Check out what Stone Bridge Press will be publishing for the upcoming 2023 season as well as recent titles, backlist, and e-books!
New books include:
Off the Beaten Tracks in Japan by John Dougill: Observations on Japan's people, culture, and history from a resident exploring the lesser-known western coastline by rail.
The Heron Catchers by David Joiner: Joiner's second novel set in the fabled Kanazawa area is an intimate yet understated look at an American who seeks recovery after his marriage to a Japanese woman has failed.
Dragon Palace by Hiromi Kawakami: A collection of transformative fiction stories by a Japanese master, blending reality, myth, and human foibles across shifting dimensions of gender, biology, and destiny. The second book published under our imprint MONKEY.
To view the catalog in your internet browser click here.
By David Joiner
Available November 2022
ISBN: 9781611720815
After Nozomi abandons Sedge and their marriage, taking all their money and leaving him with a ceramics shop he can’t manage alone, her brother and his wife offer him a lifeline at their Japanese hot spring inn until he can get back on his feet. As he proceeds forward from this devastation in his life, he becomes involved with the wife of the man Nozomi ran off with as well as her stepson, a troubled 16-year-old whose jealousy and potential for violence contrasts with his interest in birds, origami, and the haiku of Matsuo Basho. What unfolds in the shadow of “the immortal mountain of cranes” will change their lives forever.
Set in Kanazawa and Yamanaka Onsen near the Sea of Japan, The Heron Catchers explores the importance of recognizing suffering both in others and in oneself, of being compassionate, and of trusting those who offer love in the shattering wake of loss.
The Heron Catchers is the second in a series of novels set in and around the Japanese city of Kanazawa.
By John Dougill
Available November 2023
ISBN: 9781611720822
This journey the length of Japan takes the reader off the beaten tracks to explore some of the country's remoter regions along the Japan Sea—from Wakkanai in northern Hokkaido to Ibusuki in southern Kyushu—in a fascinating mix of travelogue, anecdote, and personal memoir. At each of the thirty stops along the journey the author, who has lived in Japan for thirty years, goes in quest of the spirit of place, determined to highlight what makes it special.
Mixing comments on landscape and culture, the author was inspired by Alan Booth and Donald Richie and brings a contemporary perspective to his writing. The text provides some practical information on travel by rail and railway lines, but goes into far more depth and personal observation than a conventional guidebook for tourists.
By Hiromi Kawakami, translated by Ted Goossen
Available September 2023
ISBN: 9781737625353
From the bestselling author of Strange Weather in Tokyo comes this otherworldly collection of eight stories, each a masterpiece of transformation, infused with humor, sex, and the universal search for love and beauty—in a world where the laws of time and space, and even species boundaries, don’t apply.
Meet a shape-shifting con man, a goddess who uses sex to control her followers, an elderly man possessed by a fox spirit, a woman who falls in love with her 400-year-old ancestor, a kitchen god with three faces in a weasel-infested apartment block, moles who provide underground sanctuary for humans who have lost the will to live, a man nurtured through life by his seven extraordinary sisters, and a woman who is handed from husband to husband until she is finally able to return to the sea.