Enka, a sentimental ballad genre, epitomizes for many the nihonjin no kokoro (heart/soul of Japanese). To older members of the Japanese public, who constitute enka's primary audience, this music--of parted lovers, long unseen rural hometowns, and self-sacrificing mothers--evokes a direct connection to the traditional roots of "Japaneseness." Overlooked in this emotional invocation of the past, however, are the powerful commercial forces that, since the 1970s, have shaped the consumption of enka and its version of national identity. Informed by theories of nostalgia, collective memory, cultural nationalism, and gender, this book draws on the author's extensive fieldwork in probing the practice of identity-making and the processes at work when Japan becomes "Japan."

Enka, a sentimental ballad genre, epitomizes for many the nihonjin no kokoro (heart/soul of Japanese). To older members of the Japanese public, who constitute enka’s primary audience, this music—of parted lovers, long unseen rural hometowns, and self-sacrificing mothers—evokes a direct connection to the traditional roots of “Japaneseness.” Overlooked in this emotional invocation of the past, however, are the powerful commercial forces that, since the 1970s, have shaped the consumption of enka and its version of national identity. Informed by theories of nostalgia, collective memory, cultural nationalism, and gender, this book draws on the author’s extensive fieldwork in probing the practice of identity-making and the processes at work when Japan becomes “Japan.”

Jun’ichirō Tanizaki is one of the most eminent Japanese writers of the twentieth century, renowned for his investigations of family dynamics, eroticism, and cultural identity. Most acclaimed for his postwar novels such as The Makioka Sisters and The Key, Tanizaki made his literary debut in 1910. This book presents three powerful stories of family life from the first decade of Tanizaki’s career that foreshadow the themes the great writer would go on to explore. “Longing” recounts the fantastic journey of a precocious young boy through an eerie nighttime landscape. Replete with striking natural images and uncanny human encounters, it ends with a striking revelation. “Sorrows of a Heretic” follows a university student and aspiring novelist who lives in degrading poverty in a Tokyo tenement. Ambitious and tormented, the young man rebels against his family against a backdrop of sickness and death. “The Story of an Unhappy Mother” describes a vivacious but self-centered woman’s drastic transformation after a freak accident involving her son and daughter-in-law. Written in different genres, the three stories are united by a focus on mothers and sons and a concern for Japan’s traditional culture in the face of Westernization. The longtime Tanizaki translators Anthony H. Chambers and Paul McCarthy masterfully bring these important works to an Anglophone audience.

"A spellbinding work of literature, Latitudes of Longing follows the interconnected lives of characters searching for true intimacy. The novel sweeps across India, from an island, to a valley, a city, and a snow desert to tell a love story of epic proportions. We follow a scientist who studies trees and a clairvoyant who speaks to them; a geologist working to end futile wars over a glacier; octogenarian lovers; a mother struggling to free her revolutionary son; a yeti who seeks human companionship; a turtle who transforms first into a boat and then a woman; and the ghost of an evaporated ocean as restless as the continents. Binding them all together is a vision of life as vast as the universe itself. A young writer awarded one of the most prestigious prizes in India for this novel, Shubhangi Swarup is a storyteller of extraordinary talent and insight. Richly imaginative and wryly perceptive, Latitudes of Longing offers a soaring view of humanity: our beauty and ugliness, our capacity to harm and love each other, and our mysterious and sacred relationship with nature"--

"Longing is the core of mystery. Longing itself brings the cure." Rumi In every tradition, saints and poets speak of the soul's search for the beloved, the seeker's yearning for the divine. This holy longing, a secret feeling with many disguises, leads us to pursue religious discipleship, spiritual practice, romantic union, or an ideal community. It guides us to timeless wisdom and transcendent experience. But it also can go awry, when we misplace it onto objects, such as food, alcohol, drugs, or sex, believing that they will satisfy our craving. Or when we misplace it onto an authoritarian personality, believing that he or she will meet our unmet needs. If this teacher or priest abuses power, we encounter the shadow side of spiritual life. Whether the abuse is sexual, financial, or emotional coercion, we may feel forsaken and lose faith, even in God. The Holy Longing tells the stories of teachers in many traditions Sufi poet Rumi, Hindu master Ramakrishna, Christian saint Catherine of Siena whose lives unfolded as they followed their longing. And it tells the tales of many ordinary people Catholic believers, students of Zen and TM, followers of Trungpa Rinpoche and Rajneesh and their encounters with spiritual shadow. Finally, it offers wise counsel for rekindling the flame of faith-moving through the shadow to the light by reclaiming sacred parts of the self that were lost along the way.

