Publishing in
English in Japan has a
long but much neglected history. Our intent is to make more widely
available fine publications that have recently been published in Japan,
plus some from the past, and quality books published outside Japan by
experts. The books below are available at your local bookshop that
carries English publications in or related to Japan. If not in stock,
the bookshop can obtain all titles shown here through their usual
supplier. For other alternatives, see the end of this sheet.
So We Have Been
Given
Time Orby Sawako Nakayasu, publisher: Verse Press, Amherst, Massachusetts
ISBN 0-9746353-0-8, 2004, 106pp, 139x203mm
Winner of: the 2003 Verse Prize, selected by Ann Lauterbach
Craig Watson (from back cover): In the world of Sawako Nakayasu there's no distinction between poetry and theater, meditation and action, language and performance. To be alive is to be in motion; every thought/breath/word inalterably changes every other thing/person/time. We are made of verbs and whether the task is "blanking it up" or to "keep mouth full of time," we're always on stage in the theater of language and imagination. Don't read this book -- enact it.
Sawako Nakayasu was born in Yokohama and has lived mostly in the US since the age of six. In 2003 she received the US-Japan Creatve Artists' Program Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She edits Factorial as well as the translation section of HOW2.
The Santoka:
versions by Scott Watson ISBN 4-915948-41-2 , illustration: by Ed Baker, 2005, 41pp, 180x228mm
This book is made of selections which previously appeared in the Tohoku Gakuin Review under the titles Weeds We'd Wed: English versions of more than fifty haiku by Taneda Santoka and A Life to Live: Santoka. Note: Taneda Santoka, born 1882 - died 1940.
Scott Watson presents each haiku in Japanese (kana and kanji) followed by his English versions. Explanation is added where needed.
100 Aspects of the
Moon by Leza
Lowitz Among the many memorable lines
in this elegant,
passionate book are
these: "this is what transformation looks like--the mess of it, the
tapping at the walls of your life." One
Hundred Aspects of the Moon tends to center in the perception of
a crossing, a sudden awareness that some monumental change has come
upon the self. Yet the book is anything but nostalgic: everything in it
struggles to accept change--or at least to see it with renewed
clarity.
ISBN: 4-900178-26-7, 119pp. 
Kenji
Miyazawa: An Asura in Spring
translated by Ruriko Suzuki, with introductions by David Chandler. The
first half of this book consists of the English translations and notes.
The second half consists of the original Japanese and is taken from the
Japanese text edited by Taijirou Amazawa. ISBN
4-88198-909-X, 1999, 209pp, hardcover, 147x210mm.
Inside
the Kamakura Buddha
Poems by
Wallace Gagne. His poems are rich in vernacular observations, including
the following from the title poem: You're the biggest friggin' Buddha
I've ever seen. / Bar none. / Ten thousand tons of bronze and concrete
/ enlightenment." (Dan Grunebaum, Metropolis
Tokyo) From the back cover: A heavy drinker and red meat
eater, Wallace Gagne was born in Vancouver in 1943 but was forced into
internal exile in Calgary during the brass monkey winter of 1951. (He
graduated from the University of Calgary in 1965.) 
ahadada
reader 1 edited by Jesse Glass.
Authors: Alan Halsey lives in Sheffield and is publisher of West House
Books. John Byrum is a visual poet and the editor/publisher of
Generator Press. Geraldine Monk's writing has appeared in numerous
magazines and anthologies in Britain and North America. ISBN
0-9732233-3-2, 84pp, 2004. 
Investigations
& Other Sequences Martin Koppany is a
poet, translator, and editor living in Budapest, Hungary. During the
last few years he has been working on different collections of
"experimental" poetry. The pieces contained herein were written in the
eighties and nineties, published in the Abiko Quarterly, the Lost and Found Times, Synaesthetic, Infinite Space, Essex, LVNG, and republished in book(let)
form by Coracle Press, Runaway Spoon Press, and Kalligram -- and
exhibited/performed at Woodland Pattern Book Center, Milwaukee.
Koppany's acute sense of the problems of language has moved him to try
to get as close to the patterns of thought and perception as possible,
and to create work that can be read by people who don't speak the
language in which he writes, be it Hungarian or English. ISBN
0-9732233-1-6, 70pp, 2003.
Strange Currencies
In this book
Daniel Sendecki travelsmnthrough a Far East of haunting contrasts,
where "Roadside children collect lotus flowers to weave into bracelets"
while feet away are landmines "like knives asleep in kitchen drawers
imagining meat." Startling perceptions of past and present, teeming
streets and loneliness, killing fields and open sky are juxtaposed in
finely textured images, drawing us to touch the mysterdy hidden between
"the agony and beauty." How refreshing to read poems that "Make myself
as small as possible" and reach outward, not only to look closely at a
far corner of the world, but through it, for gloimpses of enduring
value -- "to see a little light." (Susan Ioannou). Daniel Sendecki is
an intrepid tranlator of a self dislocated by travel, language,
culture, expreience. (Charlene Diehl-Jones). ISBN 0-9732233-0-8, 69pp,
2003.[very difficult to find complete of any Blyth series]
We know of no current source for volume 3. Please let us know if you know how/where we might get it.
Promoting
Japan's Best English Small Presses, Authors, Editors
Bringing you the best of English
publishing in Japan
The book business is made up of a
network of people. Book retailers generally prefer to obtain books from
one or more local distributors. Here in Japan most of the local
distributors do not directly handle books printed overseas or even
those published in Japan but aimed at a foreign audience. It may also
be that the retailer's staff are not fluent in English (or other
language) and they may mainly interface with a similar person at the
local distributor. So what to do? You want a book and you want to order
it from your friendly local retailer. The books that we catalog are ALL
available. If your local bookstore does not order directly from a
distributor that handles English books they surely order from Tohan or
Nippan (the giants of Japanese book distribution). You may have to
push, but the system works and is usually efficient. Each link knows
and trusts the next link. Of course, you or your local retailer could
skip the chain, but then prepayment is required and delivery costs may
raise the price. In any case, you can always contact us at IMC whether
you want to order from us directly or just ask a question. A human will
reply, not a software program. kunikoi@attglobal.net.
http://imcbook.net. Fax 03-3876-3627. Telephone 03-3876-3073