Book I, Chapter XXX

How princes and republics should act to avoid the vice of ingratitude, and how a commander or a citizen should act so as not to expose himself to it.

A prince, to avoid the necessity of living in constant mistrust or of being ungrateful, should command all his expeditions in person, as the Roman Emperors did in the beginning, and as the Sultan does at the present time, and as in fact all valiant princes ever have done and will do. For if victorious, all the glory and fruits of their conquests will be theirs; but if they are not present themselves at the action, and the glory of victory falls to the share of another, then it will seem to them that the conquest will not profit them unless they extinguish that glory of another which they have failed to achieve themselves. Thus they become ungrateful and unjust, and in that way their loss will be greater than their gain. But if from indolence or want of sagacity they remain idle at home, and confide the expedition to a commander, then I have no advice to give them but to follow their own inspirations. But I say to the commander, judging that he will not be able to escape the fangs of ingratitude, that he must do one of two things: either he must leave the army immediately after victory, and place himself at the disposal of his prince, carefully avoiding all show of insolence or ambition, so that the prince, deprived of all grounds of fear or suspicion, may reward him or at least not wrong him; or if this does not suit him, then he must boldly adopt the other course, and act in all respects as though he believed the conquest were for his own account, and not for his prince—conciliating to himself the good will of his army and of the subjected people, forming friendships and alliances with the neighboring princes, occupying the strongholds with his own men, corrupting the chiefs of his army and making sure of such as he cannot corrupt—and in this wise seek to punish his prince in advance for the ingratitude which he is likely to show him. And there is no other way for him to do. But, as I have already said, men neither know how to be entirely good nor wholly bad; and it so happens almost invariably that a general, after a great victory, is unwilling to leave his army, and to conduct himself with becoming modesty, and knows not how to take a decided course, which has in itself something honorable and grand; and thus he remains undecided, and whilst in this ambiguous state he is crushed.

A republic that wishes to avoid the vice of ingratitude cannot employ the same means as a prince; that is to say, she cannot go and command her own expeditions, and is obliged therefore to confide them to some one of her citizens. But it is proper that I should suggest as the best means to adopt the same course that Rome did, in being less ungrateful than others, and which resulted from her institutions. For as the whole city, nobles and plebeians, devoted themselves to the business of war, there arose at all times in Rome so many brave and victorious generals, that the people had no cause for mistrusting any one of them, there being so many that they could watch each other. And thus they kept themselves so pure, and careful not to give the least umbrage, that they afforded the people not the least ground for suspecting them of ambition; and if any of them arrived at the dictatorship, their greatest glory consisted in promptly laying this dignity down again; and thus, having inspired no fear or mistrust, they gave no cause for ingratitude. A republic, then, that wishes not to have cause for ingratitude, should adopt the same system of government as Rome; and a citizen who desires to avoid the fangs of ingratitude should observe the same conduct as that of the Roman citizens.

Castalia Library makes the world’s most beautiful leather books at its own bindery in Switzerland. Castalia House is the world’s premier translator of never-before translated works from Japanese, Spanish, French, Italian, and German into English. To support Castalia House’s historic translation efforts and receive a new translated ebook every week, support the Alexandria project, and get future access to Castalia Unlimited, become a paid subscriber to this substack. And to receive a premium deluxe leatherbound history book every four months, subscribe to Castalia History.

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NEW RELEASES

• The Mystery Planet Gan by Unno Jūza

• Romance of the Three Kingdoms Vol. 5: The Sleeping Dragon by Eiji Yoshikawa

THE MAN WHO WOULD WAKE THE DRAGON

Three times Liu Bei rides through the snow to a thatched hut in the mountains. Three times he is told the master is not at home. His brothers think it is beneath a man of his rank to beg at the door of a provincial recluse. His advisors think the young scholar’s reputation is inflated. Liu Bei goes back anyway.

Because the man for whom he is searches is Zhuge Liang, known to the very few who have heard of him as the Sleeping Dragon. Konming is but twenty-seven years old. He has never held office, never commanded troops, never left the hills around his farm. He sits in his hut and reads and waits, and the men who know him best say he is the most dangerous mind alive.

The Sleeping Dragon, Volume Five of Yoshikawa Eiji’s epic retelling of the Chinese classic marks the great pivot of his Three Kingdoms saga. The age of the warlords is ending. The age of generals is about to begin. Before the Sleeping Dragon descends from his mountain, Liu Bei is a wanderer with nothing more than a reputation. Soon after, he becomes the architect of a kingdom. But this volume is not only about the Dragon’s awakening. as it also follows Guan Yu’s legendary thousand-li ride through enemy territory, the bloody struggle between Cao Cao and Yuan Shao for supremacy in the north, and the gathering of the companions who will carry Liu Bei’s cause into the battles ahead.

This is the fifth volume in the first complete and unabridged English translation of Yoshikawa’s Sangokushi. Now available on Amazon.

Excerpt

After leaving Hu Hua’s house, the battered curtained carriage pressed on day after day through the autumn wind. Before long, on the road toward Luoyang, they came to a pass.

A partisan of Cao Cao named Kong Xiu held the gate with more than five hundred cavalry.

The foremost strongpoint of the three provinces. He would have to pass through without incident if he could.

Guan Yu halted the carriage, rode forward alone, and called out:

“A traveler bound for Hebei! I ask passage through your gate.”

Kong Xiu appeared in person, one hand on his sword hilt.

“Is the General not Yunzhang — Guan Yu?”

“Indeed. I am Guan Yu.”

“You escort the two ladies’ carriage. Where are you bound?”

“Need I say it? I am returning to my former lord Xuande, who I hear is in Hebei.”

“Then you carry a warrant from the Chancellor?”

“My departure was urgent. I neglected to bring one.”

“A common traveler needs a tally at any pass; an official on public business cannot pass a gate without the Chancellor’s warrant. You know that well enough, General.”

“When the day came to return, I should be free to go — that was the understanding between the Chancellor and myself. What need have I for regulations?”

“No, no. Yuan Shao of Hebei is the Chancellor’s mortal enemy. I cannot let a man pass into enemy territory without authorization. Wait here outside the gate. I will send a courier to the capital and seek the Chancellor’s instructions.”

“Every day weighs on me. I cannot idle here while a courier goes and returns.”

“Say what you will, General. Until I receive the Chancellor’s command, this gate stays shut. In a time when rebellion threatens every border, how should I treat the law of the land lightly?”

“Cao Cao’s law was made for Cao Cao’s subjects and his enemies. I am the Chancellor’s guest, not his vassal, and neither am I his enemy. If you insist on barring my way, I will force it open, and the calamity will be yours, not mine. Let me through.”

“I said no, and you try my patience. However, if you leave behind the carriage and every one of your attendants as hostages, I will permit you alone to pass.”

“That is something I will never allow.”

“Then turn back.”

“At any cost?”

“Enough!”

He snapped the word and ordered the guards to shut the gate.

Guan Yu’s brows rose in cold fury.

“Blind fool. Can you not see what this is?”

He leveled the Blue Dragon blade at Kong Xiu’s chest.

Kong Xiu seized the shaft. He was a man who knew nothing of his opponent and still less of himself.

“Insolent dog!” he snarled, and wheeled to bellow at his garrison troops: “Seize this ruffian! Take him!”

“So be it,” said Guan Yu, and drew back the blade.

Kong Xiu, who had been clutching the shaft like a fool, threw himself back in the saddle with a cry and clawed for his sword, but Guan Yu roared, and the crescent edge swept through him in the same instant. His body came apart in two halves, and what fell from the horse struck the ground in a burst of crimson.

The garrison troops were not worth counting. Guan Yu cut through them at will, drove the carriage forward through the gate, and as he cleared the pass called back in a voice that rolled like a temple bell:

“On Baling Bridge I took my leave of Chancellor Cao Cao himself, and I pass through here in the light of day. Why should any blame attach to you? Send word to the capital afterward — say that Guan Yu crossed Dongling Pass this day!”

White hailstones rattled against the carriage canopy that afternoon. The next day, and the next, the wheels drove on without rest along the imperial highway.

Luoyang. The walls of Luoyang had come into sight on the horizon. Here too the Chancellor’s writ held sway. One of his lords, a man named Han Fu, commanded the garrison.

A DISTRESS SIGNAL FROM DEEP SPACE

The Queen of Space, humanity’s first Venus expedition, has vanished forty million kilometers from Earth. And something is coming the other way.

When young Mineo Yagi hears the emergency broadcast on the tele-radio, he knows his uncle, the brilliant detective Homura Soroku, will be at the center of whatever comes next. Within hours, they are aboard the Silver Cat, racing toward the last known position of the lost ship as part of an international rescue fleet.

But the rescue mission becomes something far more dangerous when the fleet encounters Gan, a rogue celestial body of impossible origin that burns with a sickly amber light and is on a collision course with Earth. The lost crew of the Queen of Space may hold the only clue to stopping it, if they can be found alive.

First published in 1939, The Mystery Planet Gan is a classic of early Japanese science fiction by Unno Juza, the father of the science fiction in Japan. Never before translated into English, it is a breathless adventure in the tradition of Heinlein’s juvenile novels, a story of a brave boy and a mysterious uncle facing a mysterious threat from beyond the stars. Now available on Amazon.

Excerpt

When the emergency broadcast ended, Mineo turned to his uncle with desperate eyes.

Homura had moved away from the cipher machine at some point and was sitting on a small stool with his legs crossed, a notepad open on his knee and a pencil in his hand. When Mineo looked over, Homura was studying the shorthand he had scribbled on the pad with fierce concentration.

“Uncle, something terrible has happened, hasn’t it?”

Homura said nothing. He stood, notepad in hand, and set it quietly on the desk. As he did, his lips pressed together into a tight, hard line. It was a habit of his, something the great detective did whenever he seized on a critical lead.

“Uncle. What is it?”

Mineo asked even though he expected to be scolded for it. He couldn’t help himself.

“Yes. This is a serious matter indeed. It’s like someone touching a match to the corner of a straw barn. The whole thing will go up. Mark my words: before long, the entire world will be in an uproar.”

