検索キーワード： ナレーター "Brian Nishii" すべてのカテゴリー

On a nighttime walk along a Tokyo riverbank, a young man named Nishikawa stumbles on a dead body, beside which is lying a gun. From the moment Nishikawa makes the decision to take the gun, the world around him blurs. But Nishikawa's life becomes unexpectedly complicated: he finds himself romantically involved with two women while his estranged biological father lies dying in a hospital. Through it all he can't stop thinking about the gun - and the four bullets preloaded in its chamber.

Recognized throughout the world for his brilliance as a novelist and playwright, Yukio Mishima is also noted as a master of the short story in his native Japan, where the form is practiced as a major art. Nine of Yukio Mishima’s finest stories were selected by Mishima himself for translation in this book; they represent his extraordinary ability to depict a wide variety of human beings in moments of significance. Often his characters are sophisticated modern Japanese who turn out to be not so liberated from the past as they had thought.

Mikura Moriya expected a quiet and peaceful life in the forest when he inherited his great-grandfather’s house and enormous orchard. Someone had to keep the family business running, so he quit his job and decided to live off the land. But the house isn’t in any old forest...it’s deep in the Beastly Wilds, an area off-limits to most humans. For the Wilds are home to the Beastfolk—neither human nor animal, but something in between. It isn’t long before Mikura meets his new neighbors and makes a pact with a girl with chipmunk ears that will change his life forever.

Two detectives. Two identical women. One dead body—rapidly becoming two, then three, then four. All knotted up in Japan’s underground BDSM scene and kinbaku, a form of rope bondage which bears a complex cultural history of spirituality, torture, cleansing, and sacrifice. As Togashi, a junior member of the police force, investigates the murder of a kinbaku instructor, he finds himself unable to resist his own private transgressive desires. In contrast, Togashi’s colleague Hayama is morally upright to a fault, with a stalwart commitment to the truth.

Fiona Barnes has a secret. One so big she's afraid it will destroy everything she holds dear. Not even her beloved music can save her. Li Wu has fought prejudice his entire life. But he's always felt safe and protected within the fierce love of the Barnes family. If only the object of his desire were free to be his, all would be well. Will he risk everything to be with the one he loves or will societal pressures keep them apart?

The island city-state of Singapore harbors unique customs and traditions largely unknown to the West. A booming economy and embrace of conformity overshadow its gambling dens, red-light districts, and a collective passion for ghostly and gory tales. Now, in Singapore Noir, some of its best contemporary authors delve into its seedy side.

The goals of the budo - the martial arts and ways of Japan - lie in refining the body and spirit. These goals are not always the obvious ones - and are learned only through the guidance and direction of great teachers. The techniques, methods, and rituals of the sensei can serve as guides to a well-lived life - and provide invaluable lessons for today's martial artists.

Fuminori Nakamura's Akutagawa Prize-winner plunges us into the depths of a young man's winding, troubled psyche. An unnamed taxi driver in Tokyo has experienced a rupture in his everyday life. He cannot stop daydreaming of suicide, envisioning himself returning to the earth in what soon become terrifying blackout episodes. His live-in girlfriend, Sayuko, is in a similarly bad phase, surrendering to alcoholism to escape the memory of her miscarriage.

Dave Lowry juxtaposes his singular experience as an adept student of kenjutsu (the art of swordsmanship) under a Japanese teacher in St. Louis with a riveting account of the samurai tradition in Japan. Intertwining tales of the masters with reflections on his own apprenticeship in the samurai's arts, he reveals in their time-honored methods a way of life with profound relevance to modern times.

The essential short story collection set in the universe of Ninefox Gambit. An ex-Kel art thief has to save the world from a galaxy-shattering prototype weapon.... A general outnumbered eight-to-one must outsmart his opponent.... A renegade returns from seclusion to bury an old comrade....

The stories of hibakusha - Japanese for atomic bomb survivors - lie at the heart of this compelling minute-by-minute account of 6 August 1945 - the day the world changed forever as the Enola Gay dropped its payload over Hiroshima, ushering in the nuclear age. These survivors and witnesses, now with an average age of over 90, are the last people alive who can still provide us with reliable and detailed testimony about life in Hiroshima before the bombings.

In these short stories, collected and translated by Ralph McCarthy, we can see just how closely Dazai’s life mirrored his art, and vice versa, as the writer/narrator falls from grace, rises to fame, and falls again. Addiction, debt, shame, and despair dogged Dazai until his self-inflicted death, and yet despite all the lies and deception he resorted to in life, there is an almost fanatical honesty to his writing.

After losing multiple contracts, Shuichi must make restitution to his company. Faced with this large, unanticipated debt, the trip to Paris he and his wife have been planning for a year must be canceled. Traveling to Europe was more than a vacation; it offered the hope of reaching their teenage daughter who has stopped going to school and will not leave her room. Feeling despondent and directionless, Shuichi believes he’s the unluckiest person in Japan.

From the acclaimed authors of the runaway New York Times bestseller 2034 comes another explosive work of speculative fiction set twenty years further in the future, at a moment when a radical leap forward in artificial intelligence combines with America’s violent partisan divide to create an existential threat to the country, and the world.

Early one morning, a body is found lying next to the railway tracks just outside of Kuki Station in Saitama Prefecture, shot dead. It is identified as belonging to the owner of a local mill which is embroiled in a labour dispute. Suspicion initially falls on the workers' union, then on a new religious sect that has been gaining followers recently. Chief Inspector Onitsura and his assistant Tanna are called in to investigate, and soon set off in a journey across Japan, from Tokyo to Kyoto and Osaka, and finally to the island of Kyushu, in a hunt for the killer.

Shinto, the indigenous faith of the Japanese people, continues to fascinate and mystify both the casual visitor to Japan and the long-time resident. Relatively unknown among the religions of the world, Shinto: The Kami Way provides an enlightening window into this Japanese faith.

The Shōbōgenzō is the recognized spiritual masterpiece by the 13th- century Japanese Sōtō Zen Master Eihei Dōgen. It is comprised of discourses that he gave to his disciples, in person or in writing, at various times between 1231 and his death 22 years later at age 53. These discourses cover a wide range of topics pertinent to those in monastic life, though often also relevant to those training in lay life.

LA gardener Mas Arai returns to Hiroshima to bring his best friend’s ashes to a relative on the tiny offshore island of Ino, only to become embroiled in the mysterious death of a teenage boy who was about the same age Mas was when he survived the atomic bomb in 1945. The boy’s death affects the elderly, often-curmudgeonly, always-reluctant sleuth, who cannot return home to Los Angeles until he finds a way to see justice served.

I see the world through statistics. Logic and routine. That's what keeps me sane. Killian Doyle is my polar opposite. His merciless, passionate nature terrifies me. He kidnapped me to force his brother, my friend, out of hiding and back into the mafia. He says he'll let me go when he doesn't need me anymore. I understand what he wants. The only real question is what I want from him. Because right now, I'm confused enough to think I want him to keep me forever.

As a boy, Kenichi “Zeni” Zenimura dreams of playing professional baseball, but everyone tells him he is too small. Yet he grows up to be a successful player, playing with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig! When the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor in 1941, Zeni and his family are sent to one of ten internment camps where more than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry are imprisoned without trials. Zeni brings the game of baseball to the camp, along with a sense of hope. This true story, set in a Japanese internment camp, introduces children to a little-discussed part of American history.