Sláma i hedvábí Život na japonském maloměstě před sto lety

The book presents fascinating accounts by a diverse group of people about life in Japan at the beginning of the 20th century. Junichi Saga, a doctor by profession, spent fifteen years interviewing the oldest residents of his hometown of Cučiura. Men and women of various professions, fishermen, merchants, craftsmen, poor and rich, geisha and members of the yakuza mafia, recall their youth and speak very openly about their lives. The stories are often devastating in their rawness, yet at the same time it is surprising how naturally the narrators approach the hardships of life. The lives of ordinary people at that time were still very similar to those of their ancestors a hundred years ago, before Japan opened up to the world and new influences began to arrive. The book is not only a testimony to one small town, but also tells the story of Japan as a whole. It provides a better understanding of the country's success in modern times and what enabled the transformation of this traditional ancient world into an industrial powerhouse. The book was voted Book of the Year in Japan in 1987. This sensitive and truthful portrait of life in a distant Eastern country is being published in Czech for the first time in an excellent translation by Vlasta Winkelhöferová, holder of the Order of the Rising Sun and recipient of many awards for artistic translation and her contribution to Czech Japanese studies. Junichi Saga, a doctor by profession, spent fifteen years interviewing the oldest residents of his hometown of Cučiura.

It should be noted that Vlasta Winkelhöferová's excellent Czech translation does not contain all of the collected stories. To a certain extent, the most interesting stories have been selected for Czech readers, rather than the most drastic ones. Neither the Japanese editions of the book nor the English translation contain all the stories. The most complete version was printed in a limited edition in Japan. It is a beautifully crafted bibliophile edition with numerous color and black-and-white illustrations.