“But it’s already a worldwide incident, isn’t it? They interrupted regular programming to broadcast it.”

“No, no. Right now the match has barely caught the first bundle of straw. Soon enough, people all over the world will come running out of that barn like human torches.” He caught himself and smiled ruefully. “Listen to me, making predictions. Your uncle hates making predictions, you know.”

And that was the truth. In his investigative work, even when all the testimony and evidence lined up and anyone could have said “he’s the man,” Homura would never say it. Not to anyone. If he knew a suspect would appear at a certain place the next day, he would never breathe a word of it. He would simply go to that place on the appointed day and wait. When the culprit finally showed himself, Homura would murmur, as if to himself, “Yes. That’s how it had to be.” That was his way.

So the fact that Homura Sōroku had gone so far as to predict that the wreck of the Queen of Space would grow into a crisis threatening the entire world told you just how deeply the affair had shaken him.

Or perhaps his uncle had been waiting for something like this all along. Perhaps when the emergency broadcast came through, Homura recognized it for what it was, and the shock hit him all at once. The shorthand on that notepad was surely a transcript of the entire broadcast. At least, that was what Mineo thought.

“You said the whole world would be in an uproar. What exactly is going to happen?”

“Well now, we’ll just have to watch and see.”

And just like that, his uncle had retreated behind the careful, measured manner of the professional detective.

That was when the telephone shrieked to life.

“Ah. Here it comes.”

Homura muttered something only he could have understood and strode to the telephone.

The instrument he switched on was the international line, a videophone model with a television screen that showed the caller’s face.

The screen lit up with the ruddy complexion of an American. Behind him, a chart of the cosmos was visible on the wall.

“Hey there, Mr. Homura. I’ve been handed the job of dragging you into this. My paper wants to put you on the payroll and send you on assignment. Destination: the middle of outer space. You heard that emergency broadcast just now, I take it?”

The man who launched into business without preamble was Kirkham, a well-known reporter on the city desk of the New York Gazette. He and Homura Sōroku had crossed paths on two or three cases over the years.

“You’re dragging me out on short notice. What exactly do you want me to do, Kirkham?”

Homura’s voice carried its usual calm, unhurried tone.

“Early tomorrow morning, ten rescue ships are launching from here to go after the Queen of Space. You’ll be aboard one of them. I’ve already cleared it with Dr. Ted, the rescue team commander. You’ll conduct an investigation of the Queen of Space and file every story through us. We’ll distribute it as exclusive coverage through our newspaper, radio, and television networks, not just in America but worldwide.” Kirkham paused. “You’ll take the job, of course.”

“Any other conditions?”

“None. Let’s hear yours.”

“No conditions to speak of. Oh, hold on a moment, Kirkham.”

Homura broke off and craned his neck to the side. Mineo was standing right there, jabbing a finger at his own chest.

“You want to come along? Hmm. But don’t come crying to me if things get rough. You’re sure about this? Absolutely sure?”

Homura had a quick, hushed exchange with his nephew, then turned back to face Kirkham on the screen.

“One condition. I bring my nephew, Yagi Mineo, as my assistant. Agreed?”

“You got it. Then we have a deal.”

Kirkham broke into a grin.

“Come see me at the office no later than one hour before the rescue ships launch. We’ll have everything arranged and all the paperwork handled by then.”

Castalia Library makes the world’s most beautiful leather books at its own bindery in Switzerland. Castalia House is the premier translator of never-before translated works from Japanese, Spanish, French, Italian, and German into English. To support Castalia House’s historic translation efforts and receive a new translated ebook every week, support the Alexandria project, and get future access to Castalia Unlimited, become a paid subscriber to this substack. And to receive a premium deluxe leatherbound book every three months, subscribe to Castalia Library.

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Book I, Chapter XXIX

Which of the two is most ungrateful, a people or a prince.

It seems to me proper here, in connection with the above subject, to examine whether the people or a prince is more liable to the charge of ingratitude; and by way of illustrating this question the better, I set out by saying that the vice of ingratitude springs either from avarice or fear. For when a people or a prince has sent a general on some important expedition where by his success he acquires great glory, the prince or people is in turn bound to reward him. But if instead of such reward they dishonor and wrong him, influenced thereto by avarice, then they are guilty of an inexcusable wrong, which will involve them in eternal infamy. And yet there are many princes who commit this wrong, for which fact Tacitus assigns the reason in the following sentence: “Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure.” But when they fail to reward, or rather when they offend, not from avarice, but from suspicion and fear, then the people or the prince have some excuse for their ingratitude. We read of many instances of this kind; for the general who by his valor has conquered a state for his master, and won great glory for himself by his victory over the enemy, and has loaded his soldiers with rich booty, acquires necessarily with his own soldiers, as well as with those of the enemy and with the subjects of the prince, so high a reputation, that his very victory may become distasteful, and a cause for apprehension to his prince.

For as the nature of men is ambitious as well as suspicious, and puts no limits to one’s good fortune, it is not impossible that the suspicion that may suddenly be aroused in the mind of the prince by the victory of the general may have been aggravated by some haughty expressions or insolent acts on his part; so that the prince will naturally be made to think of securing himself against the ambition of his general. And to do this, the means that suggest themselves to him are either to have the general killed, or to deprive him of that reputation which he has acquired with the prince’s army and the people, by using every means to prove that the general’s victory was not due to his skill and courage, but to chance and the cowardice of the enemy, or to the sagacity of the other captains who were with him in that action.

After Vespasian, whilst in Judaea, had been proclaimed Emperor by his army, Antonius Primus, who was at the head of an army in Illyria, took sides with him, and marched straight into Italy against Vitellius, then Emperor in Rome, and in the most gallant manner routed two Vitellian armies, and made himself master of Rome; so that Mutianus, who had been sent there by Vespasian, found everything achieved and all difficulties overcome. The reward which Antonius received for this service was that Mutianus deprived him of the command of the army, and gradually reduced his authority in Rome to nothing; so that Antonius, indignant, went to see Vespasian, who was still in Asia, who received him in such manner that, being soon after deprived of all rank, he died almost in despair. History is full of similar examples.

We have seen in our own day with how much courage and perseverance Gonsalvo de Cordova conducted the war in Naples for King Ferdinand of Aragon against the French; how he defeated them, and conquered the kingdom for Ferdinand; and how he was rewarded by his king, who left Spain and came to Naples, and first deprived Gonsalvo of his command of the army, and then took the control of the strong places from him, and finally carried him off with him to Spain, where Gonsalvo soon after died in obscurity.

Fear and suspicion are so natural to princes that they cannot defend themselves against them, and thus it is impossible for them to show gratitude to those who, by victories achieved under their banners, have made important conquests for them. If then a prince cannot prevent himself from committing such wrongs, it is surely no wonder, nor matter worthy of more consideration, if a people acts in a similar manner. For as a free city is generally influenced by two principal objects, the one to aggrandize herself, and the other to preserve her liberties, it is natural that she should occasionally be betrayed into faults by excessive eagerness in the pursuit of either of these objects. As to the faults that result from the desire for aggrandizement, we shall speak in another place; and those resulting from the desire to preserve her liberty are amongst others the following, namely, to injure those citizens whom she should reward, and to suspect those in whom she should place most confidence. And although the effects of such conduct occasion great evils in a republic that is already corrupt, and which often lead to despotism—as was seen under Caesar in Rome, who took for himself by force what ingratitude had refused him—still, in a republic not yet entirely corrupt, they may be productive of great good in preserving her freedom for a greater length of time; as the dread of punishment will keep men better, and less ambitious.

It is true that, of all the people that ever possessed a great empire, the Romans were the least ungrateful; for it may be said that no other instance of their ingratitude can be cited than that of Scipio; for Coriolanus and Camillus were both exiled on account of the outrages which they had committed upon the people. The one was never pardoned, because he always preserved an implacable hatred against the people; but the other was not only recalled from exile, but was for the entire remainder of his life honored like a prince. The ingratitude to Scipio arose from jealousy such as never before had been felt towards any one else, and which resulted from the greatness of the enemy whom Scipio had conquered, from the great reputation which his victory after so long and perilous a war had given him, from the rapidity of his actions and the popular favor which his youth, his prudence, and other remarkable virtues had won for him. All of these were so great that everybody in Rome, even the magistrates, feared his influence and authority, which offended the intelligent men of Rome as an unheard of thing. And his manner of life was such that Cato the elder, who was reputed a man of the purest character, was the first to complain of him, saying that no city could call herself free where a citizen was feared by the magistrates.

So that if in this case the people of Rome followed the opinion of Cato, they are entitled to that excuse which, as I have said above, those peoples and princes may claim who are ungrateful from suspicion and fear. In concluding, then, this discourse, I say that, as the vice of ingratitude is usually the consequence of either avarice or fear, it will be seen that the peoples never fall into this error from avarice, and that fear also makes them less liable to it than princes, inasmuch as they have less reason for fear, as we shall show further on.

Castalia Library makes the world’s most beautiful leather books at its own bindery in Switzerland. Castalia House is the world’s premier translator of never-before translated works from Japanese, Spanish, French, Italian, and German into English. To support Castalia House’s historic translation efforts and receive a new translated ebook every week, support the Alexandria project, and get future access to Castalia Unlimited, become a paid subscriber to this substack. And to receive a premium deluxe leatherbound history book every four months, subscribe to Castalia History.

