A VIEW BY THE SEA by...

A VIEW BY THE SEA by Yasuoka Shotaro, translated from the Japanese by Karen Wigen (Columbia University Press: $13.95; 196 pp.). Yasuoka Shotaro has won numerous literary prizes in Japan for his stories tracing the decline of the traditional family in the postwar era. In the title story, Shintaro reflects on his family life as he watches over his terminally ill mother. None of them wanted to live in their old village, but even as a child, Shintaro realized he was expected to honor the tradition it represented: “For him, ‘ancestral home’ was an abstract concept, always accompanied by a disturbing uneasiness--the feeling that somehow, without realizing it, he had made a promise he couldn’t possibly remember.” Cut off from their roots, the alienated characters in “Bad Company” and “Thick the New Leaves” seek to escape from the demands of the educational system and their domineering mothers through anti-social pranks. This intriguing anthology offers a somber view of Japan during the economic boom.