Mountain/Home: New Translations from Japan

Series Editor Frank Stewart.
Guest Editor Leza Lowitz.

Mountain/Home presents new translations of selected Japanese works from the medieval period to the present. The volume opens with traditional folktales, court poetry, Edo Period poetry, and contemporary fiction—all from “One Hundred Literary Views of Mount Fuji,” a collection of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction related to Japan’s national symbol. The works reveal how Japanese attitudes toward Mount Fuji have changed over time, particularly after the country was opened to the West in the nineteenth century.

Also in Mountain/Home are a new translation of a chapter from Lady Murasaki’s classic, The Tale of Genji; fiction by Dazai Osamu influenced by Japan’s fortunes during WWII; the avant-garde poetry of Yoshioka Minoru; and the anti- war poetry of Ayukawa Nobuo. Both Yoshioka and Ayukawa served in the Imperial Army and survived to become two of the most important postwar writers.

Embodying Japan’s contemporary optimism are fiction writer Kurahashi Yumiko and poet Takahashi Mutsuo. Kurahashi’s postmodern linked stories reexamine the fluid boundaries between past and present tales. Takahashi’s haiku and meditative sketches of his home echo old Japan, when Bashō and Issa captured the humble joys of daily life.

Translators include Peter MacMillan, Charles De Wolf, Ralph McCarthy, Eric Selland, Leza Lowitz, Shogo Oketani, S. Yumiko Hulvey, Jeffrey Angles, and Emiko Miyashita.

160 pp., winter 2017 (29:2), $25
ISBN 978-0-8248-7729-3
Project Muse
ebook edition