Kant and Modern Science and Other Writings

What connects the laws of nature, a timber yard in the dark, and a girl who has outgrown her dolls? This anthology gathers six complete Japanese writings in which ideas and ordinary experiences reveal unexpectedly deep questions.

Tosaka Jun examines Kant through the problems of mathematics, causality, perception, and living organisms. Izumi Kyōka turns a nighttime meeting beside a lumberyard pond into an elusive encounter with longing and the uncanny. Hasegawa Shigure considers the kimono as an extension of the skin, praising its practical construction while asking what changing lives demand of clothing.

In Shimazaki Tōson’s Getting Ready to Grow, a father’s cherished daughter reaches adolescence in a household without a mother. Two writings by Toyoshima Yoshio explore the historical current and moral imagination of Les Misérables, then reflect on preserving a novel’s tone in translation.