| Donald Ritchie, in The Japan Times | "Even without manga, the book would be one of the best explications of Japanese grammar and structure available." Read full review. |
| aintitcool.com | "From its preface on text and pronunciation through the steps of grammar and use, Lammers builds the rules and use of the language in a clear, easily followed manner. Regardless of whether you plan on making a serious attempt to learn the Japanese Language, Japanese the Manga Way is sure to be an asset for any anime viewer." Read full review. |
| JET Alumni Association of New York Newsletter | "One is sort of 'tricked' into feeling like one is reading a comic strip rather than a textbook... Mr. Lammers has given a lot of thought to explaining the subtleties of Japanese to English speakers.... The explanations of these subtleties provide the true prize of this text, something that in ten years of studying Japanese I have rarely seen." Read full review (this is a PDF file; scroll to p. 14). |
| animefringe.com | "At 282 pages, any other book about Japanese grammar and sentence structure would seem horribly overwhelming. Yet Lammers' approach is like that of a skilled teacher taking your hand and guiding you through the assorted lessons... For anyone that found Mangajin's Basic Japanese Through Comics too daunting of a read, then take heart as Wayne P. Lammers' illustrated guide is definitely one for any up-and-coming Japanese linguist's bookshelf." Read full review. |
| Heartland Reviews heardlandreviews.com |
" What a touching novel!!!.... The ending has some unexpected twists, which will grab the reader's emotions and yank them like a chain... His storyline is so poignant, so emotional, it will have you hoping every character will come out ahead. The author is famous for having redefined Japanese TV drama to the better. This book is a clear indication as to why. We rated it a high five hearts." Read full review. |
| Midwest Book Review midwestbookreview.com |
"Hauntingly told, with a sublimely subtle undercurrent to the tides of emotion, Strangers is an unforgettable journey through memories and the inner striving to reach out and contact others. " Read full review. |
| Bret Easton Ellis, author of American Psycho | "An eerie ghost story written with hypnotic clarity: quickly-paced, intelligent, and haunting with passages of acute psychological insight into the relationship between children and their parents, which is also what makes this fascinating book so moving. He is among the best Japanese writers I have read." |
| Sonia O'Regan in The Daily Yomiuri |
"[A] simple, genuinely surprising ghost story... [Yamada] plays on the readers' emotions, drawing them into the story the same way his otherworldly characters fixate Harada. By the time the reader's fascination has turned to fear, and amusement to disgust, one is committed to the characters and compelled to read on to the climax of this satisfyingly spooky little story." |
| Donald Richie in The Japan Times |
"Taichi Yamada knows a lot about make-believe worlds and their sway over the "real" one. He is thus able to create a subtext for his ghost-story novel... Both novel and movie might be read as exercises in nostalgia were it not for the sadness that so informs both, and the knowledge that the past can kill. This lifts the work into something near metaphysics -- that branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value. " |
| The Asian Reporter | "A well-written novel that subtly raises perplexing questions like a laidback psychological thriller, then eggs on curious readers like a good mystery page-turner... Strangers offers the States a glimpse of its own forgotten past: the art--yes, art--of horror from an age when a good story instead of kill counts and gore defined the genre." Read full review. |
| Rick Kleffel, The Agony Column trashotron.com |
"Quick, slick and filled with nice wordsmithing by the writer and the translator, 'Strangers' brings cloying emotions into the world of terrorizing fiction... Readers of 'Strangers' will be hard pressed not to play out the novel as a movie, and if someone doesn't snap this up and produce it, well, then they're as stupid as we all think they are. Whoever they are. 'Strangers' is a tightly written and taut novel, the kind you'll grip between sweating hands as you finish it off in a day or so. " Read full review. |
| BookReview.Com | "Rating: Excellent!... Strangers is an intriguing ghost story with a twist at the end. It is touching and unnerving at the same time. Taichi Yamada's writing style is refreshing and embracing, drawing you into Harada's story." Read full review. |
| The Japan Times | "Ordinary life made transcendent." |
| The Atlantic Monthly | "[A] delicate, sad novel that never admits to sadness." |
| Persimmon | "Junzo Shono, one of Japan's best kept literary secrets, challenges readers to rethink what constitutes a novel... Not unlike the trees, plants, flowers and vegetables that are so central to many of his images, Shono's style is alive and organic in the way it slithers, twists, and turns in an effort to capture the moment." Read full review. |
| Multicultural Review | "[A] celebration of the very ordinary... If it seems that your attention is seldom caught by ordinary people and events, read this book and see if it changes your mind." |
| Small Press | "This collection should be sipped and savored like warm sake." |
