Edward Seidensticker Boeken

Certain conjunctions of time and place exert a special fascination--Paris in the twenties, turn-of-the-century Vienna, Weimar Berlin. Tokyo in the years between the Meiji Restoration and the Earthquake of 1923 is one of these. Until 1867 the city was called Edo--it was the shogun's capital, the biggest city in a country almost completely closed to the outside world for two and a half centuries. Then, helter-skelter, it became a modern metropolis brimming with Western fads, ideas, and technologies, exuberantly inventing and imitating even as it yearned for the past it was destroying. East and West met here as never before--or since.

Death, homosexuality and the spiritual emptiness of post-war Japan: these are the often shocking subjects which Mishima explores. The old world meets the new in this collection of fiction and drama by one of Japan's most celebrated writers. A husband prepares to commit hara-kiri in the name of patriotism; an ascetic struggles with temptation; and a businessman meets a past love in the streets of San Francisco. Violence colours the work of Mishima, as it did his life. But there is also delicate observation, pathos, humour and irony in these beautifully crafted tales. Contents: - Death in Midsummer - Three Million Yen - Thermos Flasks - The Priest of Shiga Temple and His Love - The Seven Bridges - Patriotism - Dōjōji - Onnagata - The Pearl - Swaddling Clothes

Widely considered to be a classic, this essay on Japanese aesthetics by a major author ranges from the patina of lacquerware and the custom of moon-viewing to monastery toilets and the lighting in a brothel, while contrasting the Japanese sense of subtlety and nuance with Western imports such as electric lighting

From the Nobel Prize-winning author and acclaimed writer of Thousand Cranes comes the luminous chronicle of a match of the Japanese game Go played between a master and a younger, more modern challenger that serves as a suspenseful elegy for an entire society.Go is a game of strategy in which two players attempt to surround each other’s black or white stones. Simple in its fundamentals, infinitely complex in its execution, Go is an essential expression of the Japanese spirit. And in his fictional chronicle of a match played between a revered and heretofore invincible Master and a younger, more modern challenger, Yasunari Kawabata captured the moment in which the immutable traditions of imperial Japan met the onslaught of the twentieth century.The competition between the Master of Go and his opponent, Otaké, is waged over several months and layered in ceremony. But beneath the game’s decorum lie tensions that consume not only the players themselves but their families and retainers—tensions that turn this particular contest into a duel that can only end in death. Luminous in its detail, both suspenseful and serene, The Master of Go is written with the poetic economy and psychological acumen that brought Kawabata the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Duizend kraanvogels (1951) - een begrip dat in Japan tot symbool van geluk en zuiverheid is geworden - is een liefdesroman waarin twee families verwikkeld zijn: de vader en de zoon van de ene en de moeder en de dochter van de andere. Als een boze, onreine geest spookt de schuld om de geliefden, die gestalte lijkt te hebben gekregen in de verzuurde lerares van de theeceremonie.

Schildering van de liefdesverhouding tussen een geisha met haar ongecompliceerde levensinstelling en een tot diepere menselijke gevoelens onmachtige intellectuele estheet.

This memoir is by a translator who has introduced two generations of English-language audiences to the masterpieces of classical and modern Japanese literature. His patient rendering of novels ranging from the 11th-century Tale of Genji to works of such modern masters as Junichiro Tanizaki, Yukio Mishima and Nobel-Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata has earned him the National Book Award as well as the Order of the Rising Sun, Japan's highest honour for foreigners.

A continuation of the author's history of Tokyo explains how the city recovered from both a major earthquake and Allied bombing raids in World War II