Japanese Tales

£110

Illustrated by Yuko Shimizu

Translated By Royall Tyler

A treasury of Japanese folklore and wisdom, beautifully bound by Folio and fully illustrated by artist Yuko Shimizu.

Japanese Tales

£110

Book Details

Presentation Box & BindingBound in blocked cloth
Blocked and die-cut slipcase
Printed endpapers
Silver page tops

Dimensions11 inches x 7¼ inches

FontSet in Fournier

Pages368 pages

Illustrated byYuko Shimizu

IllustrationFrontispiece, 7 colour illustrations, including 4 double-page spreads, and 17 integrated black & white drawings

Publication Date04/04/2018

Editor's Notes

A window into a long-vanished culture that still fascinates, this collection of 170 tales introduces us to a broad tableau of characters: saints and scoundrels, ghosts and magical healers and a vast assortment of deities and demons.

The tales cover unexpected themes such as Surprises, Monk Jokes and Oddities; all offer invaluable insights into Japan’s cultural heritage. From a young boy cunningly outwitting a monk so he can claim a pot of delicious syrup for himself, to a man who steals a dream from a dream-reader and nuns who dance ecstatically after eating wild mushrooms then run down a hill to surprise a group of woodcutters, the topics are far-reaching and the narratives enchanting.

Despite many of the tales’ almost 1,000-year history, Royall Tyler’s sympathetic and colloquial translations ensure the human conditions they convey are not so far removed from our modern experience. Compassion, jealousy, lust, benevolence, greed, charity – all these traits and more are depicted in this diverse work of reality and fantasy, populated by a large cast of mythical and human figures.

About the Illustrator

Yuko Shimizu

Yuko Shimizu is an award-winning New York-based Japanese artist, renowned for her intricate and expressive artwork. She has a MFA from the Illustration as Visual Essay Program offered by the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where she now teaches in the BFA undergraduate department alongside working as a freelance artist. Her work has been published by Penguin, Time, Newsweek, the New York Times and the New Yorker; for Folio her work includes Japanese Tales (2018) and The Great Gatsby (2025) Her accolades include multiple Gold and Silver Medals from the Society of Illustrators, along with recognition as one of Newsweek Japan’s ‘100 Japanese People the World Respects’.