Edward George Seidensticker was een vooraanstaand geleerde en historicus, erkend als een vooraanstaand vertaler van zowel klassieke als hedendaagse Japanse literatuur in de naoorlogse periode.
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.
Thousand Cranes is a story of love given and love withheld. Set against the backdrop of Japan's traditional tea ceremony, it is a taut, highly dramatic novel gleaming with sudden passages of poetic beauty. In one of the book's strongest scenes, the two characters are symbolized by the two fine old China bowls, one female and one male, that sit before them. The novel opens with Kikuji on his way to a tea ceremony given by Chikako, one of his father's former mistresses. He is also on his way to act out the unfinished drama of his father's life. Kikuji's father had been a cultivated man, an art lover and a pleasure seeker. He had cast off one mistress, Chikako, but had loved another, Mrs Ota, until his death. Kikuji, like his father, tries to escape from Chikako, now masculine and meddlesome. Like his father, too, he is drawn to Mrs Ota, who has remained young, alluring and pliant even though her daughter, Fumiko, is only twenty years old. Kikuji's guilty passion for Mrs Ota and Fumiko's efforts to alter the family fate lead to the novel's stunning climax.
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.
Go is a game of strategy in which two players attempt to surround each other's black or white stone. In this fictional chronicle of a match played between a revered and invincible Master and a younger, more progressive opponent, Kawabata captures the moment when traditonal imperial Japan meets the twentieth century.