Best Selling Books by Edward Seidensticker

Readings and translations of Japanese literature from the eleventh century to the 1980s by former students honoring Edward Seidensticker

A hybrid of critical biography and translation of Nagai Kafū''s work

"This is a freaking great book and I highly recommend it…if you are passionate about the history of ''the world''s greatest city,'' this book is something you must have in your collection." --JapanThis.com Edward Seidensticker''s A History of Tokyo 1867-1989 tells the fascinating story of Tokyo''s transformation from the Shogun''s capital in an isolated Japan to the largest and the most modern city in the world. With the same scholarship and sparkling style that won him admiration as the foremost translator of great works of Japanese literature, Seidensticker offers the reader his brilliant vision of an entire society suddenly wrenched from an ancient feudal past into the modern world in a few short decades, and the enormous stresses and strains that this brought with it. Originally published as two volumes, Seidensticker''s masterful work is now available in a handy, single paperback volume. Whether you''re a history buff or Tokyo-bound traveler looking to learn more, this insightful book offers a fascinating look at how the Tokyo that we know came to be. This edition contains an introduction by Donald Richie, the acknowledged expert on Japanese culture who was a close personal friend of the author, and a preface by geographer Paul Waley that puts the book into perspective for modern readers.

This sequel to Low City, High City: Tokyo From Edo to the Earthquake, carries the story of Tokyo forward to the present, showing it rising not only from the disaster of the earthquake, but a second, time from the catastrophe of 1945, to become the biggest and richest city in Asia.

Very Few People Come this Way is an epistolary novel set mostly in Japan. In the background are the last dying twitches of the student rebellion and a huge bribery scandal that led to the fall of a prime minister. The Year of the Rabbit referred to in the subtitle is 1975. The epistolists are three in number, two Americans and a Japanese. The Americans ravage the Japanese lyrical spirit with gusto. The Japanese correspondent wishes to take it seriously, but whether she succeeds better in her purpose than they do in theirs is doubtful.

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.

"These two volumes by Edward Seidensticker may well be the envy of every university press…desirable reading for amateur historians and tourists alike."—Thomas Stanley, Director of Walk Japan Limited There can be few cities in the world that live, pulsate, and breathe through their geography as Tokyo does, few cities with a history that shifts through the creases of space as does that of Tokyo. This is particularly ironic in a city whose neighborhoods today hold few distinctive features and whose gentle topography has been all but obscured by batteries of building. But it was not always so, and what better way is there of writing Tokyo''s history than by reflecting this shifting geography as neighborhoods prospered and declined while others, more aspirational, climbed up the socio–spacial ladder? This is precisely what Edward Seidensticker does in the pages of these books, brought together here together for the first time under one cover with numerous illustrations and an insert of beautifully colored Japanese woodblock prints of Tokyo from the era. Tokyo: From Edo to Showa tells the story and history of Tokyo''s transformation from the Shogun''s capital in an isolated Japan to one of the most renowned modern cities in the world. With the same scholarship and style that won him admiration as one of the premier translators of Japanese literature, Seidensticker offers the reader his own brilliant picture of a whole society suddenly emerging into the modern world. By turns elegiac and funny, reflective and crisp, Tokyo: From Edo to Showa is an important cultural history of Asia''s greatest city.

川端康成のノーベル賞スピーチ『美しい日本の私』の翻訳者として知られ、戦後初めて源氏物語の翻訳をするなど、日本文学を海外に紹介した立役者、エドワード・G.サイデンステッカーが語る源氏物語と戦後日本文学秘話。

日本文学の翻訳・研究者として著名な筆者は、語学将校として第二次大戦を体験、日本の戦後処理にもあたる。のち日本文学研究に没頭する。その半生、そして文豪たちとの交流を描く。

Fiction. Edward Seidensticker, translator of many works of twentieth-century Japanese literature and author of several books on Japan, brings to life three stories from Okamoto Kido''s A Record of Hanschichi''s Arrest. The opening story is set in 1861, just before the shogunate''s overthrow and the rise of Tokyo where a severed alien head is found. Through Hanschichi, a fictional okappiki (police officer) detective work, glimpses of old Edo are marvelously exposed.