Sato: The Sick Rose Paper

Sato, a writer from Japan's artistically transformative Taisho period (1912-1926), is known for his poetry, prose fiction and criticism. This collection offers three stories in translations that effectively convey their world- weariness and the poetic voice creating art for its own sake. The finest piece, ``The Sick Rose'' (aka ``Gloom in the Country''), portrays an author who, having fled the bustle of Tokyo with his wife and two dogs, hopes that he can be productive in a quiet village. His sensibilities are so acute that real peace eludes him even there: his days offer a blend of ennui and wracking intensity. ``Gloom in the City,'' set two months later, finds the writer/narrator in ``a house the sun never touched, a season where all sounds were vanishing into winter''; his little family disintegrates (his wife takes the dogs and moves out), and where earlier he longed for the sun, he is now reduced to inhabiting a single room where he is overwhelmed by the inundation of sunlight. In ``Okinu and Her Brother,'' the same narrator looks back upon his country sojourn to relate the downtrodden ``simple life'' of a villager. (Jan.)