Roger Pulvers has been writing fiction set in Japan for over fifty years. Now, for the first time, a collection of his very best short stories has been brought together in a single volume. Some of these stories, like the one that gives the collection its title, The Charter tells the story of a man who has chartered a boat on Tokyo's Sumida River. He is celebrating his eightieth birthday and has invited his entire family to celebrate with him. But, curiously, it is a little girl engaging with him on the deck who comes to symbolize the real love that seems absent in his 'loved ones'. The two make a promise to each other there and then that represents another kind of 'charter'. The great variety of characters encountered in these poignant and often highly humourous stories include a little boy who, it seems, will stop at nothing to get his feuding parents together again; a young woman who reconnects with an ancestor and finds love in the process; a beautiful Japanese singer who goes to Las Vegas to make it big time; a Japanese salaryman who, on an impulse, travels to Holland in search of Vermeer and loses himself instead; a naïve American who falls for a young Japanese woman, only to have to witness her modelling in the nude for a dissolute artist he despises; two young women - one Japanese, the other Indonesian - who discover that they have the same father ... and other colourful characters that give great insight into contemporary Japanese life.
MIYAZAWA KENJI remains not only Japan's most popular and beloved writer of stories for children and adults but a prescient voice for this century on how we can survive and prevail over the most challenging conditions that we face on this planet. Roger Pulvers writes in his Introduction ... "Kenji's message is: It is easy to exclude others who are 'different' from your circle, but if you exclude others, you exclude yourself, because you are inextricably linked to them; it is easy to be unkind to others, but if you are unkind to others, you are unkind to yourself; it is very easy to kill, but if you kill another person, the person who dies within is yourself." "Destroy nature in any or all of its qualities and we destroy human goodness, compassion and love. No Japanese understood this more profoundly than Miyazawa Kenji, and the people of the world need to know that." In this new collection, acclaimed author, translator and film director Roger Pulvers presents, in masterful translations, some of Miyazawa Kenji's most well-known stories. In "The Boy of the Winds" the wind arrives in a village in the form of a boy, Matasaburo, bringing, with great compassion, a warning over the abuse of nature by humans. In "The Bears on Mt. Nametoko," the fate of the king of the mountains, Kojuro, becomes that of the bears he hunts. And in the exquisitely poignant "Barefeet of Light" two young brothers face the cruelest hardships ... and the message Kenji gives us is always one of devotion and love. In addition, there are stories here by other well-known Japanese authors, the final one being the beautiful tribute to the importance of water in our lives, Inoue Hisashi's "The Water Letters." All translations come with commentary that puts the works in their historical and social context. The Japan Times has written of an earlier anthology of his works translated by Roger Pulvers: "The reader can clearly feel Miyazawa's values and hopes for humanity across time....
Published originally in Australia by ABC Books and HarperCollins, and in Japanese translation by the major publishing house Shueisha, THE HONEY AND THE FIRES is a retelling of some of the most powerful stories from the Bible for our day and age. This new paperback edition contains a story that did not appear in the original publication: "The Story of Adam and Eve - Narrated by a Snake." Roger Pulvers has brilliantly captured the essence of these time-honored tales in often bold and lyrical language that makes this book both timeless and of our time. "Every story is witty, beautifully written and encourages deep thought. Race out and buy this truly beautiful book."--INSIGHTS, magazine of the Uniting Church in Australia "Full of a light and eloquent humor ... Fascinating and profound." --Hisashi Inoue, prize-winning Japanese author "Open-hearted parables that reflect today's world."--Tokyo Shimbun "Extraordinarily fascinating tales that transcend time."--BRIO magazine "Brimming with a gentle gaze on the individual yet having a wide vision ... resoundingly powerful."--SHUKAN ASAHI weekly magazine
Originally published in Japanese, If There Were No Japan: A Cultural Memoir was acclaimed for its insights into Japanese life, bringing together aspects of history, culture and everyday life to paint an original and revealing portrait of the Japanese people and the pressing issues facing them today...During his decades of passionate engagement with Japan, Pulvers became close friends with many of the most gifted writers, filmmakers, actors and journalists in the country. Whether delving into ancient traditions or providing vivid accounts of contemporary customs, analyzing characters in Japanese fiction or recounting personal encounters with individuals, the author illuminates those inventive elements that have made Japanese culture and design the envy of the world--and that signal a way forward into the twenty-first century." -- Publisher's description.
