Tomoka Shibasaki’s short stories don’t run on human time; they run on architectural time. In her curious collection “A Hundred Years and a Day,” released on Feb. 25 in English with translations by Polly Barton, the stories seem indifferent to their human characters.
The 34 stories, each somewhere between three to seven pages long, take place mostly in Japan, and occasionally in other unnamed countries. Characters, too, are usually unnamed (“my grandmother,” “student one,” “the wife”), which gives the stories an allegorical feel, as if each highly specific narrative could also be easily generalized.
A Hundred Years and a Day, by Tomoka Shibasaki. Translated by Polly Barton. 184 pages, STONE BRIDGE PRESS, fiction.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.