Bullfight

Pushkin Best of Collection 

First English translation of an amazing debut novella by a major & incredibly prolific Japanese author

Tsugami, the editor-in-chief of a newspaper in war-scarred Osaka, agrees to sponsor a bullfight. For months this great gamble consumes him, makes him as wary & combative as if he was in a ring himself. And, as he becomes ever more distant, his lover Sakiko is unsure if she would like to see him succeed or be destroyed.

Yasushi Inoue’s novella won him the prestigious Akutagawa Prize & established him as one of Japan’s most acclaimed authors. From the planning of a bullfight-through Tsugami’s struggle, his focus & his aloneness-he crafts something intensely memorable, a compelling existential tale.

Born in 1907, Yasushi Inoue worked as a journalist & literary editor for many years, only beginning his prolific career as an author in 1949 with Bullfight. He went on to publish 50 novels & 150 short stories, both historical & contemporary, his work making him one of Japan’s major literary figures. In 1976 Inoue was presented with the Order of Culture, the highest honour granted for artistic merit in Japan. He died in 1991.

Michael Emmerich translated Inoue’s second work, “Bullfight,” which was originally published in 1949 but had never been available in English. Set in the period that immediately followed Japan’s surrender in World War II, the novella describes a small-time newspaper editor’s obsessive & possibly foolhardy quest to stage a bullfight as a publicity stunt in an Osaka baseball stadium. Shortly after the novella’s release in 2013, the Financial Times described it as “beautifully translated” & praised its “certain grim humour throughout.” Eileen Battersby, well-known literary critic for the Irish Times, included “Bullfight” on her list of the top 25 works of fiction in 2013.