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so little in these stories by Shono Junzo is overtly “Japanese” that readers of the translations may at times even forget that the stories are set in Japan. This gives them a universal appeal and familiarity, allowing them to become stories about any family of any modern society, not merely exotic stories of a country far away. The stories gently illumine the essence of human existence in a manner not unlike Thornton Wilder’s Our Town.

But at the same time, there is much in these stories that will strike the reader familiar with Japan and its literature as being, indeed, very “Japanese.” The family appearing here is, after all, a Japanese family: Even when most of the day-to-day activities described could belong to any modern society, the patterns of relating between family members, and the whole family’s experience of life’s major milestones, clearly bear the imprint of Japanese traditions and values. Not only for this steady focus on the family but for their intimate, “snapshot” style—a progression of brief episodes capturing moments in the life of a family almost like an album of photographs—the stories bring to mind the films of Ozu Yasujiro, with their low, stationary camera. The constant attention to nature, the autobiographical method, and the inclination toward reflective musing rather than analysis, all have deep roots in Japanese literature, both classical and modern—though Shono combines them in a refreshing new way. The stories are quite unlike those that have been associated with the haiku aesthetic before this, but there is nevertheless a quiet and spareness about them that make one think of haiku poetry—especially the way haiku describe scenes or momentary events as if to say “Look!” but then leave it to the reader to ponder the significance of those scenes or moments. The simplicity, both in haiku and in Shono’s stories, is deceptive: if we heed the command and turn our attention in the direction pointed, we see more than we had ever noticed before, even among the most commonplace of things.

And this is true of every reading. As translator, I have now read these stories a great many times, but continue to be moved by them anew. Sometimes I marvel at the simple beauty of the stories and their wonderful, unstinting, trueness to life. Sometimes I am warmed by their normalness and happiness—by the light Shono casts upon successes and joys and satisfying connections between people instead of dwelling on failure, dysfunction, and alienation as so many of his contemporaries have done. Other times I am put on edge by the fragility, the subtle tensions, the dark and chilling shadows that I find lurking behind the apparent calm in places I had never noticed before. Even more than most, these stories call for several readings.

A few words about the stories selected: All but the first two belong to a series of stories about a family closely modeled on Shono’s own, written over a period of more than three decades and together forming, in effect, a single, continuing narrative—a work still in progress at this writing. If the stories create the illusion of being chapters in a novel, that is the reason. It is an illusion I have deliberately fostered in my selection and arrangement of the stories because I believe they gain by being read together in this way. But I must give one caution: the stories were all originally published as short stories, self-contained and intended to stand alone; they should be viewed first as short stories, and only then as parts of a larger whole. This caution is especially important for the first two stories, “A Dance” and “Evenings at the Pool,” which were written before Shono established the method of his later stories and therefore show substantial differences from the rest of the collection in subject, psychological detail, descriptive style, point of view, and mood. The discontinuities are quite obvious for “Evenings,” which is about an entirely different family; less so for “Dance,” in which the family is virtually a younger version of the family in the later stories even if its experiences do not jibe. On certain levels, though, both of these stories belong to the longer narrative, are even essential to it, and that is why I have included them here in spite of the discontinuities. Some of the power of the later stories comes from knowing what went before.

In the years I have worked on these stories, it has been a continual struggle to find the right words for describing them to those who cannot read Japanese. It is both a pleasure and a relief that I can now let Shono’s stories speak for themselves. Shono’s voice is a quiet one, easily drowned out by the clamor of other voices in our frenetic lives. Yet, for those who will pause and lend an ear, it is truly a voice worth listening to.

Acknowledgments

Please see the copyright page for the original Japanese titles of the stories. All of the translations in this volume are complete.

A slightly different version of my translation of “Still Life” has previously been published in The Showa Anthology, edited by Van C. Gessel and Tomone Matsumoto (Kodansha International, 1985). I am grateful to the publisher for agreeing to allow re-publication here. The translations of the other stories are all entirely new.

I am deeply indebted to Robert Lyons Danly, who first introduced me to the writings of Shono Junzo and gave generously of his time to guide me through my initial translation of “Still Life.” He, more than anyone else, must be credited with teaching me the art of literary translation (though I hasten to add that the responsibility for any inadequacies in the present translations remains entirely my own). Thanks go to him as well for helping me obtain a small block grant to defray expenses as I embarked on the earliest stages of this collection. The grant was from the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies at the University of Michigan, to which I am also grateful.

I would like to thank Judy Weiss for her expert editorial advice in smoothing the “rough edges” of the manuscript, and Peter Goodman, my publisher, for the enthusiasm and sensitivity with which he took on this manuscript and turned it into such an attractive volume.

Finally, I would like to thank my wife Cheryl for reading the manuscript and offering invaluable suggestions, in some cases through several drafts. And I wish to thank both her and my son, Michael, for their interest, patience, and encouragement over the many years it has taken to bring this project to fruition. I dedicate these translations to them.

—Wayne P. Lammers