ROCK SPRING COLLECTION OF JAPANESE LITERATURE
Mizue is a Japanese housewife. Kase is a garden designer hired by her husband to landscape their home. As the garden takes shape, Mizue wakens to a new sensuality and desire. A disturbing tale of seduction, based on Japanese aesthetics and the artistic pursuit of destructive beauty.

MASAAKI TACHIHARA was awarded the Naoki Prize for Fiction in 1961. Translator Stephen W. Kohl is Associate Professor of Japanese at the University of Oregon.
 EXCERPT

"In the presence of this garden that exposed its wide and empty spaces to her, Mizue was again haunted by an uneasiness. She tried to see the bare trees and the evergreen hedge as nothing more than a pattern of colors and shapes. She tried to do the same with the stones. Again she had the fleeting feeling that the stones were Kase's eyes watching here. but when she looked closely at them they were just stones. Seen as part of the total garden they were flat and one-dimensional. Still, Mizue could not help feeling they were composed of invisible colors and empty spaces. She did not know what to make of this feeling. What was this invisible color?"

-- from WIND AND STONE