Böcker utgivna av Kurodahan Press

"DNA contains two types of base pair sequences. Exons are meaningful templates for making proteins. Introns are meaningless, random sequences. Yet introns account for ninety-five percent of human DNA. Why is such a huge proportion of the genome reserved for useless code?"What if all that genetic information wasn't really useless? What if it was put there by someone, something, in the impossibly distant past, for a purpose? And what if humanity's interest in understanding and engineering human DNA unlocks something that should have remained hidden?Award-winning science fiction author Umehara drags you screaming into a darker future as the monsters of our own genetic code come to life, revealing all too clearly humanity's fatal misunderstanding of its place in the universe... and its very reason for existence, weaving the Cthulhu Mythos, genetic engineering, and the battle against extinction into a masterpiece of horror. While the book features names and concepts from the Mythos (with good reason), it is entirely independent of it.The first part of this book was originally published in Shibano Takumi's famous Uchujin fanzine, promptly winning the 9th SF Fanzine Award, and the book was nominated for both the Mystery Writers of Japan Award and the Seiun Award.Cover by Noriyoshi Ohrai.

A new collection of stories by Yasutaka Tsutsui, famed in Japan and worldwide for his darkly humorous, satirical handling of a vast range of themes central to the human condition. Although often criticized for his treatment of "e;taboo"e; subjects such as disabilities, the Emperor, and old age, he is also recognized as one of the founders of post-modern science fiction in Japan. A number of his works have been published to widespread acclaim in English including The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Salmonella Men on Planet Porno, and Paprika.

The Black Lizard (Kurotokage) features Rampo's main detective character, Akechi Kogoro, combining elements of Poe's Auguste Dupin with the gentleman adventurers of British golden age detective literature. The Black Lizard herself is a master criminal and femme fatale, whose charged relationship with detective Akechi and unconcealed sadism have inspired shuddering admiration in generations of readers. It is largely thanks to this classic of 1960s Japanese theater that the story remains associated with sexual transgression and blurred boundaries between male and female, hunter and hunted, detective and criminal. Themes of deviance and sado-masochism are central to Beast in the Shadows (Inju), a tale from the height of Rampo's grotesque period. This tale of secret identities, violent sexuality, and dark crimes stands in stark contrast to the genteel detective stories then popular in English literature.

It is 2071, and Mars is being slowly terraformed by many nations often cooperating in an uneasy truce that reflects tensions back on Earth. The water of the polar ice cap, the most important resource for all the Mars colonies, is jointly controlled by the US, China, Japan and Russia, and doled out to the second-tier colonizing groups (Europe, Canada, Australia, India) only grudgingly. A military build-up is under way as different groups jockey for control of this all-important resource, and then the bodies of what appear to be intelligent aliens are found under the Martian ice. Saya Askai is dispatched from Earth in realtime, separating herself from the virtual reality network that encompasses civilization, to investigate... and finds herself in a battleground of cyborgs, virtual reality plagues, and Schwarzchild traps that she may only be able to navigate through safely with the help of people who probably don't exist... A brilliant work that deftly weaves cyberspace, artificial intelligence, colonies on Mars, aliens, nanotech and more into a science fiction experience.

Japan has always had its own vampire tradition, and has eagerly naturalized Western vampires and vampire literature to produce exotic new hybrids and species of horror, of terror, and of sensual, exquisite beauty. Here are a few of their masterpieces.The Japanese word for vampire is ky¿ketsuki, which translates literally to "blood-sucking monster," but the literary tradition is far, far more complex.The practice of Buddhism permeates Japan, and burials are almost always by cremation... leaving the Count and his relatives with no coffins to sleep in! But there is more than one way to sip a little blood, as these authors reveal. Thanks to Bram Stoker, Christopher Lee, and countless others who have popularized the Western vampire, modern Japanese authors have an extensive range of traditions and tales to weave into their own creations.Contents Introduction - Raechel Dumas A Cultural Dynasty of Beautiful Vampires: Japan's Acceptance, Modifications, and Adaptations of Vampires - Shimokusu Masaya Blue Lady - Inoue Masahiko Kingdom - Asukabe Katsunori The Stone Castle - Kikuchi Hideyuki The One-Legged Woman - Okamoto Kid¿ Vampire - Hikage J¿kichi The Crimson Cloak - Asamatsu Ken Vow - Sunaga Asahiko The Husk Heir - Kajio Shinji A Piece of Butterfly's Wing - Kamon Nanami Unnatural - Okuda Tetsuya Paradise Missing - Iino Fumihiko Dracula's House - Fukuzawa Tetsuz¿ Birth of a Vampire - Konaka Chiaki Halvires - Mikawa Y¿ Parasol - Inoue Masahiko

Gold Mask is Edogawa Rampo's sixth novel featuring detective Akechi Kogor¿, as he investigates the crime spree of the uncanny costumed "Gold Mask." Lovers of crime fiction will be delighted to discover that this resourceful thief, confounding Akechi's every move, is none other than Maurice Leblanc's famous "gentleman burglar," Arsene Lupin! Given Lupin's obvious influence on Rampo's own Fiend with Twenty Faces, this work serves as a fascinating precursor to his Boy Detectives series, and marks another major step in the development of Japanese detective fiction in the period between the Wars.The novel was originally published as a newspaper serial in 1930-31, and has since been collected and released by a variety of publishers, including a revised children's edition from Poplar as part of the Boy Detectives series and in the definitive Kobunsha edition of Rampo's complete works, on which this translation is based.

