Modern Japanese Literature: From 1868 to the Present Day Paperback – January 31, 1994

This is the most interesting Japanese literature I have ever read. The author's writing style is excellent! I can learn a lot from him. Many thanks.

I bought this for my JPN LIT class and I must say I have never enjoyed short stories as much as I have here, reading it all in this book.( of course some are excerpts)I would recommend it, just because I personally like reading stories that enables me to interpret and compare life of people from the past til now. This book gives good insight on society of Japan in different eras.

The collection is wonderful, but dated. I was expecting a critique but instead got an anthology,Being one who is much interested in Kawabata & current Japanese writing, the book didn't approach the present era enough to hold my interest. I'm afraid that since Keene's time a great number of other scholars & writers have visited this material & their opinions are pretty much commonplace now.

I bought this book for "The Cannery Boat", but I was disappointed because it only includes a portion of a chapter of that story.On the other hand, I loved every story in the book. And it spurred me to not only read the full versions of a few of the stories ("Botchan"), but finally convinced me to finally learn Japanese to be able to read this stuff in the original.

I like this fenre and Keene has compiled an excellent book. You have to bear in mind that this book was published in the 1950's, so it misses a lot of what could be called "present day."

This anthology is the best. I read for a survey of modern Japanese Literature class, and after reading one or two of the excerpts I was hooked. The great thing about this anthology is that all the pieces are very accessible for everyday readers; it is very dense and confusing like some literature can be.