THE SHOWA ANTHOLOGY: Modern Japanese Short Stories...

THE SHOWA ANTHOLOGY: Modern Japanese Short Stories edited by Van C. Gessel and Tomone Matsumoto (Kodansha: $14.95). In 1926, Emperor Hirohito chose Showa , meaning “enlightenment and peace,” as the name for his reign, unaware that the ensuing decades would see Japanese society profoundly transformed by militarism, war, defeat, atomic destruction--and unprecedented industrial growth. This strange panorama of events is reflected in a body of fiction that remains largely unknown in the United States. Gessel and Matsumoto have prepared an eclectic anthology that offers American readers an introduction to the major Japanese authors of the era. Many of these stories represent a confluence of the traditional Japanese first-person narrative (the so-called “I-novel”) and Western fiction, especially the work of Sartre, Camus and Kafka. The talentless narrator of Jun Ishikawa’s “Moon Gems” rivals Mersault in Camus’ “The Stranger” for utter, bleak alienation: He describes himself as “not inhabiting the face of the earth but rather a space one foot under, living in shame yet loath to abandon it.” Yoshiko Shibaki’s “Ripples” captures the dilemma of women caught between modern mores and the hallowed demands of family obligations. In Mieko Kanai’s “Platonic Love,” an author discovers the uncertainty of her own existence in a chilling confrontation with an admirer.