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FRENCH

The Little Duchess by Zénaïde Fleuriot

Sans Beauty by Zénaïde Fleuriot

Eagle and Dove by Zénaïde Fleuriot

ITALIAN

Malombra by Antonio Fogazzaro

The Sacramental Lands by Francesco Jovine

The Marchese of Roccaverdina by Luigi Capuana

GERMAN

On War by Carl von Clausewitz

Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse

JAPANESE

Sanshirō by Natsume Sōseki

Botchan by Natsume Sōseki

Kokoro by Natsume Sōseki

The Gate by Natsume Sōseki

Sorekara by Natsume Sōseki

The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu

795: The Complete Waka by Murasaki Shikibu

The Gold Demon by Ozaki Kōyō

The Midnight Mayor by Unno Jūza

The Devil Castle of the Pacific by Unno Jūza

The Mystery Planet Gan by Unno Jūza

The Phantom of the Underground Tank by Unno Jūza

The King of the Mystery Tower by Unno Jūza

The Floating Airfield by Unno Jūza

Superhuman X by Unno Jūza

The Book of the Black Death by Oguri Mushitarō

Before the Dawn by Tōson Shimazaki

The Vampire by Edogawa Ranpo

Kojiki: The Record of Ancient Matters

The Secret Scrolls of Naruto (Naruto Hicho)

The Kamigata Scroll by Eiji Yoshikawa

The Edo Scroll by Eiji Yoshikawa

The Kiso Scroll by Eiji Yoshikawa

The Funaji Scroll by Eiji Yoshikawa

The Tsurugisan Scroll by Eiji Yoshikawa

The Naruto Scroll by Eiji Yoshikawa

Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Sangokushi)

The Peach Garden by Eiji Yoshikawa

The Gathering Stars by Eiji Yoshikawa

From the Grass by Eiji Yoshikawa

The Way of the Vassal by Eiji Yoshikawa

The Sleeping Dragon by Eiji Yoshikawa

Red Cliffs by Eiji Yoshikawa

Looking Toward Shu by Eiji Yoshikawa

Heading South by Eiji Yoshikawa

The Memorial by Eiji Yoshikawa

Wuzhang Plains by Eiji Yoshikawa

The Chronicle of the Southern Kingdom

The Cursed Kindling by Naoki Sanjūgo

The Haunted Flame by Naoki Sanjūgo

The Casebook of Hanshichi

Vol. I: The Ghost Master by Kidō Okamoto

Vol. II: The Cat Commotion by Kidō Okamoto

SPANISH

Sister San Sulpicio by Armando Palacio Valdés

Episodios Nacionales: First Series

Trafalgar by Benito Pérez Galdós

The Court of Carlos IV by Benito Pérez Galdós

The Nineteenth of March and the Second of May by Benito Pérez Galdós

Bailén by Benito Pérez Galdós

Napoleon at Chamartín by Benito Pérez Galdós

Zaragoza by Benito Pérez Galdós

Gerona by Benito Pérez Galdós

Cádiz by Benito Pérez Galdós

Juan Martín el Empecinado by Benito Pérez Galdós

The Battle of Salamanca by Benito Pérez Galdós

Episodios Nacionales: Second Series

King Joseph’s Baggage by Benito Pérez Galdós

Memoirs of a Courtier of 1815 by Benito Pérez Galdós

The Second Turncoat by Benito Pérez Galdós

The Grand Orient by Benito Pérez Galdós

The Seventh of July by Benito Pérez Galdós

The Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis by Benito Pérez Galdós

The Terror of 1824 by Benito Pérez Galdós

A Royalist Volunteer by Benito Pérez Galdós

The Apostolics by Benito Pérez Galdós

One More Rebel and a Few Friars Less by Benito Pérez Galdós

Episodios Nacionales: Third Series

Zumalacárregui by Benito Pérez Galdós

Mendizábal by Benito Pérez Galdós

From Oñate to La Granja by Benito Pérez Galdós

Luchana by Benito Pérez Galdós

The Maestrazgo Campaign by Benito Pérez Galdós

The Romantic Correspondence by Benito Pérez Galdós

Vergara by Benito Pérez Galdós

Montes de Oca by Benito Pérez Galdós

The Ayacuchos by Benito Pérez Galdós

Royal Weddings by Benito Pérez Galdós

Castalia Library makes the world’s most beautiful leather books at its own bindery in Switzerland. Castalia House is the premier translator of never-before translated works from Japanese, Spanish, French, Italian, and German into English.

To support Castalia House’s historic translation efforts and receive a new translated ebook every week, support the Alexandria project, and get future access to Castalia Unlimited, become a paid subscriber to this substack. And to receive a premium deluxe leatherbound book every three months, subscribe to Castalia Library.

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NEW RELEASES

• Kojiki: The Record of Ancient Matters by O no Yasumaro

• Romance of the Three Kingdoms Vol. 4: The Way of the Vassal by Eiji Yoshikawa

BEFORE THERE WAS JAPAN, THERE WAS CHAOS

From the first stirring of heaven and earth, through the quarrel that split the sun goddess and the storm god and plunged the world into darkness, to the divine ancestors who descended from the heavens to rule the islands, the Kojiki is where the story of Japan begins.

Compiled in 712 Anno Domini by the court scholar Ō no Yasumaro from the oral recitation of Hieda no Are, the Kojiki is the oldest surviving book in Japan and the foundational text of Japanese civilization. It moves from the raw, strange power of creation mythology, where gods die giving birth to fire and descend into the underworld to retrieve the dead, through the Age of the Gods and the establishment of the imperial line, into the semi-historical reigns of the early emperors and empresses of Japan. Along the way it preserves some of the oldest poetry in the Japanese language: love songs, war songs, laments, and riddles that were already ancient when they were first written down.

This is not the Kojiki of the classroom. This translation by Kenji Weaver renders Japan’s origin story as what it was always meant to be: a work of literature, told with the gravity and sweep its subject demands. The gods behave like true pagan gods, passionate, jealous, magnificent, and terrifying. The emperors consolidate their power through marriage, war, and guile. Now available on Amazon.

Excerpt

Prince Itsuse

Setting forth from that land, they passed through the bay of Naniwa and moored their vessels at the harbor of Shirakate in Kawachi. At that time Nagasunehiko, who dwelt at Tomi in Yamato, raised an army and stood waiting to give battle. They took the shields stored aboard the vessel and went ashore. That place came to be called Tatetsu, the Shield Harbor. It is called Tatetsu of Kusaka to this day.

In the battle against Nagasunehiko, Itsuse no Mikoto took an arrow wound to his hand. He said, “It is not fitting that I, a child of the Sun, should fight facing the sun. That is why I have suffered a wound from so base an enemy. Let us circle round and strike with the sun at our backs.” They turned southward, and when they reached the sea of Chinu in the province of Izumi, he washed the blood from his hand. From this the sea takes the name Chinu.

They continued onward and came to the harbor of Wo in the province of Kii. There Itsuse no Mikoto cried out, “That I should die of a wound dealt by so base an enemy!” and perished. His tomb stands at Kamayama in Kii.

From Kumano to Yamato

Kamuyamatoiwarehiko no Mikoto pressed on and came to Kumano. There a great bear appeared dimly before him and vanished. At once Kamuyamatoiwarehiko no Mikoto lost consciousness, and all his soldiers likewise fell senseless to the ground.

At this time a man of Kumano named Takakuraji came bearing a great sword to where the divine child of heaven lay stricken, and presented it to him. Kamuyamatoiwarehiko no Mikoto awoke and said, “How long I have slept.” When he received the sword, the malevolent gods of the mountains of Kumano were cut down of their own accord, and the stricken army revived to a man.

The divine child of heaven asked how Takakuraji had come by the sword. Takakuraji replied: “In my dream, Amaterasu Ōmikami and Takagi no Kami gave a command to Takemikazuchi no Kami: the Central Land of the Reed Plain is in great turmoil; our children are in distress; that land was yours to pacify, so go down to it once more. Takemikazuchi no Kami answered that he need not descend himself; the sword with which he had pacified that land still remained, and he would send it down. He would open a hole in the roof of Takakuraji’s storehouse and drop it through. Then the gods instructed me: when you wake at dawn, take this sword and present it to the divine child of heaven. I woke and looked into my storehouse, and the sword was truly there. That is why I bring it now.”

This sword is called Sajifutsu no Kami, also known as Mikafutsu no Kami, and also as Futsunomitama. It rests today at the Isonokami Shrine.

Then came a command from Takagi no Kami: “Divine child of heaven, advance no further into this land. Many malevolent gods dwell within. I shall send the Yatagarasu from heaven. The Yatagarasu shall guide you; follow where it leads.”

Following the Yatagarasu as instructed, they came to the lower reaches of the Yoshino River. There a man was catching fish with a trap set in the river. The divine child of heaven asked, “Who are you?” He answered, “I am a god of this land. My name is Nihemotsu no Ko.” He is the ancestor of the cormorant fishers of Ada.

Going on from there, a man with a tail emerged from a well. The well was luminous. “Who are you?” asked the divine child of heaven. “I am a god of this land. My name is Ihika,” he replied. He is the ancestor of the Yoshino no Obito.

Pressing into the mountains, they met another man with a tail, who came pushing through the rocks. “Who are you?” asked the divine child of heaven. “I am a god of this land. My name is Iwaoshiwaku. I heard that the divine child of heaven had come, and so I came forth to meet him.” He is the ancestor of the Kuzu of Yoshino.

From there they crossed the mountains, treading a path through to Uda. This is why it is called Ugachi of Uda.

WHO ARE THE HEROES OF THE AGE?

Lü Bu makes his last stand at the White Gate Tower. The Emperor writes a secret edict in his own blood. And in a moonlit garden, over warm wine and green plums, Cao Cao asks Liu Bei the most dangerous question in the world: “Who are the heroes of this age?”

Volume Four of Yoshikawa Eiji’s epic adaptation of the great Chinese classic, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, plunges into the treacherous heart of the late Han, where every alliance is a gamble and every banquet may be a trap. Cao Cao tightens his grip on the imperial court while Liu Bei tends his garden and bides his time, knowing that a single misstep will cost him everything. Meanwhile, the blood oath sworn at the Peach Garden faces its greatest test as Guan Yu is separated from his brothers and must choose between loyalty and survival.

From the fall of Lü Bu to the desperate ride north, The Way of the Vassal chronicles the education of men who would be kings in the arts of patience, sacrifice, and knowing the right moment to strike. This is the volume where the game changes and the warlords of the Three Kingdoms begin to understand that the realm will not be won by the sword alone.

This is the first complete and unabridged English translation of Yoshikawa’s Sangokushi, the novel that defined the Three Kingdoms chronicle for modern readers across Asia. Translated from the Japanese by Vox Day. Now available on Amazon.

Excerpt

The storm of the purge had passed. The blood had been cleaned from the streets. A rank wind swept through the capital and was gone, and those who breathed easiest afterward were not Cao Cao and his men but the common people.

