Keshiki - Böcker

Mamoru wakes up at 9am in Berlin, eats breakfast, and then sets off to teach a Japanese language class, carrying a sashimi knife in his bag. At this moment in New York, Manfred lurches from a dream where a fisherman was about to gut him he wakes just in time to make his morning work-out. Meanwhile, Michael is preparing to go to the late-night gym in Tokyo, thinking of a man he met in Berlin only weeks before.Tawada s story follows the three men Mamoru, Manfred and Michael as they move through their lives on different sides of the globe. Though thousands of miles apart, odd moments of synchronicity form between these characters, the narrative shifting from one perspective to another as the three men's lives momentarily align and diverge. Here, modernity is rendered textual as Tawada explores the strange nature of human connection in a globalized, technologized world, and discovers what this means for contemporary storytelling.

The Untouchable ApartmentKandagawa's relationship with Mano ended over four years ago, which is why she's surprised when he calls her, drunk, to tell her that their old apartment has been knocked down. As they walk through the city, Kandagawa relives moments of their relationship and questions their decision to be apart. Lose Your Private Life Waterumi Yano is a successful young novelist, her books winning prestigious prizes and the hearts of readers all over the world. However, Waterumi is herself a fiction, a penname for the 28 year old Terumi Yano, a woman struggling to hold on to her identity as she is increasingly recognized by her loved ones as Waterumi.A GenealogyA fable-like retelling which broadly sketches the evolution of mankind and ends with Kandagawa, sitting in a bath in her apartment, remembering how, in the past, she used to be a fish.

KESHIKI is a series of exquisitely designed chapbooks, showcasing the work of eight of the most exciting writers working in Japan today. Yuki has not slept in two months. He's been infected with genuine insomnia a condition spreading throughout the city's high-profile businessmen. At first, this is a condition worth boasting about: the less Yuki sleeps, the better he feels, and he gathers with the city's elite in clubs and bars to compare how long they've been awake. It is only when he visits a sanatorium that Yuki is told his memory is quickly deteriorating, and, suddenly, Yoshida's fragmented style starts to make sense... Dream-like, sensual and unnerving, these offerings by Kyoko Yoshida, a Japanese author writing in English, surprise the reader with their texture and imagery. Spring Sleepers, the title story, frames insomnia as the contemporary condition the narrative sliding from metropolitan hyperawareness to delirious exhaustion in the space of a few pages. Spring Awakening, a koan-like mediation, describes a newly born eel emerging from then returning to its home. Finally, Yoshida reflects on her time spent in Norwich, the City of Writing.

An unnamed narrator visits her friend, the girl who is getting married, in her apartment on the fifth floor of an anonymous building. With each flight of steps, the narrator recalls different memories of the time they have spent together their time in high school, their first jobs, a chance encounter on the train. However, just as the building's corridor twists and turn toward the flat, we realise that the story, too, is shifting under our feet. As details go missing and memories are contradicted, we are left wondering whose eyes we re looking through.