"'Perhaps the highest compliment I can pay Sparling is to say that her rendition of 'The Sting of Death' was as chilling and direct for me as the many times I have read the Japanese original. . . . This volume is a significant critical and literary experience, with credit going both to Shimao and Sparling for its success.'"
Van C. Gessel in Monumenta Nipponica

"'Mr. Shimao traps us in the living nightmare of the postwar ruins within which he and his wife-and by extension all Japanese-labored to reconstruct 'normal' lives, with uncertain, heart-rending results.'"
Joan Mellen in The New York Times Book Review