Eric is a black American soldier stationed in Japan at the height of the Vietnam War. Karen is a white American student who falls in love with him. Eric is about to be sent to the front line in Vietnam. But he refuses to kill ... and the two go into hiding in Tokyo, pursued by both the Japanese police and the American military police. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Japanese students are demonstrating on the streets in protest. The Japanese Riot Police are poised to attack. Peaceful Circumstances is the story told over a single night by Karen to her father on his deathbed. It raises themes of violence against women and men when war is affecting millions of people. Peaceful Circumstances is both an exciting thriller and a deeply moving love story between two Americans who are about to come of age. Praise for The Unmaking of an American: "Roger has fearlessly thrown himself into the whirlpool of cross-culturalism. His life reads like an adventure story."--Ryuichi Sakamoto Praise for The Dream of Lafcadio Hearn: "Roger Pulvers has spun a highly readable and enjoyable portrayal of an unconventional man who embraced Japan in a time of transition, and who struggled intellectually and emotionally to come to grips with sweeping change."--The Japan Times Praise for Liv: "A gripping mystery, of a present haunted by the past, but also a profoundly moral book, asking of the reader: what would you do? In this, Liv deserves comparison with novels as great as An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro and The Reader by Bernhard Schlink." --David Peace, author of Tokyo Year Zero
Tokyo Performance is set in the pre-internet age, brilliantly captures the zeitgeist of Japan at the time. In this riveting, entertaining and wholly poignant tale, a Japanese celebrity receives a phone call while live on air that will change his life forever. Nori, a high profile Tokyo-based celebrity chef with his own weekly television show, is famous and beloved and he knows it - but he's about to put in his strangest performance. Award-winning writer, playwright and film director, Roger Pulvers, brings his love and deep fascination for Japanese culture to Tokyo Performance, a funny and, at times, tragic story, which explores the cost of fame. Red Circle Minis: Original, Short and Compelling Reads Tokyo Performance is part of Red Circle Minis, a series of short captivating books by Japan's finest contemporary writers that brings the narratives and voices of Japan together as never before. Each book is a first edition written specifically for the series and is being published in English first.
This fascinating fictional account of the life and times of Lafcadio Hearn probes the question: "What was the nature of this man, born wanderer, informant of the fiendish details of Japanese lore... a man who chose to live his life 'in defiance of the season'?" Though now largely forgotten in the West, he is, in the 21st century, still considered by the Japanese to be the foreigner with the most insight into their mind and mores. Orphan of Europe, chronicler of the eerie and the grotesque, journalist and ethnographer of subcultures, Greek-Irish author Lafcadio Hearn arrived in Yokohama from the United States in 1890. During his 14-year stay in Japan he wrote 14 books about the country, becoming known, in the decades succeeding his death, as the foremost interpreter of things Japanese in the West. The Dream of Lafcadio Hearn is a novel not only about Hearn in Meiji Japan but about any person in any era who may feel, for a time or forever, more at home in a foreign land than in their own. The novel is preceded by a detailed introduction on Hearn from the time of his birth in Greece in 1850 until his death in Japan in 1904.
Some of the most powerful stories in history are found in the Bible. the very names of their characters - including David, Daniel, Esther, Samson, Joshua and Jonah - evoke heroic personal action; individuals making righteous stands against untruths and oppression. these ancient stories speak to us of passions, loves and battles in ways that resonate with us today. How did the evil dictator in 'the Handwriting on the Wall' come undone? How did one man - Joshua - destroy a seemingly indestructible empire? What was the true gift to us of 'the good Samaritan'? What really brought down the tower of Babel? What do we make of Susanna (who story was excluded from the Bible) and her quiet yet persistent stance against the Elders? the stories in the Honey and the Fires have been retold for our modern, secular times, brilliantly capturing both the essence of the time-honoured tales and their meaning for us today. these bold, often startling and lyrical stories bring us closer to the heroes and heroines of the past, but make sense of the messages that their stories still deliver for all of us. the Honey and the Fires is that rare book: both timeless and of our time.
Satirical black comedy about interactions between Japanese and Westerners. The Sydney author has published widely in both Japan and Australia. His other publications include 'The Girl Who Absorbed a Newspaper' and 'The Last Night of December 1999' (in Japanese). He has made regular appearances on Japanese radio and television.
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