Book of Longing is Leonard Cohen's first book of new poetry since Book of Mercy was published two decades ago. It collects Cohen's poetry written between the 1980s and the present, and also includes his wonderfully witty and sensuous illustrations, including numerous playful self-portraits. The illustrations interact with, and complement, the poetry in unexpected and fascinating ways. Book of Longing demonstrates the range and depth of Cohen's work, revealing an extraordinary gift of language and visual art that speak with rare clarity, passion and timelessness.

“An extraordinary novel . . . a triumph of insight and storytelling.” —Associated Press “A true masterpiece.” —Glennon Doyle, author of Untamed An extraordinary story set in the first century about a woman who finds her voice and her destiny, from the celebrated number one New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Life of Bees and The Invention of Wings In her mesmerizing fourth work of fiction, Sue Monk Kidd takes an audacious approach to history and brings her acclaimed narrative gifts to imagine the story of a young woman named Ana. Raised in a wealthy family with ties to the ruler of Galilee, she is rebellious and ambitious, with a brilliant mind and a daring spirit. She engages in furtive scholarly pursuits and writes narratives about neglected and silenced women. Ana is expected to marry an older widower, a prospect that horrifies her. An encounter with eighteen-year-old Jesus changes everything. Their marriage evolves with love and conflict, humor and pathos in Nazareth, where Ana makes a home with Jesus, his brothers, and their mother, Mary. Ana's pent-up longings intensify amid the turbulent resistance to Rome's occupation of Israel, partially led by her brother, Judas. She is sustained by her fearless aunt Yaltha, who harbors a compelling secret. When Ana commits a brazen act that puts her in peril, she flees to Alexandria, where startling revelations and greater dangers unfold, and she finds refuge in unexpected surroundings. Ana determines her fate during a stunning convergence of events considered among the most impactful in human history. Grounded in meticulous research and written with a reverential approach to Jesus's life that focuses on his humanity, The Book of Longings is an inspiring, unforgettable account of one woman's bold struggle to realize the passion and potential inside her, while living in a time, place and culture devised to silence her. It is a triumph of storytelling both timely and timeless, from a masterful writer at the height of her powers.

Organized in four sections – Inception, Longing, Chaos, and Epiphany – K.Y. Robinson's debut poetry collection explores what it is to want in spite of trauma, shame, injustice, and mental illness. It is one survivor's powerful testimony, and a love letter "to those who lie awake burning."

“This is why we read fiction at all” raves the Washington Post: Family life meets historical romance in this critically acclaimed, “gorgeous, sweeping novel” (Ms Magazine) about two people who find each other when abandoned by everyone else, marking the signal American debut of an award-winning writer who richly deserves her international acclaim. On the outskirts of a small town in Bengal, a family lives in solitude in their vast new house. Here, lives intertwine and unravel. A widower struggles with his love for an unmarried cousin. Bakul, a motherless daughter, runs wild with Mukunda, an orphan of unknown caste adopted by the family. Confined in a room at the top of the house, a matriarch goes slowly mad; her husband searches for its cause as he shapes and reshapes his garden. As Mukunda and Bakul grow, their intense closeness matures into something else, and Mukunda is banished to Calcutta. He prospers in the turbulent years after Partition, but his thoughts stay with his home, with Bakul, with all that he has lost—and he knows that he must return.

"In the early twentieth century, Khunu Lama wandered like a beggar across Tibet and India, meeting Buddhist masters and living, so his students say, on cold porridge and water. Yet this ragged beggar-yogi became a revered teacher of the current Fourteenth Dalai Lama. At his death in 1977, he was mourned by Himalayan nuns, Tibetan lamas, and American meditators alike. The myriad surviving stories about Khunu Lama reveal unexpected forms of Tibetan Buddhism, shedding new light on questions of secularism, religion, and what it means to be modern. In Beggar Modern, Annabella Pitkin explores the emotionally charged Tibetan Buddhist imaginaries of renunciation, devotion, and the teacher-student lineage relationship as resources for Tibetan Buddhist approaches to modernity. By examining narrative accounts of the life of a remarkable twentieth-century Himalayan Buddhist and focusing on his remembered identity as a renunciant bodhisattva, Pitkin illuminates Tibetan and Himalayan practices of memory, reinvention, and mourning. Refuting longstanding caricatures of Tibetan Buddhist communities as unable to be modern because of their religious commitments, Pitkin shows instead how twentieth- and twenty-first-century Tibetan Buddhists have used precisely the cultural resources that connect them to their past as vital tools for creating new futures"--