The Best of Japanese Science Fiction
I
bought this book cos I'd never seen any Japanese science fiction. The stories
didn't do a whole lot for me. They tended to be simple stories about a
strange premise about the future, like a future were a fascist state takes
offending humans and, through some unknown process, plants them in the
ground where they gradually turn into trees. I don't know whether the inability
of these stories to really grab my attention is related to the translation
process, but I suspect not. My reason? "The Savage Mouth", a gruesome story
by Sakyo Komatsu, which gripped me. Unfortunately, it gripped me right
in the stomach, and I almost lost my lunch. Read it, but don't say I didn't
warn you.
The collection doesn't even do much for me as a cultural study. The
stories don't seem "Japanese" to me, they just seem mediocre.