"An important author who portrays troubled individuals caught between the demands of society and the horror of solitude. Till now, his work has been hard to find in the West, though he has received major literary prizes in his homeland."
--William Ferguson in The New York Times Book Review

"An ideal book for inclusion in survey courses on modern Japanese literature. . . . a useful resource for courses on Japanese anthropology and contemporary society."
--Sonja Arntzen in Choice

"This is a major and long-overdue addition both to the corpus of contemporary Japanese literature in English and to critical commentary on that corpus."
--Roy Starrs in The Journal of Asian Studies

"Touchingly introspective, hauntingly stark, and compellingly readable in a disturbing way."
--Erik R. Lofgren in World Literature Today

Furui Yoshikichi deals with the human dramas of growing up and growing old, but by probing further into the recesses of the mind and memory, he touches upon the deepest mysteries of human existence. As if to balance the somber themes of madness and death, Furui also shows a great sensitivity to the dark humor inherent in everyday life.

Yôko (winner of the Akutagawa Prize in 1971) is the story of a sensitive young man's relationship with the title character, a beautiful young woman who is suffering from an apparently hereditary mental illness that defies precise diagnosis but is clearly linked to the traumatic transition from carefree child to responsible adult. Through Yôko's vivid but distorted perceptions of the world, Furui highlights the process by which reality and identity are created. Above all, however, Yôko is a touching, if somewhat unusual, tale of a young couple's deepening love.

The other two short stories in this collection, "The Plain of Sorrows" and "The Doll," deal with the subject of coming to terms with aging and death, thus shifting the focus from the crises of young adulthood to those of middle age.

Furui explores a range of human experiences on the borderline between life and death, the present and the past. Here, in particular, we find a surprisingly vital legacy of the literature and culture of premodern Japan coexisting with the concrete and commuter trains of Japan today.