Showing results by narrator "Brian Nishii" in All Categories

After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Canadian government uprooted Bin Okuma’s family and relatives from their homes on British Columbia’s west coast. Families were allowed to take only the possessions they could carry, and Bin, as a young boy, witnessed neighbors raiding his home before the transport boat even undocked. Removed from the one-hundred-mile “Protected Zone”, Japanese Canadians were sent to internment camps where for five years they lived in hardship in hastily erected shacks in the mountainous interior. More than 50 years later, after his wife’s sudden death, Bin travels across Canada....

"You should be here; he's simply magnificent." These are the final words a biologist hears before his Margaret Mead-like wife dies at the hands of Godzilla. The words haunt him as he studies the kaiju (Japan's giant monsters) on an island reserve, attempting to understand the beauty his wife saw. Every story in the collection turns to the fantastic, the mysticism of the past, and the absurdities of the future to illuminate the spaces we occupy when we are at our most vulnerable."

Japan faces Korea in the World Baseball Classic at Dodger Stadium, and curmudgeonly gardener Mas Arai finds himself embroiled in a murder. A Japanese tabloid writer drops dead on the field, and Mas gave the victim his last drink. It turns out there's more at stake than a baseball championship - international diplomacy depends upon uncovering secrets buried decades ago.

Mas Arai's best friend, Haruo, is getting married, and he has grudgingly agreed to serve as best man. But when an ancient Japanese doll display of Haruo's fiance goes missing, the wedding is called off with fingers pointed at Haruo. To solve the mystery and to save Haruo's life, Mas must untangle a web of secrecy, heartbreaking memories, and murder.

Early Light offers three very different aspects of Osamu Dazai's genius: the title story relates his misadventures as a drinker and a family man in the terrible fire bombings of Tokyo at the end of WWII. Having lost their own home, he and his wife flee with a new baby boy and their little girl to relatives in Kofu, only to be bombed out anew.

Decades before trade moved between the United States and Japan at its present pace, there was a Japanese immigrant's son with an American dream. Born to a farming tycoon in California, George Aratani was forced to leave the family business behind when incarcerated with more than 100,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. After the war, he traveled to Japan with little idea of what he would import from the war-devastated archipelago. What followed was the development of his two powerful businesses, Mikasa and Kenwood.

The universe shifts and changes: suddenly you understand, you get it, and are filled with wonder. That moment of understanding drives the greatest science-fiction stories and lies at the heart of Engineering Infinity. Whether it's coming up hard against the speed of light - and with it the enormity of the universe, realizing that terraforming a distant world is harder and more dangerous than you'd ever thought, or simply realizing that a hitchhiker on a starship consumes fuel and oxygen with tragic results, it's hard science-fiction where a sense of discovery is most often found and where science-fiction's true heart lies.

Andy Knight is working a dead-end job in a convenience store when he's transported to a fantasy world. He is taken in by a master shinobi and soon discovers his magical abilities: He can communicate and harness the strengths of beasts. This power is forbidden in the world of Nobu-Teng, and to make matters worse, Andy is an outsider. Using this power will make for him no end of enemies, but it might be the one thing that helps him become something he's always dreamt of: a shinobi.

Mara Coyne’s new client has left her uneasy. Republican kingmaker Richard Tobias has hired her, he says, because of her skill in recovering stolen art and advocating for the rightful owners, but Mara senses that he is not telling her everything. Tobias reveals that a centuries-old map was stolen from an archaeological dig he is sponsoring in China, and he wants her to get it back. But as Mara begins her investigation, she uncovers the shocking truth: The map is more valuable than anyone has ever imagined, and her client’s motives are more sinister than she suspected.

A tender, whimsical tale of love, loss, and the quiet miracles of everyday life. Perfect for fans of cosy Japanese fiction. When an unexpected diagnosis turns his world upside down, a lonely man, with only Cabbage the cat for company, is faced with an impossible choice. The Devil appears with an...

In Beverly Hills, murder has suddenly gone out of style. For five weeks, the head of the city's tiny homicide squad, Zen detective Masao Masuto, has worked only robbery investigations. But after more than a month without a corpse, this dry spell is about to end. The dead woman is Ana Fortez, a Chicana whose death was originally classified as terminal food poisoning brought on by a feast of botulism-infested clairs. But because botulism can only grow in an airtight space, the medical examiner warns Masuto that the fatal bacteria must have been purposefully injected into the pastry.

LA gardener Mas Arai returns to Hiroshima to bring his best friend’s ashes to a relative on the tiny offshore island of Ino, only to become embroiled in the mysterious death of a teenage boy who was about the same age Mas was when he survived the atomic bomb in 1945. The boy’s death affects the elderly, often-curmudgeonly, always-reluctant sleuth, who cannot return home to Los Angeles until he finds a way to see justice served.

Fred Korematsu liked listening to music on the radio, playing tennis, and hanging around with his friends - just like lots of other Americans. But everything changed when the United States went to war with Japan in 1941 and the government forced all people of Japanese ancestry to leave their homes on the West Coast and move to distant prison camps. This included Fred, whose parents had immigrated to the United States from Japan many years before. But Fred refused to go.

The fires of rebellion are spreading throughout the Jade Empire. By the will of the regent, many people in the capital have lost not only their positions but also their lives. In these changing times, Yang's patron, the beautiful and venomous Scorpion, gives him a new deadly task. He must go to the Jade Abode and receive the Silver Magister's paizi, which will give him the right to deliver justice and cleanse the Empire of filth. But the Lady of the Nine Tails isn't a person who is content with little.

The sacred arts play an essential, intrinsic role in Tibetan Buddhist practice. Here, one of the great practitioners and master artists of our time presents a guide to the Tibetan Buddhist path, from preliminary practices through enlightenment, from the artist's perspective. With profound wisdom, he shows how visual representations of the sacred in paintings, sculptures, mandalas, and stupas can be an essential support to practice throughout the path.

They call the pool at the Beverly Glen Hotel "the naked hooker." To the frustration of the Beverly Hills police department, the women there are so high class that it's impossible to distinguish guests and girlfriends from professionals. Women flock to the lavish hotel because it teems with film stars, businessmen - and America's richest criminals. Tonight, to detective Masao Masuto's chagrin, there is the body of a naked man in the pool.

From the moment university student Nishikawa spots the gun next to the dead man he's stumbled across on a nighttime walk, the world around him blurs. The gun - loaded with four bullets - brings an intoxicating sense of excitement to his life. But soon merely possessing the gun is not enough. He must shoot it.

Yang is given a choice without a choice. Having survived the deadly trials at the Lion Academy, he is thrown into a new hell. From now on, he is a member of the Night Guard—the hated masters of low warfare. Together with his new companion, he learns more about life in the Jade Empire and continues his ascent to the heights of power.

"Truth is not found in fixed stillness, but in ceaseless change/movement. Isn't this the quintessential core of what stories are all about?" —Haruki Murakami, from the afterword to The City and Its Uncertain Walls The long-awaited new novel from Haruki Murakami, his first in six years...

From a sleepy fishing village to a samurai capital to a vibrant global metropolis, Eiko Maruko Siniawer takes readers through Tokyo's rich history, revealing four centuries of transformation deeply woven into its fabric. This accessible guide introduces a world of shoguns and kabuki theater, riots and earthquakes, wartime devastation and resilience, booms and busts, bright lights and skyscrapers, all viewed through the lived experiences of those who have inhabited and shaped a city of distinctive neighborhoods and different personalities.