... I was blown away. I really, really enjoyed it, and it makes me really wish that Shiga had used his enormous talent to write more books. The premise of the book is pretty simple. We start off with a young man named Kensaku, who after his mother dies moves in with his paternal grandfather. He resents his father for this because he is the only one of the children who is forced to move in with the old man. Kensaku never learns to like his grandfather, but does like Oei, his grandfather's 20 year old mistress. Warp ahead several years, We find Kensaku still living with Oei, and making a living being a writer. He has not written anything major, but has contributed short works to several magazines. The book goes on from there. The reader experiences the agony Kensaku goes through when he finds out the circumstances of his birth, his lust for Oei. His finally marrying someone he loves only to have it marred by the death of his son. The torment he goes through when his young wife Naoko is raped by her cousin. A wonderful book. Shiga, although he wrrote much less, belongs in the same group as Mishima, Kawabata, and Tanizaki as one of the great japanese writers of the modern era.

Perhaps one of the best of Japan's interwar novels, "A Dark Night.." takes the reader directly into the mind of author Naoya Shiga who lived in similar circumstances with the main character Kensaku. It is provocative in the way the author makes Kensaku grapple with himself concerning so moral questions that prop up through the course of his adult life until his presumed death at the end. The writer-bohemian Kensaku, who can arguably be taken for the real Naoya Shiga (Edwin McClellan defines this novel as a watakushi-shosetsu in form but not in substance), is at once a critical yet sympathetic description of the modern intellectual who consciensciously takes up both sides of the dilemmas that confront him but inexorably fails to heed his better judgement. Yet for all his debauchery the reader will most likely be delighted of his almost school-boyish courting of his his future wife and in the end be relieved that it was Naoko and no other who rescued him from his eternal quandary about women (starting from his mother and questionable birth). This novel can in some ways be compared and contrasted to Milan Kundera's "Unbearable Lightness of Being" in its views about women. Much has been made about the inconclusiveness of this 400-plus paged novel but I am of the opinion that to have dragged on would just have produced redundant statements to the eventual ending. This novel also provides a very detailed picture of prewar Japan, especially in its desciptions of the old Tokyo quarter (shitamachi) and outlying areas including Yokohama and Kamakura. As Kensaku does a bit of travelling by train and boat from central Honshu to Shikoku and parts of Kyushu, this book may also make for a sort of travel diary. Of particular interest are the descriptions of Onomichi in Hiroshima prefecture and Mt. Daisen in Tottori. Lastly, all of this is brought together in clear and elaborate prose by Mr. McClellan. I have read numerous Japanese works in English and never have I been so impressed as I was with this translation. It fills up all of the gaps, in particular social and cultural references in speech inferred only in the abrupt Japanese original. In all, a convincing work that Shiga Naoya should have written another novel apart from this.

This is a marvelous peek inside Robert Kennedy's efforts against corrupt labor unions. I had long been intrigued with the whole RFK-Jimmy Hoffa "feud," so this was a treat for me. Robert Kennedy's writing style is at once humorous and pragmatic. He provides a detailed account of the inner workings of the McClellan Committee. Moreover, he meticulously describes the corruption within the labor organizations, with particular emphasis on Jimmy Hoffa. A word of warning: When I use words like "detailed" and "meticulously," I'm being serious. The book is a must for anyone interested in RFK, Jimmy Hoffa, the McClellan Committee, or American labor history; but someone who wants an action movie packaged as a book, will probably be disillusioned. Having said that, I loved the book. I highly recommend it.

This book is almost perfect. It is a story of Eiji Yoshikawa's life as a child and as an adult. It will rouse all readers and completely absorb them into the story, just like all other stories by Eiji Yoshikawa.

Working from Mori Ogai's biography of Shibue Chusai, a 19th century Japanese doctor in service to the Tsugaru Shogunate, the author of this book focuses rather on the extraordinary life of his wife, Io. Supplementing Ogai's text with his own research, McClellan covers the span of her difficult and remarkable life from her marriage to Chusai, the births (and deaths) of her children, the death of Chusai, and her latter days spent moving all over Japan with her family, trying to eke out a meager living. Japan at this time was going through significant changes as power was wrested from feudal landlords and "restored" to the Emperor Meiji. As a result, Io's entire life changed; born to privilege and affluence, she and her family lost both their status and their income in the restoration. What is amazing about Io is how unconventional she is, and how her story resists the stereotype of the demure, powerless woman (especially in 19th century Japan). Io is not afraid to carry a dagger and pull it out and threaten to use it on thugs who would harm her. And after her husband's death she declines invitations to live with relatives, opting instead to maintain her autonomy even with its threat of greater poverty. She is exceptionally well educated, and learns to read English in her sixties. But McClellan is also careful to place Io's story within its historical context, reminding us of the real limitations she faced because of her sex. He still surmises, however, on her opinions on the issues affecting her quickly changing society, such as women's voting rights and Western scholarship. Above all, Io is portrayed as a woman who combines qualities of strength and courage with tolerance. These are the exact qualities one needed to survive in the world she inhabited, and her possession of them ensured, no doubt, her remarkable success.

