In Light of Shadows

In Light of Shadows is the long-awaited second volume of short fiction by the Meiji-Taishō writer Izumi Kyō ka. It includes the famous novella Uta andon (A story by lantern light), the bizarre, anti-psychological story "Mayu kakushi no rei‘ (A quiet obsession), and Kyō ka‘s hauntingly erotic final work, "Rukō shyinsō " (The heart-vine), as well as critical discussions of each of these three tales. Translator Charles Inouye places Kyō ka‘s "literature of shadows" (ka no bungaku) within a worldwide gothic tradition even as he refines its Japanese context. Underscoring Kyō ka‘s relevance for a contemporary international audience, Inouye adjusts Tanizaki Jun‘ichirō ‘s evaluation of Kyō ka as the most Japanese of authors by demonstrating how the writer‘s paradigm of the suffering heroine can be linked to his exposure to Christianity, to a beautiful American woman, and to the aesthetic of blood sacrifice. In Light of Shadows masterfully conveys the magic allusiveness and elliptical style of this extraordinary writer, who Mishima Yukio called "the only genius of modern Japanese letters."