Cao Cao wore the face of a man for whom nothing had happened. In his breast there remained neither the bitterness nor the bile of yesterday. His mind was already absorbed in a hundred schemes for tomorrow.

“Xun Yu.” He spoke as though beginning a matter of routine. “There are still names unaccounted for. And not minor ones.”

“Ma Teng in the west, and Xuande in Xu Province.”

“Precisely. Both signed the oath of Dong Cheng’s loyalist pact. Both have demonstrated their treasonous intent beyond any shadow of doubt. Something must be done.”

“That goes without saying.”

“Then let me hear your strategy.”

“The provincial troops of Xiliang have always been fierce. We cannot engage them lightly. Xuande, for his part, holds the strategic heart of Xu Province, with Xiapi and Xiaopei fortified in the Horns of the Bull formation. His forces are small, but I do not think he can be subdued quickly.”

“If we approach every enemy with that degree of caution, then every enemy will prove formidable and we shall never move against any of them.”

“Were there no Yuan Shao in the north, I would have no reservations. But his border forces at Guandu have been steadily reinforced of late. Your Excellency’s true adversary is Yuan Shao, and no other. He is the one who contends with you for mastery of the empire.”

“Which is exactly why I wish to strike at Xuande first. He is Yuan Shao’s right hand in the south.”

“No, no. We cannot strip the capital of its defenses at such a time. Better to lure Ma Teng here with honeyed words, dispose of him by deception, and then apply diplomatic pressure to Xuande at our leisure, blunting his resolve while spreading false reports to sow distrust between him and Yuan Shao. That, I believe, is the surest course.”

“Too slow. A plan that moves too slowly becomes a different plan. While we sit deliberating, the situation around us shifts, and then we find ourselves revising our strategy in the middle of its execution. That is the lowest grade of generalship.”

Cao Cao’s determination to strike Xuande first was not entirely a matter of strategy. He had once lavished affection on the man, had embraced him as a friend and near equal, and the violence of that earlier attachment now rebounded as its opposite. It was Cao Cao’s particular failing that even in questions of the gravest national consequence, he could never entirely separate calculation from feeling.

The two men were debating behind closed doors when Guo Jia entered the chamber. Guo Jia was another of the advisors Cao Cao trusted most within his inner council.

“You arrive at the right moment. What is your view?”

Guo Jia answered without hesitation.

“There is no question. We must crush Xuande in a single stroke. He has governed Xu Province too briefly to command the people’s loyalty; his roots there are shallow. As for Yuan Shao, his bluster is loud but his house is divided. Tian Feng, Shen Pei, Xu You, all of them fine officers, and not one of them can agree with the others. Add to that Yuan Shao’s own chronic indecision. How could such a man launch a swift campaign? He will not move.”

The argument aligned perfectly with Cao Cao’s own desire. He decided on the spot. Summoning his chief of military affairs, his staff officers, his divisional commanders, and the directors of supply and transport to a single hall, he issued his orders.

“Muster two hundred thousand troops. Divide them into five divisions. Advance on Xu Province by three routes.”

The armies moved at once. And almost as quickly, word of the mobilization spread south to Xu Province.

The first to catch wind of it was Sun Qian. He raced to Xiapi to alert Guan Yu, then without pausing rode hard for Xiaopei.

Liu Bei was at Xiaopei. The news struck him like a blow.

“The blood edict discovered. The Imperial Uncle Dong and all who stood with him, dead. I had steeled myself for the possibility, and yet...”

“My lord, you must write to Yuan Shao at once. I will carry the letter myself and beg for his aid. There is no other course.”

Sun Qian took Liu Bei’s letter, mounted a fresh horse, and rode north through the night without rest, pressing toward Hebei as though the darkness itself were at his heels.

Castalia Library makes the world’s most beautiful leather books at its own bindery in Switzerland. Castalia House is the premier translator of never-before translated works from Japanese, Spanish, French, Italian, and German into English. To support Castalia House’s historic translation efforts and receive a new translated ebook every week, support the Alexandria project, and get future access to Castalia Unlimited, become a paid subscriber to this substack. And to receive a premium deluxe leatherbound book every three months, subscribe to Castalia Library.

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Book I, Chapter XXVIII

Why Rome was less ungrateful to her citizens than Athens.

In reading the history of republics we find in all of them a degree of ingratitude to their citizens; this, however, seems to have been the case to a less extent in Rome than in Athens, and perhaps less even than in any other republic. In seeking for the reason of this difference, so far as Rome and Athens are concerned, I believe it was because Rome had less cause for mistrusting her citizens than Athens. In fact, from the time of the expulsion of the kings until Sylla and Marius, no Roman citizen ever attempted to deprive his country of her liberty; so that, there being no occasion to suspect her citizens, there was consequently no cause for offending them inconsiderately.

The very contrary happened in Athens, for Pisistratus had by fraud robbed her of her liberty at the very time of her highest prosperity; so soon as she afterwards recovered her freedom, remembering the injuries received and her past servitude, she resented with the utmost harshness, not only all faults, but the mere semblance of faults, on the part of her citizens. It was this that gave rise to the exile and death of so many of her illustrious men, and thence came the practice of ostracism and every other violence which that city exercised at various times against some of her noblest citizens.

It is a very true saying of political writers, that those states which have recovered their liberty treat their citizens with greater severity than such as have never lost it. A careful consideration of what has been said on this subject will show that Athens is neither to be blamed, nor Rome to be praised, for their respective conduct, and that it necessarily resulted entirely from the difference of the events that occurred in those cities; for a penetrating observer will not fail to see that, if Rome had been deprived of her liberty in the manner Athens was, she would not have been more indulgent to her citizens than the latter. We may judge very correctly of this by her treatment of Collatinus and Publius Valerius after the expulsion of the kings; the first was exiled for no other reason than that he bore the name of the Tarquins, and the other was equally sent into exile because he had excited suspicion by building a house on Mount Coelius.

Seeing then how suspicious and severe Rome showed herself in these two cases, we may fairly judge that she would have been liable to the charge of ingratitude, the same as Athens, if she had been offended by her citizens in the beginning of her existence, before she had grown powerful. And so as not to be obliged to return to this subject of ingratitude, I shall continue what I have to say in relation to it in the next chapter.

Castalia Library makes the world’s most beautiful leather books at its own bindery in Switzerland. Castalia House is the world’s premier translator of never-before translated works from Japanese, Spanish, French, Italian, and German into English. To support Castalia House’s historic translation efforts and receive a new translated ebook every week, support the Alexandria project, and get future access to Castalia Unlimited, become a paid subscriber to this substack. And to receive a premium deluxe leatherbound history book every four months, subscribe to Castalia History.

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NEW RELEASES

• Romance of the Three Kingdoms Vol. 3: From the Grass by Eiji Yoshikawa

• The Sacramental Lands by Francesco Jovine

THE EMPIRE IS DIVIDED

Dong Zhuo is dead, but the empire is no closer to peace. The tyrant’s lieutenants have seized the Emperor and turned on each other, the capital lies in ruins, and the warlords who united to overthrow him have scattered to carve out their own domains. In the chaos, three separate stories unfold across the breadth of China.

In the east, the young warrior Sun Ce, barely twenty, burning with ambition, and so brilliant in battle that men call him the Little Conqueror, fights his way across the Yangtze to build the kingdom that will one day become Wu. In the north, Cao Cao methodically absorbs rivals, marries strategically, wages brutal campaigns against Zhang Xiu along the Yu River, and demonstrates the calculating ruthlessness that will make him the most powerful man in China. And on the roads between them, Liu Bei wanders landless, without an army, dependent on the hospitality of men who may betray him at any moment, and surviving only through the loyalty of his brothers and his stubborn refusal to abandon the cause he swore to in the Peach Garden.

This is the volume that includes the famous story where Cao Cao tells his thirsty, exhausted soldiers that plum groves lie just ahead and gives them the courage to march on. But there are no plum groves. There is only a brilliant general who understands that sometimes an imaginary plum is worth more than a real one.

From the Grass is the third of ten volumes in Castalia House’s complete English translation of Yoshikawa Eiji’s Sangokushi. Over the next two weeks, all ten volumes will be released. Now available on Amazon.

Excerpt

One of Yang Feng’s subordinates came to him with a report.

“Xu Huang has brought someone from the enemy camp into his tent. They are speaking privately.”

Yang Feng’s suspicions were immediate.

“Seize them both and bring them before me,” he ordered, and dispatched several dozen cavalry to surround Xu Huang’s tent. But Cao Cao’s concealed forces rose from their positions and drove the riders back, and Man Chong rescued Xu Huang from the encirclement. Together, the two men escaped to Cao Cao’s camp.

Cao Cao, having obtained Xu Huang as he had hoped, said simply, “This is the greatest joy I have known of late.”

Cao Cao loved able men more than he loved women. How lavishly he treated Xu Huang need hardly be described.

Yang Feng and Han Xian attempted a counterattack, but Xu Huang had already gone over to the enemy, and seeing no prospect of victory, they withdrew southward to Nanyang in Henan, where they threw themselves upon the mercy of Yuan Shu.

And so the Emperor’s carriage and Cao Cao’s army arrived at last at the gates of Xuchang.

Here stood the old palace halls and gate towers, and below the walls a proper city with streets and markets already in place. Cao Cao first established the imperial residence, then ordered the construction of ancestral temples and the expansion of government offices, and in this way transformed Xuchang into a capital worthy of the name.

At the same time, thirteen ministers of the old court were enfeoffed as marquises, and Cao Cao himself assumed the title of Grand Marshal, Marquis of Wuping.

Dong Zhao, who had previously come as the Emperor’s envoy and whose qualities Cao Cao had recognized even then, was now elevated at a stroke to the post of Magistrate of Luoyang.

Man Chong, in recognition of his service, was appointed Magistrate of Xuchang.

Xun Yu became Attendant-in-Ordinary and Director of the Secretariat.

Xun You was named Military Advisor.

Guo Jia received the post of Marshal of Ceremonies.

Liu Ye was appointed Assistant to the Minister of Works.

