Publishers Weekly
(January 2, 2006) |
"The stories, which flow easily from one to another, each bear their own sense of wonder, fear and discovery. And while the locations may jump from a boyhood soccer field to the summit of Mt. Myoko, the thread that binds them is the author's gratitude for one more day of experiencing the world. Ishihara writes with the grace of a seasoned author who remains in awe of his subject: the taste of mountain trout becomes the affirmation of existence after a long journey, while a powerful electrical storm at sea has him once again wondering if he will escape death."
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The Daily Yomiuri
(April 2, 2006) |
"Miles from the Tokyo metropolitan government building and throwaway remarks about rioting gaijin, here Ishihara writes about the things that inspire him. The result is a much greater understanding of the man than you would get from his statements to the press. In Undercurrents, we see a man who writes with love and awe about the raw energy of the natural world and what he sees as its supernatural mirror. A man--it might be whispered--worthy of a kind of respect.... The quality of Ishihara's writing shines through, thanks to Wayne P. Lammers' translation. Though sometimes a little on the dry side, the English text has a slightly acerbic tone that one feels captures the man."
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Metropolis
(May 5, 2006) |
"Indeed, the more of his buddy-buddy anecdotes about loyalty and dignity and ghosts you read, the more you get a sense that the supposed “straight talker” of Japanese politics is in fact a blatant romantic, an exaggerator, a believer, above all, in myths— his friends’, his family’s, his country’s. And when you start thinking like that, suddenly sensitive novelist Ishihara’s literary fantasyland of will-o-the-wisps, deep sea aliens and the glory of silent suffering seem right at home in his political fantasyland, where Japan has a racial destiny, women are baby factories and you can’t count in French."
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