Category: Literature

The Casebook of Old Edo’s Sherlock Holmes Reviewed

Posted on by UH Press

Tom Baker in the April 21, 2007 edition of The Daily Yomiuri had this to say about Okamoto Kido’s The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi: Detective Stories of Old Edo, recently published by University of Hawai‘i Press:

“An entertaining collection of detective stories. . . . The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi offers a special pleasure for readers familiar with the Tokyo area, where well-known place names appear on every page, but with startling different details.”

A contemporary of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author Okamoto Kido examines the seamy underside of life in Edo (Tokyo) through his fictional detective, the street-smart Hanshichi. Modeled after Doyle’s tales about his own Sherlock Holmes, these fourteen stories, translated by Ian MacDonald, offer entertaining insights into the development of the modern Japanese crime novel.

Read the full text of Tom Baker’s review here.

The Poetics of Motoori Norinaga

Posted on by UH Press

One of Japan’s most renowned intellectuals, Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801) is perhaps best known for his notion of mono no aware, a detailed description of the workings of emotions as the precondition for the poetic act. As a poet and a theoretician of poetry, Norinaga had a keen eye for etymologies and other archaeological practices aimed at recovering the depth and richness of the Japanese language.

The Poetics of Motoori Norinaga: A Hermeneutical Journey, translated and edited by Michael F. Marra, contains his major works on the Yamato region—the heartland of Japanese culture—including one of his most famous poetic diaries, The Sedge Hat Diary (Sugagasa no Nikki), translated into English here for the first time.

May 2007 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3078-6 / $57.00 (CLOTH)

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