Temple of the Wild Geese and Bamboo Dolls of Echizen (2008)

Published for the first time in English, both Tsutomu Mizukami’s novellas are set in early-20th-century Japan and feature odd young men saddled with smallish statures, abnormally large heads, and something to prove. The first is a conflicted Zen Buddhism novice abandoned by his mother and toiling underneath a harsh master; the second is a bamboo craftsman hoping to emerge from his father’s shadow. Both stories display Mizukami’s elegant, sparse language, but while Temple of the Wild Geese is clipped by its stilted storytelling, Bamboo Dolls of Echizen follows a more natural plot progression, and is all the more affecting because of it. B