Edward Seidensticker, the most eminent translator from Japanese to English, is a man of many parts. Not only has he given us "The Tale of Genji," "The Makioka Sisters," and much else, he is also the author of the finest history of Tokyo and has written that wonderful account of Tokyo's own Nagai Kafu. Now, all of these various abilities come gloriously together in his new book, a conflation of translation, adaptation, comment, knowledge about and affection for Tokyo.
The bottom layer of this delicious mille-feuille of a confection is the popular series of detective stories known as the "Hanshichi Torimonocho" (1917-36) written by Kido Okamoto, a writer best remembered for such "new Kabuki" as "A Tale of Shuzenji."
Okamoto (1872-1939), like Seidensticker, was an aficionado of Tokyo. He invented the Tokugawa police officer, Hanshichi (a personage born, he says, in 1823 in Nihonbashi) so that following his investigator around as he solved his cases, Okamoto could explore Edo (the city later named Tokyo).
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