Ichigensan: The Newcomer

Ichigensan is a novel which can be enjoyed on many levels - as a delicate sensual love story as a depiction of the refined society in Japans cultural capital Kyoto and as an exploration of the themes of alienation and prejudice common to many environments regardless of the boundaries of time and place. Unusually it shows Japan from the eyes of both an outsider and an internal outcast and even more unusually it originally achieved this through sensuous prose carefully crafted by a non-native speaker of Japanese. The fact that this best-selling novella then won the Subaru Prize one of Japans top literary awards and was also nominated for the Akutagawa Prize is a testament to its unique narrative power. The story is by no means chained to Japan however and this new translation by Takuma Sminkey will allow readers world-wide to enjoy the multitude of sensations engendered by life and love in an alien culture.