Finished reading this collection by Takashi Atoda. These short stories have a decidedly more contemporary air to them than most of the other books I’ve been reading lately; most are Showa era, and even then, the stories set in the past are moved there via reminiscence. (A frequent theme is a character recalling their childhood vividly, reflecting on what is lost from the past, and accepting its transience) The settings are generally realistic, although there are some horror-esque twist endings, which I cannot give away for fear of spoiling them, and a few fanciful tales, although IMHO, these are the weaker stories. On the back cover, Atoda is described as a “popular” novelist, and I suppose this means that his stories are not exceedingly enigmatic, although a few stories end on a deliberately open note, and many are more straightfowardly and wholesomely emotional than certain high literature works. Although the note also says that the stories do have more “human warmth” than Kawabata, I suppose I’d characterize them more as being (as far as I can feel style in translation) much more stylistically subdued than Kawabata, although the writer does move in some stories towards heavy aesthetic description. (extreme austerity sometimes becomes almost ostentatious?)