Fair Dalliance
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Fair Dalliance: 15 Stories by Yoshiyuki Junnosuke YOSHIYUKI Junnosuke |
This collection has come into being out of the conviction that the short stories of Yoshiyuki Junnosuke, if they were made accessible in English under one cover, would certainly be appreciated and enjoyed abroad as they have been in Japan. The prolific Yoshiyuki Junnosuke has left us a vast body of literature, a feast of short stories, novels, novellas, essays on a wide range of topics, translations from English, and light fiction whose function is simply to entertain. An edition of his complete works published in 1983, eleven years before death stilled his pen, came to 20 volumes.
In the preface to New Writing in Japan, Mishima Yukio says of Yoshiyuki: “The delicacy of Yoshiyuki’s language and sensibility is probably more subtle and sophisticated than that of any Japanese writer since the war…The idée fixe of Japanese youth today—that love is impossible and impracticable—lies deep at the root of Yoshiyuki’s thinking.”
His elegant prose style is often likened to that of Albert Camus. Howard Hibbett said of Yoshiyuki (in Contemporary Japanese Literature: an Anthology of Fiction, Film and Other Writing Since 1945): “The cool, polished surface of his fiction faithfully reflects a world of mingled frivolity and futility… The urbane refinement of his astringent prose style is much admired.”
- My Bed Is a Boat (Nedai no fune)
- Japanese Handball (Temari)
- On Houses (Kaoku ni tsuite)
- The Man Who Fired the Bath (Furo taku otoko)
- Perfume Bottles (Kōsuibin)
- The Illusionist (Tejinashi)
- Hydrangeas (Ajisai)
- I Ran Over a Cat (Neko funjatta)
- Something Unexpected (Fui no dekigoto)
- Three Dreams (Yume mittsu)
- Twins (Sōsei)
- A Certain Married Couple (Aru fūfu)
- The Flies (Hae)
- The Battle of the Clays (Nendo gassen)
- Katsushika Ward (Katsushika)
