Banishment by Shell

Ostracism, the Athenian vote by shells, gives this book its title: Minakami Takitarō, novelist, critic and lifelong insurance man, refused to wait quietly for the crowd to banish him and cast his own vote instead. These essays from the first series of his Kaigara tsuihō, written between 1915 and 1920, are sharp, candid and often very funny.

He rages at the newspaper reporters who met his ship from Europe and fabricated a story about him, takes on critics and questionnaires, and writes warm, exacting portraits of the writers around him: his teacher Nagai Kafū, Izumi Kyōka, Kubota Mantarō, Okada Yachiyo and Satomi Ton. There are prefaces to his own early books, a collector's tale of book-buying, a boy who turns up on a Sunday morning determined to become a novelist, and a confessional essay on the childhood worship of women and its collapse.

Translated complete and unabridged from the Japanese, with a translator's note, endnotes on people, publications and period terms, and full source information. Some essays express attitudes toward women typical of their time and author; they are translated as written.