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Viz Publishes Jiro Asada's The Stationmaster Anthology
posted on by Egan Loo
The North American publisher Viz Media has announced today that it is shipping its English translation of The Stationmaster (Poppoya), a literary anthology by award-winning author Jirō Asada. Asada published these eight short stories in 1997 in Japan, where they won a special award from the Japan Adventure Fiction Association and the Naoki Award from the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Literature.
"The Stationmaster," the short story about a railway man's memories that gave the anthology its name, was turned into a live-action film in 1999 and a television drama in 2002. Japan submitted the film for a Best Foreign Language Film nomination in the 72nd Academy Awards in 2000, although a Japanese film would not win this category until this year. Takumi Nagayasu (The Legend of Mother Sarah) adapted this story and another story in the collection, "Love Letter," into manga form for Kodansha's Monthly Afternoon magazine in 1999.