| Library Journal | "The simple voice in these stories gives them a timeless, almost placeless quality that leaves the reader with a sense of rest and serenity." |
| Prof. Van C. Gessel, BYU | "Shono is one of the leading writers of postwar Japan, a master of simplicity and subtlety. The placid surfaces of stories conceal a painful uncertainty about contemporary Japanese life. Lammers's sensitive translations convey both the pain and the placidity with moving clarity." |
| Publishers Weekly | "A penetrating collection of stories. . . .Lammers's excellent translation keeps the dialogue and language deceptively simple yet nuanced and subtle; he makes the family Japanese and universal at the same time." |
| Education About ASIA | "Shono's settings are clearly Japanese, but as layers reveal themselves, the Japaneseness of the whole work recedes and becomes only a backdrop...[Shono's fiction] captures the heart of the reader, whether American or Japanese. It slowly reveals itself as universal, rather than narrowly nationalistic." |
| PEN West Award Citation | "The translator accomplished the highly difficult and original task of finding an idiom that was at once familiar and outlandish. Elegant, fluent and colloquial, Lammers' English text reads like an invisible language one has somehow always known." |
| Kenyon College Book Review | "These stories are so artful. . . they seem like the artless productions of life itself. . . The nuances and tone of Shono's style--a very quiet and sophisticated music against a background of subtle and careful observations--don't escape the translator's ear, and the translator's ear in English is remarkably exact, too. . . Few authors have had a better translator." |
| Hiroaki Sato, translator and critic | "Junzo Shono describes domestic scenes with airy sophistication and charm. . . . Begin any of his narratives and you become Junzo Shono, an amused observer of daily occurrences. Wayne Lammers's translations recreate Shono's unique voice with natural precision. Reading Lammers is reading Shono." |
| The New York Times Book Review, on "Still Life" in The Showa Anthology | "[T]his collection of family scenes, told without a trace of contrivance and rendered by Wayne P. Lammers into English so natural that one sometimes wonders if it is about a Japanese family, is among the most successful stories in the anthology." |
| The New York Times Book Review | "Ooka . . . takes the reader along the path of a prisoner of war, from fear of disgrace at home to relief [at the elated welcome they received]. Wayne P. Lammers has provided a seamless translation." |
| The Asahi Evening News | "Translated with masterful elegance. . . . The reader who remembers [Ooka's] Fires on the Plain as a novel of 'manic intensity' . . . may be surprised by the detached, contemplative, and often lighthearted tone, as well as the dry wit of Taken Captive." |
| Sasuga News and Reviews | "Ooka Shohei . . . narrates his experience as a prisoner of war with disoncerting wit, brilliant intellectual prowess, and a deep introspection. Wayne Lammers' translation of this work is a marvel of empathy. . . . He thoroughly conveys the author's fluid pace and style." |
| Mangajin | "Taken Captive is at once an intensely personal revelation as well as a powerful critique of Japanese militarism. . . . [It] reads like a chronicle of death and rebirth. The chronicle reproduces the slow rhythms of his idle days: the sights, sounds, tastes of POW camp life; the long stretches of time spent in contemplation and observation of minutiae. [It] is well served by the elegant, measured English translation, which nicely evokes the sepia tones and slightly old-world, careful prose of the original." |
| Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese | "Lammers has produced an exemplar of the academic genre 'translation with introduction and notes.' It is a model of both literary style and scholarship. The writing is elegant and clear, not only in the translation but also in the introduction and appendices. The scholarship is informed by care and honesty throughout." |
| Journal of Japanese Studies | "Given the importance of Fujiwara Teika to both the [classical] waka and monogatari traditions, it is not surprising that a tale attributed to him would be of great interest . . . Wayne Lammers' study and translation makes this intriguing text available to English-reading audiences for the first time . . . [It is] a very fine translation." |
| Monumenta Nipponica | "The three books of the translation are adroitly handled, piquing the interest of readers to follow events in the tale with anticipation. . . . The story manages to hold our interest despite, or perhaps because of, the informative notes [Lammers] provides to bolster the translation. . . . [He] presents a convincing case for establishing Teika as author. . . . A contribution worthy of serious consideration." |
| Journal of Asian Studies | "[The translation] manages the difficult balancing act of maintaining a style appropriate to the original while skillfully using language appealing to the English-speaking reader. . . . Enjoyable to read." |
| Choice | "This first translation of a prose fiction tale ascribed to [Teika] is welcome indeed. The translation itself is extremely readable and satisfying. . . .[It] should appeal to readers and scholars interested in both a charming tale and the development of prose fiction in world literature." |