Nezu Press Blog

Nezu Press has Moved

2011-03-16T08:39:00.000-07:00

There have been a number of changes here at Nezu Press during the past few months, resulting in a move to new premises. The new address for correspondence is:

Office 3512
PO Box 6945
London
W1A 6US

However, for anyone thinking of submitting a manuscript please take a look at our submission guidelines, as we no longer accept submissions via the post. There were three reasons for our decision to move over completely to email submissions: firstly, they are kinder to trees; secondly, we were receiving only a small number of paper submissions; lastly, materials in pdf format are easier to share amongst the team.

To All Writers Who Submitted During December 2009 - February 2010

2010-08-24T10:10:00.001-07:00

We discovered recently that a number of submissions made via email were deleted in error during a computer overhaul at the beginning of the year. If you submitted sample chapters between December 20th 2009 and February 1st 2010 and have heard nothing at all from us, it is more than likely that your submission was one of those lost when our system was updated. Please resend your submission - check our new submission guidelines here. We apologise for any inconvenience this has caused.

An Interview with Marianne K. Nishibayashi

2009-11-30T09:33:00.000-08:00

Marianne K. Nishibayashi is the author of My Dearest Osan. She talks to us today about her current book and her plans for her next writing project.

Marianne, what inspired you to write My Dearest Osan?

In October 1998, my Japanese grandmother sent me a box of papers. Inside that box were old photographs, postcards, letters, drawings; a collection that captured my family's history on paper. Almost everything was familiar, as grandma had shown me the contents of that box many times when I was a child. One collection of papers was unfamiliar, however - pages of handwritten Japanese that looked very old. I couldn't read them. My mother couldn't read them. Grandma told me she'd explain the contents when she visited that Christmas - she said she was the only one who could read the antiquated Japanese they contained.

Before translating the contents to me (though she admitted she knew them by heart so was really reciting rather than translating) grandma told me all she knew of the back story. A relative on my grandma's side of the family had written the letters in the latter part of the 19th century (I named the relative Sankatsu and moved the time period to the beginning of the 19th century for the book). There were numerous scraps of incomplete letters, and two whole letters, one of which told us what grandma already knew - Sankatsu's sister had been sold by her father and the two girls hadn't seen each other for many years. The fragments and second complete letter painted a picture that sparked my imagination. Family rumours, handed down over many decades, added to that picture.

My grandmother had her theories about what had happened to the two sisters. She was still thinking up new ones, she said. She shared all of them with me. Some detective work and research, and a lot of my grandma's imagination, transformed those pages of writing into the preliminary pages for "My Dearest Osan".

Are you still trying to uncover what really happened to the two sisters?

Yes. I don't think I'll ever give up trying to find out more about them. I received some letters from a relative just before the book came out who said she had more information, and I'm going to visit her when I go to see family in Japan next year. I'm hoping to uncover more letters, as my grandmother was always sure that there had been more of them in the family when she was a girl.

What are you working on at the moment?

Another book set in Japan - this time the end of the nineteenth century. I'm right at the beginning of this project and I'm not fixed on how things will pan out. It's a story about a young woman who marries into a well-to-do family, believing that she's really landed on her feet. However, a strange sequence of events leads her to question whether her new family is all it previously appeared to be, so she begins to investigate her husband's past, discovering three previous wives and a number of children who died in infancy along the way.

What do you like to do when you're not writing?

I have two very lively children, three equally lively cairn terriers, and a mad cocker spaniel. There's not time to do much at all when I'm not writing. When I do get some free time, though, I like to walk. We live in a very built-up area, so it's nice to hit the road and head out into the countryside - breathe in some fresh air and walk in the woods.

My Dearest Osan

2009-11-01T12:06:00.000-08:00

We are proud to announce the release of My Dearest Osan, the debut novel of Marianne K. Nishibayashi, which will be available from December 5th.

Osan is a prostitute within the famous Yoshiwara pleasure quarter, sold into the profession as a child. Sankatsu, her sister, is a respectable married woman and mother. The two sisters are separated by their situation in life, confined within their societal roles, and bullied by vengeful and domineering women; in Osan’s case it is the brothel keeper’s wife, and for Sankatsu it is her overbearing mother-in-law. Desperate to be reunited, they hatch a plan to end their misery and escape their respective prisons. Told through the correspondence exchanged between Osan and Sankatsu, and the letters exchanged by those close to the two sisters, My Dearest Osan is a tale of love, duty, betrayal and revenge in 19th century Japan.

For full details click here.

The Complete Woodblock Prints of Kitagawa Utamaro: A Descriptive Catalogue

2009-10-01T12:27:00.000-07:00

We are proud to announce the release of The Complete Woodblock Prints of Kitagawa Utamaro: A Descriptive Catalogue, which will be available from November 5th.

