Winner of the Yomiuri Prize and recipient of the 2022-23 William F. Sibley Memorial Subvention Award for Japanese Translation.

Introducing Tatsuhiko Shibusawa-Japan's Italo Calvino-in this fantastical tale of a Japanese prince who encounters both beauty and danger on a pilgrimage to India.

A fantasy set in the ninth century, Takaoka's Travels recounts the adventures of a Japanese prince-turned-monk on a pilgrimage to India. As Prince Takaoka and his companions pass through faraway lands, the rules of the ordinary world are upended, and they find curiosities and miracles wherever they go. The travelers encounter strange creatures--a white ape who guards a harem of bird-women, beasts who feed on dreams, a dog-headed man who can see hundreds of years into the future. On the high seas, their ship is boarded by ghostly pirates and driven back by supernatural winds, and still they push on. At every turn, Prince Takaoka is drawn to the beauty around him, whether it takes the form of a perfectly shaped pearl or a giant blood-red flower, but such beauty proves to be extremely dangerous. Seductive and mysterious, offering high adventure yet deeply human, this is a novel that transcends all expectations.

With an afterword by translator David Boyd.

• In-person and online events with the translator, paired with American writers in this genre. A MONKEY tour is scheduled for spring 2024 (dates TBC): New York, Boston, Providence, Pittsburgh. Participants include Hiromi Kawakami, author of Dragon Palace; David Boyd, translator of Takaoka's Travels; Ted Goossen, translator of Dragon Palace; Motoyuki Shibata, founder of MONKEY
  
• Co-op available.
• National print campaign - Galleys/e-galleys sent to The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Japan Times, Kyoto Journal, Japan Forward, Nippon, Nikkei Asian Review, LA Times, and other national and fiction and Japan-interest media and reviewer.
• Podcast interviews with book-related podcasts such as Books on Asia, Asian Review of Books.
• Promotion through the translator's website and social media channels: https://monkeymagazine.org/
• Special outreach for reviews and interviews with the translator to English-language Japanese media including NHK, The Japan Times, The Asahi Shimbun, Japan Today and more.

About the Author

TATSUHIKO SHIBUSAWA (1928-1987) published only one novel, Takaoka's Travels, but it is considered a touchstone of Japanese counterculture. He was a prolific translator of French literature, known for his translations of the Marquis de Sade and the French surrealists. In addition to Takaoka's Travels, he wrote several volumes of short fiction and numerous essays dealing with topics ranging from dreams to the occult.

DAVID BOYD is an assistant professor of Japanese at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His translation of Hideo Furukawa's Slow Boat (Pushkin Press, 2017) won the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. He has translated three novellas by Hiroko Oyamada: The Factory (2019), The Hole (2020), and Weasels in the Attic (2022). He won the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the second time for his translation of The Hole. With Sam Bett, he co-translated three novels by Mieko Kawakami: Breasts and Eggs (2020), Heaven (2021), and All the Lovers in the Night (2022).

Reviews

"I love Takaoka's Travels so much that my novel The Third Love features a character inspired by Shibusawa's hero, Prince Takaoka. With the publication of this translation, readers around the world will be able to enjoy this marvelous book!"

-Hiromi Kawakami, author of Strange Weather in Tokyo and Dragon Palace

"Takaoka's Travels will somehow remind you, simultaneously and impossibly, of a hundred books you've loved and nothing you've ever read. The plot moves in eddies, playfully forgetting and then remembering itself. . . . It's rare to read a book and feel not only that you don't know where it's taking you but, over and over again, that you don't know where it took you, and I can't stop thinking about the experience."

-Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Ghost Variations

Book Information
ISBN 9798988688709
Author Tatsuhiko Shibusawa
Format Paperback
Page Count 184
Imprint MONKEY
Publisher Stone Bridge Press