Palm-of-the-Hand Stories
Encyclopedia
is the name Japan
ese author Yasunari Kawabata
gave to more than 140 short stories he wrote over his long career, the earliest published in the 1920 and the last appearing posthumously in 1972. The stories are characterized by their brevity, some less than a page long, and their dramatic concision.
Although scattered individual stories had previously appeared in English, in 1988 Lane Dunlop and J. Martin Holman
published the first substantial volume of English translations, a total of 70 stories drawn from the period of almost 50 years from 1922 until Kawabata's death in 1972, as Palm-of-the-Hand Stories. Dunlop and Holman's collection was reissued by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux under the North Point Press imprint in 2006. In 1998, Holman's translations of another 20 of the palm-of-the-hand stories that had been published originally in Japanese before 1930 appeared in the book, The Dancing Girl of Izu
and Other Stories, published by Counterpoint Press.
A more common reading of the Japanese 掌の小説 is "tenohira no shōsetsu" used in most publications, but Kawabata is said to have preferred the reading "tanagokoro no shōsetsu".
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese author Yasunari Kawabata
Yasunari Kawabata
was a Japanese short story writer and novelist whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award...
gave to more than 140 short stories he wrote over his long career, the earliest published in the 1920 and the last appearing posthumously in 1972. The stories are characterized by their brevity, some less than a page long, and their dramatic concision.
Although scattered individual stories had previously appeared in English, in 1988 Lane Dunlop and J. Martin Holman
J. Martin Holman
James Martin Holman, Jr. is a literary translator, professor, puppeteer, and puppet theater director. He received a BA in Japanese from Brigham Young University and did graduate work in Japanese literature at the University of California, Berkeley.Holman lived in Japan for more than ten years as a...
published the first substantial volume of English translations, a total of 70 stories drawn from the period of almost 50 years from 1922 until Kawabata's death in 1972, as Palm-of-the-Hand Stories. Dunlop and Holman's collection was reissued by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux under the North Point Press imprint in 2006. In 1998, Holman's translations of another 20 of the palm-of-the-hand stories that had been published originally in Japanese before 1930 appeared in the book, The Dancing Girl of Izu
The Dancing Girl of Izu
"The Dancing Girl of Izu" or , published in 1926, was the first work of literature by Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata to achieve great popular and critical acclaim. Kawabata would win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968...
and Other Stories, published by Counterpoint Press.
A more common reading of the Japanese 掌の小説 is "tenohira no shōsetsu" used in most publications, but Kawabata is said to have preferred the reading "tanagokoro no shōsetsu".