Modern Japanese Literature is Donald Keene's critically acclaimed companion volume to his landmark work Anthology of Japanese Literature: From the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century. Now considered the standard canon of modern Japanese writing translated into English, Modern Japanese Literature includes concise introductions to the writers, as well as a historical introduction by Protessor Keene.
"Something of the variety and greatness of modern Japanese literature can be suggested by enumeration of a few of the finest selections: 'Growing Up, a lyrical story of pre-adolescence in the nineties; an amusingly graceful new translation of Natsume's story of 'Botchan, an ill-starred and ineffectual Huck Finn; Nagai s evocation of a place, generation, and nation in 'The Sumida River'; Kokomitsu's terrifying and Kafkaesque 'Time'; Kawabata's superb delineation of woman in 'The Mole'; 'Firefly Hunt, a brief glimpse into Tanizaki's masterpiece, 'Thin Snow; and the disturbing postwar vision of such writers as Dazai and Mishima.
"All this is only a fraction of the rich store of fiction in this book. ... The most important thing about this volume is the rightness of the selections and the moving beauty of the translations." — Saturday Review
For the past forty-five years, Donald Keene has been widely regarded as America's foremost cultural ambassador to Japan. Presently University Professor Emeritus and Shincho Professor of Japanese Literature Emeritus at Columbia University, he has written and translated over fifty books. The winner of numerous literary awards and prizes, including the Kikuchi Kan Prize, the Order of the Rising Sun, the Yamagata Banto Prize, the Japan Foundation Prize, the Shincho Grand Prize, and the Ivan Sandrof Award for literary criticism, Professor Keene was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1986; in 1990 he was elected as a foreign member of the Japan Academy.
