Delicate tales reveal the flow of life in the modern Japanese family, the accidental pleasures and the unexplained misfortunes. Shono's unique "snapshot" technique--the layering of commonplace events, images, and conversations--is like haiku poetry crossed with an Ozu-style film drama.

Junzo Shono was born in 1921 and lived in Kawasaki, Japan. His works have won numerous literary awards, including the Yomiuri Prize for Evening Clouds.

Wayne P. Lammers is a translator of Japanese into English. Lammers grew up in Japan in an American household, using English at home and Japanese everywhere else. After building on this bilingual foundation by specializing in Japanese studies in college and graduate school, he taught Japanese language, literature, and culture at the university level for a number of years.