Japanese fairy tales - enchanting, enigmatic stories of animals, human beings and the great natural world . Dark and innocent, sublime and whimsical, Miyazawa's stories have the ageless feel of the best fairy tales. There are animal allegories such as 'The Ungrateful Rat' where a rude rodent insults all the objects he meets - until he meets the Rat Trap/ There are morality tales such as 'The Restaurant of Many Orders', where two hunters become the hunted. There are also transcendent stories of childhood and mortality like Miyazawa's best-known 'Night Train to the Stars', where a magical steam train carries children through the night and up to the heavens. These stories reveal the unique brilliance of one of Japan's most beloved early twentieth-century writers. WITH A FOREWORD BY DAVID MITCHELL AND AN INTRODUCTION BY KAORI NAGAI 'Kenji Miyazawa fables are international-class' David Mitchell 'For readers who relish the disturbing material of fairy tale, the specificity and surprise of tanka , collisions of the everyday with the supernatural and glimpses of Japan right on the brink of industrialization, Kenji Miyazawa's masterly stories will be a delight' New York Times ' Few works have given me so much pleasure (and hard work) as the tales of Miyazawa Kenji [...] more genuine originality, and a more universal appeal, than almost anything else I have done.' John Bester, translator Night Train to the Stars: beloved, enigmatic Japanese folk tales