Cui Du became Superintendent of Revenue.

Xiahou Dun, Xiahou Yuan, Cao Ren, Cao Hong, the most trusted of Cao Cao’s trusted men, were all raised to the rank of general. Yue Jin, Li Dian, and Xu Huang, proven warriors all, were appointed colonels. Xu Chu and Dian Wei were named commandants.

With such an assembly of talent, Cao Cao’s authority made itself felt to the farthest horizons.

Whenever he came or went, three hundred armored elite troops flowed around him, their bows and halberds glittering. By contrast, the old ministers of the court were left with nothing but their titles. Grand Minister, Elder Statesman; the words still hung in the air, but the shadows behind them grew thinner by the day.

These men had been brought entirely to heel by Cao Cao’s ascendancy. It had become the established custom that every matter of governance was first reported to Cao Cao, and only afterward memorialized to the Son of Heaven.

“One tyrant is removed, and another rises in his place. Surely the fortunes of the House of Han are a sun already setting in the west.”

Those who lamented did not lament aloud. They wept only behind the dull veil of powerless eyes, standing motionless beside the Emperor like wooden statues.

Military advisors, strategists, and a brilliant company of staff officers were drinking with fierce enthusiasm.

At the center of them sat Cao Cao. His face radiated an ambition vast as a rainbow, and he was holding forth grandly on the affairs of the realm when the conversation happened to turn to Liu Bei.

“That man has somehow installed himself as the master of Xuzhou, and from what I hear, he has taken Lü Bu in at Xiaopei and is supporting him there. The combination of Lü Bu’s valor and Liu Bei’s statesmanship is a matter of some concern for the future. If those two were ever to unite in purpose and direct their combined strength against us, the situation would become troublesome even now. Has anyone a stratagem to prevent this before it takes shape?”

When Cao Cao had spoken, Xu Chu answered at once.

“Nothing could be simpler. Give me fifty thousand picked troops, and I will bring back Lü Bu’s head and Liu Bei’s head both, hanging from either side of my saddle.”

Someone laughed.

“Ha ha ha ha ha! They are not wine jars, you know.”

It was Xun Yu. He was raising his cup to the lips that had just laughed, regarding Xu Chu from the narrow corners of a strategist’s eyes.

AN AWARD-WINNING NOVEL OF EARLY 20TH CENTURY ITALY

In the remote hill country of Molise, the sacramental lands lie cursed and fallow. Once the property of the Church, then seized by the new Italian state and sold to the Cannavale family, the fields have gone unworked for generations — haunted, the peasants say, by divine punishment. Lightning strikes the chapel. Horses bolt and drag their riders over the stones. No one will touch the soil. Into this world of ancient superstition and feudal decay comes Luca Marano, a seminary dropout and son of illiterate peasants, who dares to believe that the land belongs to the people who are willing to work it.

Luca’s struggle draws him into an uneasy alliance with Laura, the unhappy wife of the landowner Enrico Cannavale, a man of charm and casual cruelty whose grip on his estate, his household, and his own sanity is slowly loosening. As Laura commits her fortune and her reputation to restoring the sacramental lands, and as Luca gathers the desperate peasants of Morutri to occupy them, the two are drawn together across a gulf of class, education, and convention that neither can fully bridge.

Francesco Jovine’s posthumous masterpiece, winner of the Premio Viareggio in 1950, is one of the great Italian novels of the twentieth century and one that has never before appeared in English. At once a love story, a political tragedy, and a portrait of a world where the land itself is a character, The Sacramental Lands stands alongside Carlo Levi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli and Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s The Leopard as an essential work of Italian literature. An original Castalia House translation. Now available on Amazon.

Excerpt

Morutri lay at the far edge of the Sacramento estate. At its highest point, toward Calena, the estate had a hillock with the ruined chapel from which it took its name. Beside the chapel stood the remains of a small Capuchin hermitage. The chapel had been in use until 1867, the year the estate, which belonged in large part to the episcopal see of Calena and the barony of Morutri, was confiscated and bought at auction by the Cannavale family. In those years, one May night, a storm wrapped Morutri and Calena in a phosphorescent light, and the Sacramento chapel was split apart by lightning. Some shepherds who had tried to round up their sheep and drive them back to the pens had seen clearly, among the clouds, the Blessed Sacrament appear — a luminous, radiant disk from which the lightning bolts flew down upon the chapel. Twenty sheep were burned to cinders; one of the shepherds found himself, waking from a long sleep, naked as a worm. He had fled toward Morutri, chased by dozens of devils that came pouring out of the chapel ruins, hopping and hissing in the dark.

A month later, toward the end of June, at night and without warning, a small light appeared from the north and began to dance among the stubble and the brush. From the four corners of the land flames leapt up, the fire reached a grove near Macchia Loreto, and around the chapel a blaze broke out. The alarm bells were rung at Morutri, but no one stirred to put out the fire. The spring at Gerino and the streams south of the chapel were found, days later, dry as the bed of an African river.

“But is all this true?” Laura asked.

“I don’t know,” Enrico answered. “All I know, from the court papers, is that in ’67 the administration of the episcopal see brought a suit through a front man to challenge the expropriation. A lawsuit that lasted forty years.”

“And who won?”

“Good lord, it was a hopeless case. My father won it. But the peasants of Morutri and Pietrafolca, from that night on, refused to work the land.”

Laura had sat down on a pile of stones, halfway up the slope, and looked out over the boundless expanse falling away toward the village that huddled, like a growth, at the edge of the estate. The horses, a few steps away, reins loose on their necks, cropped the grass that pushed up between the stones.

“Of course,” said Enrico. “I don’t know if it’s because the springs dried up, but one side of the village is being eaten by a landslide. In winter the cemetery carries its dead down toward the Calandro.”

Laura, after a moment’s silence, asked:

“How many hectares?”

“Must be three thousand.”

Enrico stood and traced the boundaries of the estate with a broad sweep of his arm.

“Down there, where the farmhouses are — that’s Cannavale land that isn’t part of the estate. It’s the only land that’s properly farmed.”

Laura followed his directions absently. Suddenly, as though reaching the end of some inward reasoning, she said:

“Do you know don Giacomo Fontana?”

“Who’s that?” said Enrico, turning.

“A priest.”

“I don’t know him. I don’t want anything to do with priests.”

“You’ll run into him. You would have met him already if you hadn’t been away a whole month.” She paused, then added, slowly, with sadness: “Twenty-nine days.”

Enrico was taken aback by her tone. His eyes filled with tender wonder. He drew close to Laura and said:

“You counted them?”

“I counted them,” Laura answered, looking him full in the face with those eyes of hers, full of allure and youthful innocence.

Enrico moved closer, hesitant, as though he wanted to give form to the surge of sudden tenderness. But Laura stood up. Her face turned serious. She said: “Shall we go to Morutri? It’ll be late if we don’t leave now.”

She took her horse by the reins, put her foot in the stirrup, and swung into the saddle as though flying. Enrico’s horse, on the other hand, made a strange, half-wheeling move that shook the stirrup from his foot three or four times. Enrico lost his temper and struck the animal on the head with the crop handle, and the horse began to rear, fighting the vicious jerks of the bit.

Laura watched without blinking. She said slowly:

“Shall I get down and help you?”

But Enrico wasn’t listening. He managed to calm himself for a moment and lead the animal forward gently by the reins. He brought it alongside a pile of stones and tried to swing onto its flank from the higher ground. But the horse seemed to have guessed the trick, and when Enrico got his foot in the stirrup, it sidled away, nearly throwing him. Laura dismounted. She went to Enrico’s horse, took it gently by the bit, stroked its head two or three times, and then pushed it back, murmuring soft words the way one does with a child. The horse moved obediently. When it was in the right position, Laura said:

“Now. Go ahead.”

Enrico mounted. The moment he had the animal between his legs he drove his spurs cruelly into its flanks. His face was tight and his eyes burned.

“The Devil’s Goat,” Laura murmured to herself, watching him gallop over the rough ground.

Castalia Library makes the world’s most beautiful leather books at its own bindery in Switzerland. Castalia House is the premier translator of never-before translated works from Japanese, Spanish, French, Italian, and German. To support Castalia House’s historic translation efforts and receive a new translated ebook every week, support the Alexandria project, and get future access to Castalia Unlimited, become a paid subscriber to this substack. And to receive a premium deluxe leatherbound book every three months, subscribe to Castalia Library.

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Book I, Chapter XXVII

Showing that men are very rarely either entirely good or entirely bad.

When Pope Julius II. went, in the year 1505, to Bologna to expel the Bentivogli from that state, the government of which they had held for a hundred years, he wanted also to remove Giovanpaolo Baglioni from Perugia, who had made himself the absolute master of that city; for it was the intention of Pope Julius to destroy all the petty tyrants that occupied the possessions of the Church. Having arrived at Perugia with that purpose, which was well known to everybody, he did not wait to enter the city with his army for his protection, but went in almost alone, although Giovanpaolo had collected a large force within the city for his defence. And thus, with the customary impetuosity which characterized all his acts, Julius placed himself with only a small guard in the hands of his enemy Baglioni, whom he nevertheless carried off with him, leaving a governor in his stead to administer the state in the name of the Church.

Sagacious men who were with the Pope observed his temerity and the cowardice of Baglioni, and could not understand why the latter had not by a single blow rid himself of his enemy, whereby he would have secured for himself eternal fame and rich booty, for the Pope was accompanied by all the cardinals with their valuables. Nor could they believe that he had refrained from doing this either from goodness or conscientious scruples; for no sentiment of piety or respect could enter the heart of a man of such vile character as Giovanpaolo, who had dishonored his sister and murdered his nephews and cousins for the sake of obtaining possession of the state; but they concluded that mankind were neither utterly wicked nor perfectly good, and that when a crime has in itself some grandeur or magnanimity they will not know how to attempt it.

Thus Giovanpaolo Baglioni, who did not mind open incest and parricide, knew not how, or, more correctly speaking, dared not, to attempt an act (although having a justifiable opportunity) for which every one would have admired his courage, and which would have secured him eternal fame, as being the first to show these prelates how little esteem those merit who live and govern as they do; and as having done an act the greatness of which would have overshadowed the infamy and all the danger that could possibly result from it.

