BOOK REVIEW

Reading Muro Saisei’s “Tokyo: City of Illusions” in English and Japanese

This Taisho era novella is published with parallel Japanese and English translation by J.D. Wisgo

Arigatai Books is a publisher of Japanese literature in translation created by J.D. Wisgo. Arigatai’s latest book is the novella, Tokyo: City of Illusions (幻影の都市) by Murō Saisei (室生犀星).

This story was written in 1921, during the Taisho era (1912–1926). This period proved to be a short, chaotic interlude between the sudden opening to the Western world of the Meiji era, and the march to war of early Showa.

Murō was born in 1889 in Kanazawa and moved to Tokyo in 1909 where he became known as an accomplished poet. Encouraged by Akutagawa and Satō Haruo, he began writing prose, mostly autobiographical sketches of his early life written in a melancholy style.

I first came across Murō Saisei from his short story “Brother and Sister (兄妹)” published in 1934 and translated by Edward Seidensticker in the classic anthology Modern Japanese Stories.

But I knew nothing else of Murō other than “Brother and Sister” since few of his works had been translated into English. Wisgo is rectifying the situation to bring Murō to the…