Naoshi Koriyama and Bruce Allen have repackaged Konjaku Monogatari Shu in a way that both retains the compelling sense of history in these ancient tales and vivifies their relevance to human experience in the twenty-first century. Through well told and carefully translated stories, we become more conscious of who we are and our intricate relationships to the world. -Scott ... Read moreSlovic, University of Idaho, USA, editor, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment These masterful, elegant translations of ninety extraordinary tales from the Konjaku Monogatari Shu-one of the most valued works of classical Japanese literature-contribute significantly to our understandings of premodern Japanese culture and religion. They also give us an unprecedented glimpse into the daily lives of early Japan's common people, those obscured in the Tale of Genji and other celebrated classics. Most significant in our age of ecological crisis, the Konjaku tales, referencing major ecological transformations of the Japanese countryside, reveal the tensions between religion's spiritual callings to preserve nature and the human need to hunt, fish, and farm to survive. -Karen Thornber, Professor of Comparative Literature and Professor, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University, author of Ecoambiguity Show Less