Singular Rebellion - Hardcover

Saiichi Maruya was born in 1925. He was a professor of English literature, specializing in the field of contemporary fiction (in particular, James Joyce), before becoming a full-time writer in the late 1960s. He has translated a wide range of fiction into Japanese, from Jerome's Three Men in a Boat to Greene's It's a Battlefield. Singular Rebellion, the first of Maruya's novels to be translated into English, was awarded one of the most important Japanese literary prizes, the Tanizaki Prize, on its first publication, and he has since won numerous other awards. One of his latest English publication is Rain in the Wind, a collection of stories.

The translator: Dennis Keene, an English poet who has lived and taught in Japan for many years, is known for his distinguished translations of Maruya's Rain in the Wind and Morio Kita's The House of Nire, among other works of Japanese fiction.

I had arranged to meet Yukari at six o'clock in a hotel lobby. I left my heavy suitcase with the company janitor, saying I'd come back to collect it later, and set off a little earlier than I needed to. I'd walked from the subway station and just reached a main intersection near the hotel, where I was waiting at the crossing for the lights to change, when I noticed Yukari was standing exactly opposite me on the other side of the road. She must have arrived a little early, I assumed, and was taking a stroll in the May twilight. The young woman in the white dress with purple polka dots still hadn't noticed me even though there was now practically no traffic passing, and she stood there idly in a rather affected way. To her right was an old foreign couple, and behind them a group of women dressed as if they were just returning from some wedding reception, each holding a gift wrapped in identical red and white and talking constantly to each other about something.

I kept expecting her to notice me, but although she was facing in my direction she still maintained her rather prim, distant expression. I finally lost my patience and raised my hand when I saw she was looking intently at me, and then immediately her face broke into a smile of incredible sweetness, like a flower opening. Straight away she stepped smoothly out toward me, still smiling, and I let out a great shout of warning. A light brown limousine swept by on the other side of the road but, once it had passed, there was Yukari back on the edge of the sidewalk and still smiling at me. The lights at last turned green and Yukari and I met in the middle of the crossing, where she separated from the old foreign couple and the women returning from their wedding since she went back with me to the side from which she'd come.

As we walked toward the hotel she said:

"Fancy shouting like that!" remonstrating as she stared at me with her great big eyes.