A subtle blend of story and art
The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter (Kodansha’s Illustrated Japanese Classics)
This is an elegant package. The story is a classic Japanese folktale interpreted by one of Japan’s greatest writers. A cautionary tale about love between humans and spirits, it is a well paced story, calm and quiet like a new moon. The text is balanced with the original Japanese script on one side and the English translation on the other. Interspersed though out are beautiful paper-cut illustrations. “Tale of the Bamboo Cutter” is very much a piece of book art.
The only drawback of this edition is the size. It is small, and would have benefited from a hard-backed coffee table edition. As it is, it is too fragile to be a child’s book.
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