From literature in translation to compelling stories set in Japan, China, and beyond--start your journey through rich cultural landscapes and engaging narratives here.
A new, definitive translation of the postwar classic know to the west as No Longer Human—a tortured vision inspiring the likes of Junji Ito and Bungo Stray Dogs
Yanagi Sōetsu (1889–1961) was a Japanese philosopher who pioneered the influential aesthetic concept and artistic movement known as Mingei, “folk craft.” Beginning in the 1920s, Yanagi began to champion the beauty of common, utilitarian art. The Mingei style stands in contrast to both fine art—art for art’s sake, where the artist’s reputation inheres in the work—and the mass-produced commodities of industrial production that increasingly predominated.
In her new collection, A Hundred Years and a Day: 34 Stories, Tomoka Shibasaki—acclaimed author of the novel Spring Garden—offers a masterful selection of stories that redefine the boundaries of the short story. Fluidly translated by award-winning translator Polly Barton, A Hundred Years and a Day will join the roster alongside Hiromi Kawakami, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, and Hiromi Ito as the fourth publication from our MONKEY imprint in partnership with MONKEY: New Writing from Ja
In Allen Weiss’s forthcoming book on Kyoto’s artistic landscape, Illusory Dwellings, he writes about the unease with which modern Western art categories contain Japanese aesthetics. There is, on the one hand, a question of what constitutes the avant-garde and the traditional in a particular national canon.