A journey into the carefree, today-centric generation of Japan's economic boom years, as they enjoy the cosmopolitan lifestyle of Tokyo while exploring new dimensions in Japanese society and self-image. It won the coveted Bungei Prize partly because it was so completely different from the relatively staid, traditional literature of the time, but also because it served as a guide into the evolving world of a rich, global, commercialized nation and a younger generation who grew up never knowing war.The Japanese students inhabiting these pages pursue pleasure, fashion, and the recognition of their peers, forging new senses of identity through brand-name goods and music, but even as they drift from encounter to encounter they remain aloof from serious involvement, isolated from the essential interactions and demands of Japanese society. The book is clearly a product of the time, with a bewildering array of names and events that fix it in the young college scene of the 70s and 80s, and presents a dazzling cross-section of a generation.Winner of the 1980 Bungei PrizeFinalist for the 1981 Akutagawa Prize

Like many things Japanese, the Japanese legal system has its peculiarities... and Professor Jones applies his decades of legal and teaching experience to shed light on its mysteries. As with most legal systems there is method to its madness, and while the reasoning behind it all is a bit different from the approaches of Western nations, it works. Usually.Based on the author's long-running feature in The Japan Times, the book offers a selection of his most important columns, plus other articles drawn from numerous sources, and including a number of never-before published pieces. Older articles have been updated to reflect more recent developments, but remain vitally important to understanding how things work in Japan. And in spite of being written by an attorney, the book is in everyday English, peppered with entertaining and sometimes stinging asides. Here, at last, is a glimpse into the Japanese legal system, ideal for foreign residents of Japan as well as legal researchers and practitioners.

World War II was a world-spanning conflict that engulfed dozens of countries, a maelstrom that dragged whole nations, religions, and millions of people to their deaths.But it was fought with more than merely guns and machines...Even before the War was begun in earnest, Nazi Germany had sent expeditions to the darkest hiding places of the world: to shadowed Africa, to the towering peaks of Tibet, and even to the frigid wastes of Antarctica.Their goal was to locate occult weaponry and "aid" for the glory of the Third Reich.And they were successful.But were those they sought truly allies? Or were they the old Gods themselves, waiting for their chance to remold the world of Man in their own image once again?Ken Asamatsu presents another fantastic novel of the War, the Cthulhu Mythos, and humanity trapped in the middle.

Erinys, tiny moon of Uranus, home to a tinier and almost forgotten colony. Left behind in the debris of the failed Outer Planet Revolt in 2099, Erinys is quietly decaying. For the hunted remnants of the Outer Planet Alliance (OPA), however, it offers a potential hiding place, and, possibly, a way to independence for the Outer Planets. With a highly detailed background, realistic technology, and convincing characters, The Erinys Incident is a fascinating journey from deep in the gravity well of the sun, to lonely outposts far beyond the rings of Saturn.When it comes to gritty, realistic Space Opera, Tani K¿sh¿'s name is always high on the list in Japan. With an extensive future history stretching from the early 21st century (and already partially overwritten by the pace of history!) into the far future, he writes of people and spaceships with quirks and "issues," facing life-and-death problems with creativity and dogged determination. Tani's first story in English, "Q-Cruiser Basilisk," was published to acclaim in Speculative Japan Volume 2 and Erinys reveals another part of his saga of the development of starfaring humanity. The author is currently revising his works to take recent astronomical discoveries (and technological developments) into account, and continuing to write new adventures set in the same universe.

First published in 1982, this delightful collection of essays and rewrites reinterprets, from a nonconformist perspective, such well-known and canonical Western stories as Grimm's Fairy Tales, Mother Goose stories, and Aesop's fables.Like Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber, the author "breaks open classic fairy tales to find new things in them." Both Carter and Terayama give the tales a radical twist laced with dark taboo-violating undertones. The first half of this book includes Terayama's subversive analysis of such stories as The Emperor's New Clothes, The Bremen Town Musicians, Pinocchio, and Puss in Boots. In the latter half, he offers his own rewrites of Thumbelina, Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella. In every case, he turns the story on its head, and then having thrown the reader off balance, asks them to follow him into new territory of unorthodox interpretation, arguing that the conventional interpretation of a story we have read for pleasure since childhood is ill-conceived and thoughtless.

The fourth book of our well-received Speculative Japan series introduces new talents from Japan, and fresh new stories by some of the outstanding authors we've introduced to the English-speaking world already. From deep in the mountains of the Japanese countryside to the plains of frigid Pluto, from a warm South Pacific isle to a freezing mountainside, to Mars or inside a lonely psyche... a positive smorgasbord of speculative enjoyment, in English for the first time!