With such a piddling amount of Japanese fiction finding its way into English translation each year, you learn to make the most of what you can get. So when this year's Tokyo International Literary Festival marked the launch of not one, but two compendia of Japan-related writing, it felt like an embarrassment of riches. In addition to the latest issue of "Monkey Business," the annual journal edited by veteran translators Motoyuki Shibata and Ted Goossen, the festival welcomed the arrival of a Japan-themed issue of the British quarterly, "Granta," released simultaneously in English and Japanese.

Granta 127: Japan, by Various.
GRANTA PUBLICATIONS, Fiction/ Nonfiction.
Rating: ★★★★★