How can the "voiceless" voice be represented? This primary question underpins Ishikawa’s analysis of selected work by Buraku writer, Nakagami Kenji (1946-1992). In spite of his Buraku background, Nakagami’s privilege as a writer made it difficult for him to “hear” and “represent” those voices silenced by mainstream social structures in Japan.

Hoaxes! Jokes! Farces and fun! China’s Chaplin introduces the imagination of Xu Zhuodai (1880–1958), a comic dynamo who made Shanghai laugh through the tumultuous decades of the pre-Mao era. Xu was a popular and prolific literary humorist who styled himself variously as Master of the Broken Chamberpot Studio, Dr. Split-Crotch Pants, Dr. Hairy Li, and Old Man Soy Sauce.

With this newly translated version of The Running Boy, the fiction of Megumu Sagisawa makes its long-overdue first appearance in English. Lovingly rendered with a critical introduction by the translator, this collection of three stories, written in 1989, sits on the thinnest part of Japan's economic bubble and provides a cautionary glimpse into the malaise of its impending collapse.