Embracing Family Author: Nobuo Kojima Translator: Yukiko Tanaka Japanese Literature Series December 2005 190 pages, 6 x 9 Hardcover, 1-56478-405-3 $21.95 Retail Hardcover Price: $21.95 Our Hardcover Price: $17.56—20% OFF!

Search the full text of this book

Book Description

Set during the U.S. Occupation following World War II, Embracing Family is a novel of conflict—between Western and Eastern traditions, between a husband and wife, between ideals and reality. At the opening of the book, Miwa Shunsuke and his wife are trapped in a strained marriage, subtly attacking one another in a manner similar to that of the characters in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? When his wife has an affair with an American GI, Miwa is forced to come to terms with the disintegration of their relationship and the fact that his attempts to repair it only exacerbate the situation.

An award-winning novel, critics have read this book as a metaphor of postwar Japanese society, in which the traditional moral and philosophical basis of Japanese culture is neglected in favor of Western conventions.

About the Author

Nobuo Kojima is the author of more than thirty volumes of fiction essays and criticism. He has been awarded the Akutagawa Prize the Tanizaki Junichiro Literary Prize and the Minister of Education Prize. In addition to his own writing, he has translated the works of William Saroyan and J. D. Salinger among others into his native Japanese. Embracing Family is his first book translated into English.

About the Translator

Yukiko Tanaka is translator of Japanese literature, with books such as Shu Kishida's A Place for Apology: War, Guilt, and US-Japan Relations and Nobuo Kojima's Realm of the Dead to her credit. She has also written studies on World War II and women in Japan.

Praise

"Embracing Family should be read by all American readers, both for social and political reasons. It is about how the people of Japan perceived the U.S. Occupation, which lasted for 6 years and 8 months following Japan's defeat in World II. I think the Occupation era has been deeply entrenched in the Japanese mind, possibly more so than the war itself. Aside from this novel, no one has written a book dealing with this subject, possibly because, for a Japanese writer to write about the Occupation, he would have to confront the shame of defeat. Mr. Kojima's work serves as a source from which to gain insights into the tremendous effect this period of history had on Japanese citizens and culture and will hopefully start a discussion about this era. "—Shimada Masahiko