Golden Kin-Yōbi: 4 – Kurodahan Press

It’s Friday again, and that means it’s time for another giveaway!  This week, it’s courtesy of Kurodahan Press, a great small publisher which has a mix of new translations and reissues of out-of-print books, both from Japan and elsewhere in East Asia.  The selection comprises an eclectic mix of literary fiction, speculative fiction and non-fiction, and this giveaway will feature three of their books – with free worldwide delivery 🙂

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First up is Osamu Dazai’s Blue Bamboo, a reissued collection of several of the writer’s short stories.  The collection shows the same great style as his more famous work, but it has a much lighter tone and is a joy to read.  It’s a mixture of oriental fairy tales, autobiographical pieces and contemporary stories, all wonderfully translated by Ralph McCarthy.  I loved it – find my review here.

Next up, it’s some non-fiction.  Ivan Morris was a well-known Japanophile (see my review of his Modern Japanese Stories anthology), and his work The Nobility of Failure is a study of several Japanese historical figures.  In his book, Morris attempts to answer a simple question: why does Japan celebrate its heroic failures?  It’s an old book, but a good one, a fascinating insight into the Japanese psyche – and one I’d love to try 🙂



As is the third book today – although this one is a very different creature.  The latest Kurodahan release is a slice of more contemporary J-Lit, Mieko Kanai’s Oh, Tama!  It’s a warm, humorous tale set in Tokyo, where a man with many problems to address receives an additional headache in the form of a cat.  Oh, Tama! is a lighter work which sounds like something most readers would enjoy!

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So, if you’d like to win one of these books, simply comment below, leaving your name, an e-mail address and the name of the book you’d like to win.  There’s no need to follow me, either here, on Facebook or on Twitter (unless you want to, of course!) – anyone can enter, and everyone has an equal chance of winning 🙂

Entries will close at 8 p.m. (AEST) on Thursday, January the 30th (that’s 9 a.m. on Thursday, London time), and the winners will be announced in the next Golden Kin-Yōbi post (the winners, naturally, will be chosen using some kind of random on-line draw thingy).  So, what are you waiting for?  Get commenting, and good luck!

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And, of course, we need to announce the winners of last week’s prizes!

The three copies of Natsume Soseki’s Light and Dark go to:

Marina Sofia

Judith (Leeswammes)

and Emma (Words and Peace)

I will be in contact with the winners shortly – thanks again to Columbia University Press for the great prizes 🙂