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NEW RELEASES

• Romance of the Three Kingdoms Vol. 2: The Gathering Stars by Eiji Yoshikawa

• The Phantom of the Underground Tank by Juza Unno

THE WARLORDS RISE AGAINST THE TYRANT

The coalition has gathered. From every corner of the dying Han empire, eighteen warlords have pledged their armies to a single cause: the destruction of Dong Zhuo, the tyrant who seized the capital, deposed the Emperor, and now rules from Luoyang with the peerless warrior Lü Bu at his side. Among them is Liu Bei, still a nobody with no land and no title, whose sworn brothers Guan Yu and Zhang Fei will write their names in legend before the campaign is over — Guan Yu with a single cup of wine cooling on the table while he rides out to take a general’s head, and all three brothers together against Lü Bu at the gates of Hulao Pass, in the most famous duel in Chinese literature.

But coalitions built on ambition shatter on success. When Dong Zhuo burns Luoyang to the ground and flees west with the Emperor, the alliance collapses into suspicion and betrayal. Sun Jian, the Tiger of Jiangdong, pockets the Imperial Seal and marches south. Cao Cao, the only man with the clarity to pursue Dong Zhuo, is abandoned by his allies and nearly destroyed. And in the capital’s ashes, an aging minister named Wang Yun launches the most audacious conspiracy in the saga, a plot that hinges on the legendary beauty of a single woman who will set father against adopted son and bring the tyrant down from within.

The Gathering Stars is the second of ten volumes in Castalia House’s complete English translation of Yoshikawa Eiji’s Sangokushi. Over the next two weeks, all ten volumes will be released. Now available on Amazon.

Excerpt

The express riders bearing news of the defeat threw Luoyang into turmoil. Li Su, thunderstruck, rushed to inform the Chancellor. Dong Zhuo himself had gone white.

“How badly did our men break?”

“They have fled back behind Si Pass.”

“Order them to hold the pass. No one leaves.”

“I have already given that command, pending the arrival of reinforcements.”

“How could a warrior of Hua Xiong’s caliber be killed so easily?”

“Whatever his courage, Yuan Shao commands real loyalty and real strength across the provinces.”

“Yuan Shao’s uncle, Yuan Wei. He is still in the capital, is he not?”

“He holds the office of Grand Tutor.”

“This is intolerable. If he were to raise insurrection from within, Luoyang would fall into chaos overnight.”

“I have been concerned about the same thing.”

“A dangerous man, and we have let him sit here all this time. Remove him at once.”

Over a thousand cavalry from the Chancellor’s guard were dispatched immediately to the residence of Grand Tutor Yuan Wei.

They set fire to it from the front and the rear. Every man and woman who fled the burning house, servants and warriors alike, was cut down. Yuan Wei himself did not escape.

That same day, two hundred thousand troops marched from Luoyang.

One force, fifty thousand strong under Generals Li Jue and Guo Si, was sent to reinforce Si Pass.

The other force numbered one hundred and fifty thousand, and Dong Zhuo himself led it to fortify Hulao Pass.

Among the retainers guarding the Chancellor rode Li Ru and Lü Bu at the head of a company that included Zhang Ji, Fan Chou, and other formidable men. Hulao Pass lay fifty-odd li south of Luoyang, and it was said that a hundred thousand men holding its natural ramparts could deny passage to any army under heaven.

Dong Zhuo established his headquarters there and summoned Lü Bu, the strong right arm of his forces.

“You will take the field beyond the pass.”

He gave him thirty thousand picked troops.

With Dong Zhuo himself holding the pass with a hundred and twenty thousand men, and thirty thousand elite troops deployed as a vanguard under the warrior they called a match for ten thousand, the position was a fortress of iron and stone in more than name alone.

Cut off from the ten provinces’ supply routes, the coalition lords found their communications with their home territories threatened, and the first signs of unrest rippled through the allied camp.

“This has become grave. We must settle on a strategy before the men lose heart.”

Yuan Shao spoke quietly to Cao Cao.

Cao Cao agreed, and they convened a war council at once to make their course clear.

The enemy had split into two forces to advance south, and so the coalition divided its own strength in answer. One contingent remained at Si Pass. The rest, the combined armies of eight lords, marched on Hulao Pass. These eight were Wang Kuang, Bao Xin, Qiao Mao, Yuan Yi, Kong Rong, Zhang Yang, Tao Qian, and Gongsun Zan.

Cao Cao held himself in reserve as a mobile force, ready to reinforce any point of the line that wavered.

“So. They have come.” Lü Bu, astride the famous Red Hare, surveyed the approaching enemy from his forward position beyond Hulao Pass with perfect composure.

Lü Bu, in his panoply that day.

Over a crimson brocade war-coat blazoned with a hundred flowers he wore linked-ring armor. His hair was bound in triple prongs beneath a purple-gold crown. A lion-skin belt held his bow and arrows at his waist. In his hands he gripped the great painted-haft halberd, and he sat astride Red Hare so that even that great horse looked small beneath him. His presence overwhelmed the coalition’s army, and every man who saw him could only stare.

“So that is Lü Bu.”

THE FATHER OF JAPANESE SCIENCE FICTION

In 1940, a Japanese electrical engineer who wrote science fiction imagined the year 1950: an American cargo ship fighting through an Antarctic blizzard, a secret military installation buried beneath the ice, and a fleet of underground tanks that could bore through solid rock. He called it The Phantom of the Underground Tank, and it was the kind of book that made Japanese boys dream about the future the way Heinlein made American boys dream about the stars.

When the cargo ship Ark runs aground on an uncharted Antarctic shore, young Okishima and his American friend Pete discover something impossible beneath the ice: a vast subterranean fortress stocked with machines unlike anything in any nation’s arsenal. Captured by a rogue commander with plans that could reshape the balance of power across the Pacific, the two boys must escape a prison buried a thousand meters underground, survive the frozen wasteland above, and find a way to warn the outside world before the phantom fleet launches.

Written for young readers by the founding father of Japanese science fiction, The Phantom of the Underground Tank is a lost classic of pre-war adventure SF, a book that belongs on the shelf between Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth and Heinlein’s Rocket Ship Galileo. An original Castalia House translation. Now available on Amazon.

Excerpt

The Ark was burning every drop of heavy oil her engines could take, straining at full power to push through the blizzard toward the pole. It was almost entirely wasted effort. The ship would start to make headway, only to be shoved back again, unable to hold her gains.

Worse, the danger was growing by the minute. They were charging blind into the storm, like a man with no eyes running along a cliff’s edge without a cane.

The captain and his first officer stood on the bridge, coat collars turned up, staring into the spray. Neither face showed any color of life.

“Captain. It’s no good, is it.”

“No. I know it’s no good.”

“This is madness. We can make our excuses to Rear Admiral Lind afterward. At least let us heave to until the blizzard passes.”

“It’s too late for that. Rear Admiral Lind has placed a great wager. A great wager for the Greater American Federation. We have no choice but to join him in it. Because—”

“Captain! Iceberg!”

“Damn. Radio Rear Admiral Lind—”

Before the captain could finish his anguished cry, a mountain of ice loomed suddenly off the bow. In the same instant a tremendous crash sent every man on deck sprawling.

The alarm shrieked.

The Ark drove up onto the iceberg with a grinding, splintering roar.

White steam erupted from the hull in billowing clouds. The engines must have ruptured.

“All hands on deck!”

The crew poured out onto the blizzard-swept deck. The wind hit like a wall of ice. Four or five men slipped on the spot and went over the side into the sea.

The alarm reached the quarters of the Nameless Strike Force just as fast.

The men were stunned.

“We’ve hit an iceberg! All hands on deck!”

An iceberg was shock enough. That they’d struck one and the ship was sinking was beyond belief.

The men had noticed it getting colder and figured the ship had turned north off Newfoundland, heading up toward Canada.

“What, we’re in the Bering Strait already?”

Not the Bering Strait. The exact opposite direction. They were near the Antarctic.

Lieutenant Carlton, commander of the Nameless Strike Force, had slammed his head into an iron door in the collision and was badly hurt. But he was a soldier through and through. He tore a curtain into strips, bound his head tight, and turned to his men.

“Everyone stay calm. We’re near the Antarctic, but Rear Admiral Lind will send a rescue party before long.”

“The Antarctic?”

“That’s right. Too late to keep it quiet now. The Antarctic was our destination all along. We were to come under Rear Admiral Lind’s command and receive our operational orders from him. After that, we were supposed to—”

“Hey! Boats are over here! Nameless Strike Force, move it!”

The lieutenant’s words were cut short.

The men scrambled across the tilting deck, each one fighting to reach the boats first.

“Stay calm! A rescue party will come! Count on it!”

The blizzard swallowed the lieutenant’s voice almost as fast as he could shout.

Then something worse happened.

An explosion ripped through the ship from below. Cold seawater had flooded into the boilers.

The Ark lurched with each blast, listing further every time.

Private First Class Pete and Sergeant Pye were the last ones out. They’d started to leave, realized it was a blizzard outside, and doubled straight back for their cold-weather gear. Training had paid off when it counted.

“Quite a show, isn’t it, Sergeant.”

“What? You’re cool as a damn cucumber. We could die out here, you know.”

“You only die once. Might as well enjoy the view while it lasts.”

“Kid, talking to you makes me want to put on a pot of coffee.”

Sergeant Pye, for his part, wasn’t exactly panicking either.

To support Castalia House’s historic translation efforts and receive a new translated ebook every week, support the Alexandria project, and get future access to Castalia Unlimited, become a paid subscriber to this substack. And to receive a deluxe leatherbound book every three months, subscribe to Castalia Library.

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Book I, Chapter XXVI

A new prince in a city or province conquered by him should organize everything anew.