The depth of this novel amazed me ... I cannot imagine the torment that Sensei felt, keeping his secret to himself until the very end of his life. Orphaned at a young age, betrayed by his uncle over money, betrayer of his best friend over love, cause of his friend's suicide ... I can only hope that the narrator got as much out of Sensei's story as I did.

The last part, Sensei's confession, was clearly at the heart of Soseki's novel. I believe I read that actually, Sensei's Testament was the first part Soseki wrote originally (which would, to a degree, explain the "unfinished" abrupt ending). Also, during the first two parts "I" refers several times to Sensei's death, which would make sense chronologically if the last part was actually the first part.

In any event, reading this book was a joy, even if it was a sad tale. Soseki's prose was akin to poetry, something I think was lost a bit in the translation (which is nearly fifty years old now). Even in the translation, however, I think the poetic power that Soseki writes with is apparent. Kokoro is a classic for the ages.

If I possesed the grasp of words that both Soseki and his translator did in this novel, I could better convey the emotions that poured out of me as I read this book. If I told you that this book was of loneliness as a result of the modern era in trun of the Centruy Japan, you would see Soseki as a reactionary against change. He was not, though but rather comfortable with modern conveniences. If I told you that never have I read a story with characters of such depth, you would pass it off as a complicated classic. It is not but rather simple to read. It is this style that makes the intense and profound truth so hard hitting. Imagine living in a country where, in one lifetime, modernization that took Europe centuries occurs. People from a set hierarchy spanning millenia come to ride the same train together and with the traditional age goes the moral values associated with it. This lack of identification with your own country men creates such a deep loneliness that only one's closest friends can fill. And when something comes between one and ones'friend at least the Emperor, which began this era is alive and unchanging. When the Emperor dies, what meaning does ones' existence have anymore. This modern age which took your friends, distanced you from your wife has no more things that link you to it. Why live?

The subject matter of this charming Japanese novel by one of the dozen or so greatest writers of the 20th century, is the loneliness spanning two generations of Japanese men. A story within a story, it begins with an exposition of the profound influence one man, Sensei, has on a young friend (the narrator) and in particular, the devastating consequences that Sensei's cataclysmic decision has on the narrator's life. Later in the book we hear Sensei's own story in which he describes the devastating consequences had on his own life by a cataclysmic decision made by one of the people he valued most. The book is deceptively simple but floods with lyrical beauty. It is a book that lives on in your mind for a long time, and taps into the inevitable feeling that we all have from time to time that we are alone, swallowed by the "silence of the whirlpool". Awesome. Read it and never regret it.

If you aren't familiar with the life of Natsume Soseki (and how many non-Japanese are ?), you could be forgiven for not realizing that this is an autobiographical novel. The introductory notes in my edition told me so, that's how I found out. With this information, you will soon understand that the author was an unsparing critic of himself. Pessimistic, dark and revealing of his most selfish behavior, GRASS ON THE WAYSIDE tunnels through the underground emotions and suppressed angers of the author's penurious life. Soseki's view of marriage and family ties is extremely bleak. "People didn't really change very much, he thought, they only decayed." (p.112) He certainly included himself. Apparently he took no pleasure in any human relationship. The people who inhabit these pages are constantly sick and poor, but receive little to no sympathy or love from those closest to them. Like most of Soseki's novels, this one explores a certain palette of emotional colors, none of them bright. Unlike others, GRASS ON THE WAYSIDE has more activity, more characters described in greater detail, and rather than being smooth like "Sanshiro", "Kokoro" or "The Three-Cornered World", it has a certain uneven rhythm or start-stop quality in its 102 chapters. I feel this originates in the fact that it was serialized in the Tokyo daily 'Asahi Shimbun' when it first appeared.

"Activity" is a relative word. For most of the novel, Kenzo, the protagonist, wrestles with the dilemma of how to avoid the requests for money of a former foster father and that man's estranged wife. As he struggles to escape the onerous demands of a man he feels he owes nothing, we meet Kenzo's brother and sister, their spouses, and his wife and her relatives. A few other characters also appear. Soseki still prefers introspective analysis to action in the Western sense. Kenzo does not act on his problem until Chapter 90. His decision is nearly coincidental with the birth of his third child. At the end, he muses, "Hardly anything in this life is settled. Things that happened once will go on happening. But they come back in different guises and that's what fools us." If definite endings and complicated plots are your love, better skip this book. GRASS ON THE WAYSIDE is a typically Japanese novel by a Meiji period author, slow, indefinite, psychologically complex, and in this case autobiographical. I happen to admire Natsume Soseki greatly, but I concede that he might not be to everyone's taste.

The writer is tubercular and has a hard time making ends meet, especially since he can't say no to family members. He bickers with his wife (poor wife!) and tires himself out writing novels that get spiked.