Kitagawa Utamaro was the leading light of the popular Ukiyo-e school of woodblock print designers during its golden age, famous throughout Japan within his own lifetime, an immeasurable influence upon nineteenth century French artists, such as Vincent Van Gogh, Édouard Manet and Claude Monet, and is a continuing source of inspiration and admiration throughout the world today for his portraits of sumptuously garbed courtesans and sensitively drawn depictions of everyday life in eighteenth century Edo. This volume, the first catalogue to document all of Utamaro's known print designs in the broadsheet format, provides a comprehensive descriptive listing of the artist's works, along with more than a hundred and thirty reproductions of his prints, with accompanying indices to aid in the location of specific works by publisher's mark, subject, or title. This groundbreaking publication, the product of more than two decades of exhaustive research, forms a record of the artist's works that will serve as a lasting reference source for connoisseurs, curators, and dealers alike.

For full book details click here.

A Tale of Blackmail, Turnip Tossing, and the Cold-Blooded Murder of an Incredibly Irritating Old Man

2008-12-13T11:25:00.000-08:00

UK author Gina Collia-Suzuki is set to turn tragedy into comedy with the release of her new novel, 'The Wonderful Demise of Benjamin Arnold Guppy.'

Bristol, UK (PRWEB) December 13, 2008 -- When Gina Collia-Suzuki moved out of the city with her husband, in search of a more peaceful and relaxed lifestyle on the southwest coast of England, the last thing she expected was to find herself living next to nightmare neighbours from hell. After suffering years of systematic abuse, and receiving little or no assistance from anyone working within the legal system, you might expect the novel inspired by these events to be a sombre exploration of the effects of living with nightmare neighbours, but it's far from that. The resulting work of fiction, which charts the exploits of Benjamin Arnold Guppy and his equally malevolent wife, Pat, in their attempts, invariably doomed to failure and highly comical in nature, to extort money from their young neighbours, is a satirical tale of the transformation of an ordinary thirty-something woman into a calculating killer, and the demise of the man responsible for that change.

'Some messages have more impact when delivered with humour,' the author said. 'Guppy's a horrid character, there's no doubt about that, but he's also an absurd one. He makes you laugh and cringe at the same time.'

Guppy, a sour-faced old swindler with a penchant for clucking like a chicken and more than a passing interest in the local postman, is relentless in his attempts to achieve his goal, and his victim, unlike the author, who insists that she has never murdered any of her neighbours, struggles to come to terms with her situation before ultimately realising that murder is her only means of escape.

The book, published by Nezu Press, will be available in January 2009. For more information visit the Nezu Press site.

Accepting Japanese Art History Submissions

2008-11-30T12:30:00.000-08:00

We are currently accepting submissions from authors of Japanese art history books. It is our hope that we shall eventually be able to offer readers a selection of titles covering various periods and artistic movements. Please view our submissions page here. Providing illustrations at this stage is not necessary, but if you are intending to include illustrations with your sample chapters and wish to send them electronically, please email beforehand to discuss possible methods of delivery.

Utamaro Revealed to a 21st Century Audience

2008-10-11T11:16:00.000-07:00

UK author Gina Collia-Suzuki is set to launch the first book to focus on the subjects and themes depicted in the woodblock prints of 18th century Japanese artist Kitagawa Utamaro.

Bristol, UK (PRWEB) October 11, 2008 -- Beautiful courtesans parading with whitened faces, star-crossed lovers sacrificing everything to be together, and dashing heroes fearlessly laying down their lives for the sake of honour. Utamaro's prints have it all. The characters who appeared in Utamaro's works captured the imaginations of the people of 18th century Japan, and they are set to do the same amongst modern readers following the publication of this new book; one of only a handful of in-depth studies written in English about the artist, and the only one to focus specifically on the subjects depicted.

Kitagawa Utamaro (1753-1806), who produced in the region of 2,000 woodblock prints during his lifetime, is one of the most well-known and admired figures in the history of Japanese art. Renowned throughout the world for his portraits of beautiful women, his influence upon the work of Western artists has been beyond measure.

The author, an artist in her own right, has been a collector of Japanese woodblock prints, and more specifically those of Utamaro, for many years. At the age of sixteen she was taken under the wing of world-renowned Japanese art history scholar Jack Hillier, and has since devoted more than two decades to studying Japanese prints.

"You can't help wondering why the Mona Lisa is smiling," said the author, "when you look at a painting you want to know more about the artist's subject, to make a connection, and for me it's always been the same when looking at Japanese prints. They are incredibly beautiful things to look at, but they also tell a story, often about real people, sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic. That's always fascinated me."

"Utamaro Revealed", published by Nezu Press, with a retail price of £22.48, will be launched officially on October 25th 2008. Further details are available here.