“You’re up very late,” says Reiko. What time is it?” “Past 2.” “Really. I no longer know what time of day or night it is.” “Let’s talk, Stu.” Reiko sits down in the chair across the desk from me. We are in my room, ...

“Reiko, this is so unlike you! (Reiko-chan-rashikunai, レイコちゃんらしくない).” “Is it?” “I don’t think I’ve ever . . . “ ” . . . seen me like this. I know. But you haven’t seen me in a long time.” “I never thought I’d hear you ...

In Tokyo and even in the Occident, I have known almost no society except that of courtesans. — Nagai Kafu There’s not much left of Kafu today. Among the major Japanese writers of the early 20th century, he scarcely ranks as a survivor. Natsume ...

“Why don’t you get a divorce? (早く離婚したら, Hayaku rikon shitara?).” We are in our usual cafe, Madoka and I, a quiet little place where jazz flows softly from overhead speakers and everyone seems to talk in whispers. I stare at her over my coffee ...

Wonderful, wonderful! Outside, the world as we know it is on the brink of collapse, but here in my study it is snug and warm; my books surround me, the coffee is hot and fresh . . . There is a perfunctory knock at ...

The main character of the one-act play that follows is loosely based on the few known facts concerning a Russian nobleman-refugee named Semyon Nikolaevitch Smirnitsky. Born in St. Petersburg in 1879, Smirnitsky fled the Russian Revolution in 1919 and spent the rest of his ...

Of all the stupid, idiotic . . . sumimasen. Stuart Keyes is my name. I’m not in the best of moods, though you mustn’t judge me by that. I’m good-humored enough most of the time, but . . . It’s these damned shitsugen of ...

The reader is invited to accompany me on a trip (return, not one-way) to second childhood. Those of us who learned Japanese as adults missed out, after all, on a vast store of linguistic experience. Is it irretrievable? Maybe not. The child’s world is ...

Every year, the Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation selects a “kanji of the year.” This year’s is “hen,” meaning “change” or, equally, “strange, peculiar.” It will be a long time before the world stops reeling from the strange changes of 2008. They are in ...

Terrified of death, having inflicted it on many, the Chinese ruler Qin Shi Huang (259-210 B.C.) sent his court sage, Xu Fu, across the eastern seas in quest of the elixir of eternal life. Xu Fu’s 60 ships, carrying (says one version) 3,000 virgin ...

This story spans 10,000 years, yet presents few recognizable individuals. Here’s one: “The earliest known Jomon man,” writes J. Edward Kidder Jr. in “The Cambridge History of Japan,” “was uncovered in 1949 below a shell layer in the Hirasaka shell mound in Yokohama City. ...