One Thousand and One Second Stories
One Thousand and One Second Stories (一千一秒物語, Issen Ichibyō Monogatari) is a collection of short stories by Inagaki Taruho. Published in 1923, the loosely connected stories are written in an idiosyncratic style, often presenting surreal situations and characters.
Overview[edit]
One Thousand and One-Second Stories is considered an example of early Japanese modernism.[1] Critic and translator Hiroaki Sato asserts that Taruho's style also resembles Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism, and Expressionism, all of which were influential artistic movements of the time.[2] The brief stories, some of which are only a sentence or two, are described as “fragmentary distillations of simple observations”.[3] Most of the stories have a Japanese title, while a few are titled in French like Un Mémoire and Un Chanson ďEnfants. Celestial bodies appear throughout; shooting stars fall to earth and become everyday objects, and the moon acts as a recurring character known as “Mr. Moon”.[4] According to the New York Times, Taruho’s “whimsical sketches are colorful and amusing, a mixture of vaudeville slapstick and primitive cartoon”.[4]
Taruho is believed to have included an explanation for his stories’s fanciful style with the final line of Un Énigme, in which the narrator exclaims: nonsenseisayhasavalue.[4] [1]
The book was first published in English in 1998.
References[edit]
- ^ a b Inagaki, Taruho; Vita, Tricia (1998). One thousand and one-second stories. Sun & moon classics. Los Angeles, Calif: Sun & Moon Press. ISBN 978-1-55713-361-8.
- ^ "Tricia Vita - Inagaki Taruho's One Thousand and One-Second Stories". www.triciavita.com. Retrieved 2023-08-04.
- ^ "Book Reviews, Sites, Romance, Fantasy, Fiction". Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved 2023-08-04.
- ^ a b c Guy, David (1998-08-16). "Books in Brief: Fiction". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-08-04.