Whoever becomes prince of a city or state, especially if the foundation of his power is feeble, and does not wish to establish there either a monarchy or a republic, will find the best means for holding that principality to organize the government entirely anew (he being himself a new prince there); that is, he should appoint new governors with new titles, new powers, and new men, and he should make the poor rich, as David did when he became king, “who heaped riches upon the needy, and dismissed the wealthy empty-handed.” Besides this, he should destroy the old cities and build new ones, and transfer the inhabitants from one place to another; in short, he should leave nothing unchanged in that province, so that there should be neither rank, nor grade, nor honor, nor wealth, that should not be recognized as coming from him. He should take Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander, for his model, who by proceeding in that manner became, from a petty king, master of all Greece. And his historian tells us that he transferred the inhabitants from one province to another, as shepherds move their flocks from place to place.

Doubtless these means are cruel and destructive of all civilized life, and neither Christian nor even human, and should be avoided by every one. In fact, the life of a private citizen would be preferable to that of a king at the expense of the ruin of so many human beings. Nevertheless, whoever is unwilling to adopt the first and humane course must, if he wishes to maintain his power, follow the latter evil course. But men generally decide upon a middle course, which is most hazardous; for they know neither how to be entirely good or entirely bad, as we shall illustrate by examples in the next chapter.

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NEW RELEASES

• Romance of the Three Kingdoms Vol. 1: The Peach Garden by Eiji Yoshikawa

• 795: The Complete Waka of Genji Monogatari by Murasaki Shikibu

THE EMPIRE, NOW UNITED, MUST DIVIDE

Yoshikawa Eiji’s Sangokushi is the most widely read retelling of the Three Kingdoms saga ever written. Serialized from 1939 to 1943 in the Chūgai Shōgyō Shinpō — the forerunner of Japan’s Wall Street Journal — it reached a readership of tens of millions and has remained continuously in print for over eighty years. Where the original Chinese Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a dry historical chronicle, Yoshikawa reimagined it as a living novel: his Liu Bei is not a symbol of virtue but a complicated man struggling with ambition and doubt, his Cao Cao is brilliant and terrifying in equal measure, and his Guan Yu and Zhang Fei are as vivid as any characters in modern fiction. It is through Yoshikawa, more than through any other writer, that East Asia’s greatest epic entered the bloodstream of modern Japanese culture and, from there, inspired the manga, anime, films, and video games that have carried the Three Kingdoms story around the world.

The Peach Garden opens in the last days of the decaying Han Dynasty, when the empire is rotting from within and peasant rebellions are consuming the provinces. In a marketplace, a straw-sandal weaver named Liu Bei meets a fugitive butcher named Zhang Fei, and shortly after, a warrior named Guan Yu who is on the run for killing a corrupt official. The three men swear an oath of brotherhood in a peach garden, to live and die together, and to restore justice to the realm. They set out with nothing but their pledge and their weapons to make a place for themselves in a world that is falling apart. From that oath, everything follows: the rise of warlords, the burning of cities, and the first stirrings of the war that will tear China into three kingdoms.

This is the first volume of a complete English translation of all ten volumes of Yoshikawa’s Sangokushi. Over the next two weeks, all ten volumes will be released. This is the weekly subscription book and has already been sent to the subscribers. Now available on Amazon.

Excerpt

Lousang Village in Zhuo county was a small post station of no more than two or three hundred houses, but travelers moving north to south and south to north with the seasons would tether their donkeys here in considerable numbers, so that wine shops lined the main road, and rustic entertainers played the two-stringed fiddle, and the place had a liveliness out of proportion to its size.

The district fell under the jurisdiction of Governor Liu Yan, administered on his behalf by Commandant Zou Jing, whose offices were in the town. But the rampant incursions of the Yellow Turbans in recent years had cast a pall over the region, and Lousang Village was no exception. Every evening, well before dark, the iron doors of the village gate were shut fast, and all traffic, whether of travelers or residents, was cut off until morning.

The gate closed when the sun hung red and enormous on the western rim of the continent and the watchman in the tower above struck six beats on the drum. The people of the district called it the Six Drum Gate for this reason, and today, as on every other day, the red sun was settling against the iron doors and the drums had already sounded two, three, four times in succession.

“Wait! Please, wait!”

A lone traveler came driving his donkey hard from the distance, waving one arm overhead. He had very nearly missed the gate by a single beat and would have spent the night outside the walls.

The last drum was on the point of sounding when he reached the entrance and dismounted.

“I beg your pardon. Please let me through.”

He submitted to the standard inspection at the checkpoint. The guard took one look at his face and said, “Well now, aren’t you Liu Bei?”

Liu Bei was a resident of Lousang Village, and everyone knew him by sight.

“I am. I’ve just returned from my travels.”

“Your face is passport enough. No need for inspection. But where on earth have you been? This trip of yours has been a long one.”

“The usual trading business, but with the Yellow Turbans running wild in every direction, it’s been impossible to do proper business anywhere.”

“I can believe it. Fewer travelers come through the checkpoint every day. Go on, get through.”

“Thank you kindly.”

Liu Bei was remounting his donkey when the guard called after him.

“Oh, one more thing. Your mother, isn’t it, who used to come to the gate every evening asking whether her son had come through yet? Whether Liu Bei had passed today? She hasn’t been seen these ten days or so. Word is she’s taken ill and is bedridden. You’d best get home and show her your face.”

“What? My mother has fallen ill while I was away?”

A sudden dread seized his chest. He drove the donkey through the gate and into the town at a gallop.

The familiar streets passed in a blur of evening color. He did not spare them a glance. The road through the narrow, short post town gave out quickly, and the way opened again onto the unhurried countryside.

A gentle stream. Rice paddies. It was autumn, and the villagers had already begun the harvest. Here and there, figures in the fields and the dark shapes of water buffalo were turning homeward toward the scattered farmhouses.

“There. I can see the house.”

Liu Bei shaded his eyes from the back of the donkey. In the last of the sinking light, one dark roof stood alone, and beside it, visible even from this distance, a tree so vast it looked like an enormous parasol. That was the mulberry. That was the house where Liu Bei had been born.

How she must have waited for him. And what had he done? He had set out meaning to serve her, and all he had accomplished was to pile unfilial absence upon unfilial absence. Mother, forgive me.

The donkey seemed to know his heart, for it quickened its pace unbidden, and soon they had come to the foot of the great mulberry tree.

THE COMPLETE POETRY OF GENJI MONOGATARI

The Tale of Genji, written a thousand years ago by the court lady Murasaki Shikibu, contains 795 poems woven into its prose. It is the largest and most complex body of waka embedded in any work of Japanese literature. These poems are not ornaments. In the world of the Heian court, poetry was the primary medium of communication between lovers, rivals, parents, and children. To compose well was to demonstrate breeding, intelligence, and depth of feeling. To compose poorly was to reveal yourself as graceless and unworthy.

795: The Complete Waka of Genji Monogatari presents all 795 waka from a new English translation of The Tale of Genji. Each poem has been translated using a tiered system designed to make the character’s poetic ability audible in English, just as it is in the original Japanese. When Prince Genji composes, you hear the easy fusion of passion and technique that marks a genius. When Murasaki no Ue responds, you hear a woman whose artistic ability matches his own. When Lady Rokujō writes, her poems burn with an intensity that borders on the dangerously insane.

But not every character in the Genji is a master poet. The Safflower Princess composes with painful earnestness and no ear for rhythm. Her poems are technically correct and emotionally inert, and the translation renders them so. The Lady of Ōmi rattles off verse with the confident gracelessness of someone who has never understood what poetry is for. Among the men, the poems of minor courtiers and provincial officials often lack the subtlety and allusive depth of Genji’s circle. These differences are not accidental. Murasaki Shikibu used poetry as characterization, and the quality of a person’s verse is important in telling the reader who they are. This translation preserves that aspect of her work.

Organized by chapter, with each poem numbered sequentially from 1 to 795 and indexed in a complete reference list, this volume serves both as a companion to The Tale of Genji and as a standalone anthology of Heian court poetry, the most intimate record we possess of how the men and women of a thousand years ago spoke to each other when words alone were not enough. Now available on Amazon.

Excerpt

花散里

Hana Chiru Sato

Wochika heri

おちかへり
えそしのはれぬ
ほとゝきす
ほのかたらひし
やとのかきねに

Returning,
the cuckoo cannot bear it,
cannot hold back its cry,
at the hedge of the house
where once we faintly spoke.

Hototogisu

ほとゝきす
ことゝふこゑは
それなれと
あなおほつかな
さみたれのそら

The cuckoo speaks
and the voice
is indeed his,
yet how uncertain
the sky of the rainy month.

Tachibana no

たち花の
かをなつかしみ
ほとゝきす
はなちるさとを
たつねてそとふ

Drawn by the scent
of the orange blossoms,
the cuckoo comes,
seeking the village
where the flowers fall.

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Here are the results of yesterday’s poll, in which 124 readers participated. Thanks to everyone who took the time to read all three sample chapters and take part in the poll.

1. 52% Translation 1

2. 28% Translation 3

3. 19% Translation 2

TRANSLATION 1: Leila Vennewitz (1992, Pushkin Press 2024) This is the prestige modern translation. Leila Vennewitz (1912–2007) was a Canadian-English translator of German literature best known for her translations of the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Heinrich Böll, for whom she served as his principal English voice, and she also translated Martin Walser, Uwe Johnson, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, and Jurek Becker. She was among the most decorated literary translators of her generation, winning the Schlegel-Tieck Prize (1968), the Goethe House/PEN prize (1978), and the American Translators Association’s German Literary Prize (1989), and she was notable within the profession for having pioneered the ability of translators to gain copyright for their own translations. Her Narcissus and Goldmund was the third major English translation after the 1932 Dunlop and 1968 Molinaro translations. While her reputation rests mainly on Böll rather than Hesse, the translation demonstrates her craftsmanship and now has a prestige-press imprint behind it.

TRANSLATION 2: Ursule Molinaro (1968) This is the translation nearly every English-language reader of the novel has encountered. Ursule Molinaro’s version, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1968, restored the direct character-based title Narcissus and Goldmund from the Dunlop edition’s change to Death and the Lover and became the standard version for several decades, kept in print through a mass-market Bantam edition in 1984 and a Picador paperback in 2003. Molinaro herself was not a career translator but a novelist and experimental writer who also introduced Christa Wolf, Claude Ollier, and Philippe Sollers to English readers. Her Narcissus arrived at the height of the American Hesse boom and is the countercultural-era text, the one that shaped how multiple English-speaking generations read the book.

