Rural Japan
The Roads to Sata - Alan Booth
One sunny spring morning in the 1970s, an unlikely Englishman set out on a pilgrimage that would take him across the entire length of Japan. Travelling only along small back roads, Alan Booth travelled on foot from Soya, the country's northernmost tip, to Sata in the extreme south, traversing three islands and some 2,000 miles of rural Japan. His mission: 'to come to grips with the business of living here,' after having spent most of his adult life in Tokyo. The Roads to Sata is a wry, witty, inimitable account of that prodigious trek, vividly revealing the reality of life in off-the-tourist-track Japan.
The Story of a Single Woman - Chiyo Uno
Growing up in a remote mountain village, Kazue always nurtured a spirit of independence. Ignoring the values of her traditional community, she rejects an early arranged marriage and embarks on a scandalous affair. Exiled from her home, Kazue departs to follow her impulses wherever they might lead. Driven by her enduring hope and resilience, Kazue goes first to Korea and then to Tokyo, taking up with a series of men but always casting out again on her own path. Sparklingly beautiful, The Story of a Single Woman is an autobiographical account of desire and freedom by a trailblazing Japanese writer.
The Hole - Hiroko Oyamada
When Asa's husband is offered a new job away from the city, the couple end up relocating. And since his new office is very close to his family's home, it makes sense to move in next door to his parents. Through the long hot summer, Asa does her best to adjust to their new rural lives, to the constant presence of her in-laws, to the emptiness of her existence and the incessant buzz of cicadas. And then one day, while running an errand for her mother-in-law, she comes across a strange creature, follows it to the embankment of a river, and ends up falling into a hole - a hole that seems to have been made specifically for her. Thus begins a series of bizarre experiences that drive Asa deeper into the mysteries of this rural landscape and the family she has married in to, leading her to question her role in this world and, eventually, who she even is.
Tokyo Express - Seicho Matsumoto
In a rocky cove in the bay of Hakata, the bodies of a young and beautiful couple are discovered. Stood in the coast's wind and cold, the police see nothing to investigate: the flush of the couple's cheeks speaks clearly of cyanide, of a lovers' suicide. But in the eyes of two men, Torigai Jutaro, a senior detective, and Kiichi Mihara, a young gun from Tokyo, something is not quite right. Together, they begin to pick at the knot of a unique and calculated crime.
Travels with a Writing Brush - Meredith McKinney
Discover a realm of travel writing undreamed of in the West - a richly literary tradition extending through a thousand years and more, whose individual works together weave a dense and beautiful brocade of repeated patterns and motifs, tones and textures. Here are asobi, the wandering performers who prefigured geisha; travelling monks who sleep on pillows of grass and listen to the autumnal insects; and a young girl who passionately longs to travel to the capital and read more stories. Taking in songs, dramas, tales, diaries and above all, poetry, this wonderful anthology roams over mountains and along perilous shores to show how profoundly travel inspired the Japanese imagination.