Scan barcode
A review by andrew_j_r
The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories by Jay Rubin
4.0
This book has taken me a while to read - not because it’s bad, but because I tend to read a few short stories between books. I can’t get into short story collections like a novel, I dip in and out of them over a period of time.
This is actually one of the best collections that I have read. It has a very high hit rate - most short story collections are, for me, more miss than hit, but this is definitely the other way round.
The stories vary from three pages to just over seventy. They are grouped together in themes - Japan’s relationship with the West, disasters (natural and man made) and are not presented in chronological order, although there are a number of suggested reading orders and one of those is based around when the stories are set. I read them in theme order as presented in the book.
There are a number of standout tales here. I adored the opening offering, “The Story Of Tomoda and Matsunaga” as well as the grim “Hell Screen” and a tale of people of lived in Hiroshima when the nuclear bomb fell. In fact, as I read the title list I have a distinct memory of most of the stories, most of the time if I looked back through a list of titles on a short story collection after reading it I would remember less than half as many would singularly fail to grab my attention. This is a collection based on the opinions of worthiness of one editor, and he has done a spectacular job. It is also a bonus that the introduction is written my Haruki Murakami, one of my favourite authors Japanese or otherwise, and two of his short stories are included here (oddly, two of the less memorable ones!)
I hope there are more books like this. A similarly constructed collection about cultures that I don’t know all that well would be fascinating, such as China or Mexico. But definitely worth a look - it has reinvigorated my interest in short stories, unexpectedly so as this was not a book that I would necessarily have chosen to buy, it was an unexpected gift from a good friend.
This is actually one of the best collections that I have read. It has a very high hit rate - most short story collections are, for me, more miss than hit, but this is definitely the other way round.
The stories vary from three pages to just over seventy. They are grouped together in themes - Japan’s relationship with the West, disasters (natural and man made) and are not presented in chronological order, although there are a number of suggested reading orders and one of those is based around when the stories are set. I read them in theme order as presented in the book.
There are a number of standout tales here. I adored the opening offering, “The Story Of Tomoda and Matsunaga” as well as the grim “Hell Screen” and a tale of people of lived in Hiroshima when the nuclear bomb fell. In fact, as I read the title list I have a distinct memory of most of the stories, most of the time if I looked back through a list of titles on a short story collection after reading it I would remember less than half as many would singularly fail to grab my attention. This is a collection based on the opinions of worthiness of one editor, and he has done a spectacular job. It is also a bonus that the introduction is written my Haruki Murakami, one of my favourite authors Japanese or otherwise, and two of his short stories are included here (oddly, two of the less memorable ones!)
I hope there are more books like this. A similarly constructed collection about cultures that I don’t know all that well would be fascinating, such as China or Mexico. But definitely worth a look - it has reinvigorated my interest in short stories, unexpectedly so as this was not a book that I would necessarily have chosen to buy, it was an unexpected gift from a good friend.