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by the ingenuity of its plot, by the evocation of some unusual scene or atmosphere or again by the vivid portrayal of a character; but a badly written short story is almost bound to fail, regardless of its content.

In the present collection, twenty-five well-known modern Japanese writers were chosen and each of these writers represented by one story. The period covered by the stories is from 1910 to 1954; the stories appear in the order of their authors’ years of birth. About one half of the stories was selected by the editor, the other half by Mr Kawabata Yasunari and members of the Japanese National Commission for UNESCO, for whose advice and co-operation I should here like to express my grateful thanks. I should also like to thank Mr Yoshida Kenichi, the critic, for his valuable advice. The stories were divided among four translators, three of whom have English as their mother tongue and one Japanese.^[1]

Any selection implies a degree of criticism. Omission of certain distinguished writers from the present collection does not, however, suggest any adverse judgment. In several cases writers were omitted because it seemed impossible to represent their work adequately by one story. The most notable instance is that of the great novelist, Natsumé Sōseki (1867–1916), whose name has appeared several times in the present introduction. Ozaki Kōyō (1867–1903), Kōda Rohan (1867–1947), Shimazaki Tōson (1872–1943), Arishima Takeo (1878–1923), Itō Sei (b. 1905) and others would certainly have been included if it had been possible to find suitable stories.

The many-sided literary gifts of men like Nagai Kafū and Tanizaki Junichirō can certainly not be represented by a single story or even by a single novel. The most that can be hoped is to display some facet of their talents. Clearly this is more difficult in the case of writers whose forte was the novel and