Published in 1972, New Writing in Japan is a terrific snapshot of postwar Japanese literature at a moment when much of it remained scarcely available in English.

Edited by scholar and translator Geoffrey Bownas with Yukio Mishima, the anthology moves between fiction and poetry, gathering writers who would become major figures alongside others still relatively little translated.

The fiction alone is unusually strong: Kōbō Abe’s strange, compressed “Stick and Red Cocoon,” Kenzaburō Ōe’s “The Catch,” Mishima’s “Patriotism,” plus work by Taruho Inagaki, Yutaka Haniya, Jun’nosuke Yoshiyuki, Shōtarō Yasuoka and Shintarō Ishihara. The latter section opens outward into postwar Japanese poetry, including Ryūichi Tamura, Shuntarō Tanikawa, Kazuko Shiraishi, Mutsuo Takahashi, Kunio Tsukamoto and others, with tanka and haiku alongside freer modern forms.

This is a fascinating record of what “contemporary Japanese literature” looked like to English-language readers in the early 1970s, before the canon hardened around a much smaller handful of names.

Edition & condition: Penguin Books, 1972. Paperback. Moderate cover wear and creasing; pages age-toned but clean, binding sound.