TRANSLATION 3: Castalia House (2026) This is the most literal and precise of the three translations. It tracks several details more closely than the others (“glow of the tiny lamp flame,” “lean,” “covetous sidelong glance,” “without fail,” “mullioned windows,” “by stealth over eaves,” “pleaded, sobbing”). Fidelity is therefore very high. Readability is still strong, but the prose is a shade more formal and deliberate; it does not flow quite as effortlessly as the other two. It is the safest choice if maximum closeness to the German wording is the priority. (from Grok)

So the Vennewitz translation is the clear winner, which is no surprise as she is arguably the best German-English translator of the 20th century. It would have been both unexpected and remarkable if we could have reached that level already, just as we do not expect to approach the levels of William Weaver translating Italian or Jay Rubin translating Japanese anytime soon.

However, the fact that our translation was reasonably competitive with the Vennewitz translation and was actually preferred to the mainstream Molinaro translation, which I personally found to be a little clumsy back in the days when my German was considerably better, means that we can proceed with confidence in publishing our own edition of Narcissus and Goldmund, whether in ebook, hardcover, or leather.

Hermann Hesse has long been one of my favorite authors. I even wrote my 10th grade thesis on his novel Siddhartha, which has also served as the inspiration for two of my songs. Of all his excellent novels, I prefer only Das Glaspernspiel to Narziss und Goldmund. And while the three existing English translations of Narcissus and Goldmund are under copyright, the German original no longer is. So what we ask today is for you to do us the favor of reading three different versions of the same chapter and telling us in the poll at the end which of the three translations you prefer.

If you wish to explain the reasons for your preference in the comments after you vote in the poll, that’s fine. We would only ask that no one read through the comments until they have a) read each of the translations through in their entirety and b) voted in the poll.

It’s not necessary to read the translations closely, as there is not going to be a test on the details at the end, but please at least skim over each of them from beginning to end in order to get a good sense of which translation you prefer.

TRANSLATION 1

In the light shed by the tiny flame they all settled down, the two girls on wooden stools, the boys round them on the floor. They spoke in whispers and drank from the cider, with Adolf and Konrad doing most of the talking. From time to time one of them would stand up, stroke the skinny one’s hair and neck and whisper in her ear. The younger one was never touched. Probably, Goldmund thought, the older one was the maidservant, the pretty, younger one the daughter of the house. But it didn’t matter anyway and was no concern of his, for he would never come back here. The secret escape and the walk in the dark through the forest: that he had enjoyed, it had been something new, exciting, mysterious yet not dangerous. Although it was forbidden, the infringement did not weigh on his conscience. But this, this nocturnal visiting of the girls, was more than merely forbidden, he felt. It was a sin. To the others, perhaps, even this was no more than a minor escapade, but not to him. To him, knowing himself destined for asceticism and the monastic life, no dallying with girls was permitted. No, he would never come back here, yet he could feel his heart thumping apprehensively in the dim lamplight of the humble kitchen.

His schoolmates acted like heroes in front of the girls, showing off with Latin phrases which they inserted into the conversation. All three evidently found favour with the maidservant as one after another they approached her with clumsy little caresses, of which the most intimate was a shy kiss. They seemed to know exactly how far they could go. And since the whole conversation had to be carried on in whispers, there was actually something comical about the scene, although Goldmund did not find it so. He stayed hunched up on the floor, staring at the little flame and not uttering a word. Sometimes, with an almost lustful glance, he would catch one of the caresses being exchanged among the others. While continuing to stare straight ahead, he longed to fix his gaze on the younger girl, the one with the plaits, but this was the very thing he would not allow himself to do. Yet whenever his will-power weakened and his eyes strayed to that calm, sweet, girlish face, he found her dark eyes riveted on his own face, staring at him as if spellbound.

Perhaps an hour had passed – never had Goldmund known an hour to be so long – before his schoolmates ran out of phrases and caresses. Silence fell, and as they sat there, somewhat embarrassed, Eberhard began to yawn, at which point the maidservant told them it was time for them to leave. They all got to their feet, and each offered his hand to the maidservant, Goldmund last. Then each offered his hand to the young girl, Goldmund last. Konrad was the first to climb out of the window, followed by Eberhard and Adolf. When half-way out Goldmund felt a hand on his shoulder holding him back. He could not stop, but when he was standing on the ground outside he did reluctantly turn round. The young girl with the plaits was leaning out of the window. ‘Goldmund!’ she whispered.

He stood still.

‘Will you come back?’ she asked, her shy voice barely breathing the words.

Goldmund shook his head.

Stretching out both hands she clasped his head; he felt the warmth of her small hands on his temples. She leaned over until her dark eyes were close to his. ‘Come back!’ she whispered, and her lips touched his in a childish kiss.

He quickly ran after the others through the little garden, stumbled across beds, smelling damp earth and manure, scratching his hand on a rose-bush, and finally climbed over the fence to hurry after the others out of the village and towards the forest. ‘Never again!’ commanded his will-power. ‘Tomorrow!’ implored his sobbing heart.

No one encountered the nightbirds; unmolested they found their way back to Mariabronn, across the stream, through the mill, across the linden-tree courtyard, and by devious routes over low roofs and through columned windows into the monastery and finally the dormitory.

TRANSLATION 2

In the light of the tiny lamp they sat down, the girls on rigid little stools and the students around them on the floor. They spoke in whispers, with interruptions for sips of cider, Adolf and Konrad making most of the conversation. From time to time one of them would get up and caress the hair and neck of the older girl, and whisper into her ear; no one touched the younger girl. The big one was probably the maid, Goldmund thought, and the smaller, pretty one the daughter of the house. But what difference did it make. It was none of his business and he would never come back here. The secrecy of the escapade, the walk through the night forest had been beautiful, out of the ordinary, exciting but not dangerous. Forbidden yes, but even so the transgression did not burden one’s conscience. Whereas this, visiting girls at night, was more than just forbidden; he felt it was a sin. Perhaps for the others even this was only a small adventure, but not for him; he knew that he was destined for the ascetic life of a monk, and playing with girls was not permitted him. No, he would never come back here. But his heart pounded with anguish in the flickering half light of the poor kitchen.

The others were showing off in front of the girls and spiking their talk with tidbits of Latin. The servant girl seemed to like all three; they would sidle up to her with their awkward little caresses, a timid kiss at most. They seemed to know exactly how much was permitted. And since the whole conversation had to be held in whispers, there was something rather silly about the scene, but Goldmund did not see it that way. He crouched on the floor and stared into the flickering flame of the lamp, not saying a word. Occasionally a slightly eager side glance would catch one of the caresses the others were exchanging. Stiffly he stared straight ahead again. More than anything else he would have liked to look at the younger girl with the braids, at no one but her, but that especially he forbade himself. And every time his will slackened and his eyes strayed to the sweet quiet face of the girl, he found her dark eyes riveted on his face, staring at him as though she were spellbound.

An hour may have passed—never had Goldmund lived through a longer hour. The students had exhausted their conversation and caresses; they sat in embarrassed silence; Eberhard began to yawn. The servant girl said it was time to leave. They stood up, shook her hand—Goldmund last. Then they shook hands with the younger girl—Goldmund last. Konrad was first to climb out through the window, followed by Eberhard and Adolf. As Goldmund was climbing out, he felt a hand hold him back by a shoulder. He could not stop; once outside on the ground he slowly turned his head. The younger girl with the braids was leaning out of the window.

“Goldmund!” she whispered. He stood and waited.

“Are you coming back?” she asked. Her timid voice was no more than a breath.

Goldmund shook his head. She reached out with both hands, seized his head; her small hands felt warm on his temples. She bent far down, until her dark eyes were close before his.

“Do come back!” she whispered, and her mouth touched his in a child’s kiss.

Quickly he ran through the small garden, toppled across the flower beds, smelled wet earth and dung. A rosebush tore his hand. He climbed over the fence and trotted after the others out of the village toward the forest. “Never again!” commanded his will. “Again! Tomorrow!” begged his heart.

Nobody surprised the night owls. Nothing hindered their return to Mariabronn, across the little stream, through the mill, across the square of linden trees, along secret passageways, over gables, around window columns, into the cloister and the dormitory.

TRANSLATION THREE

In the glow of the tiny lamp flame they settled down, the two girls on small stiff stools, the pupils around them on the floor. They spoke in whispers, and between the whispers they drank cider. Adolf and Konrad did most of the talking. Now and again one of them would stand and stroke the lean girl’s hair and neck, whispering in her ear; the younger one remained untouched. Probably, Goldmund thought, the older was the maid, the pretty younger one the daughter of the house. But it was of no consequence; it was none of his affair, for he would never come here again. The secret escape and the night walk through the forest, that had been fine, that had been unfamiliar, exciting, mysterious, and yet not dangerous. It was forbidden, true, but the transgression did not weigh heavily on his conscience. This, however, this nighttime visit to the girls, was more than merely forbidden; this, he felt, was sin. For the others, perhaps, it was only a small indiscretion, but not for him; for him, who knew himself destined for the asceticism of the monastic life, no dalliance with girls was permitted. No, he would never come again. But his heart beat hard and anxious in the dim lamplight of the humble kitchen.

His companions played the hero before the girls and gave themselves airs with Latin phrases, which they mixed into the conversation. All three seemed to be in the maid’s good graces; one after another they approached her with their small, clumsy caresses, the tenderest of which was a shy kiss. They seemed to know exactly what was permitted them here. And since the whole conversation had to be carried on in whispers, the scene had something rather comic about it, though Goldmund did not feel it so. He crouched silently on the floor and stared into the little lamp flame without saying a word. Now and then, with a somewhat covetous sidelong glance, he caught one of the small tendernesses exchanged among the others. Rigidly he stared straight ahead. What he would most have liked to look at was the young one with the braids, but this was precisely what he forbade himself. Yet whenever his will slackened and his gaze strayed toward that still, sweet girlish face, he found, without fail, her dark eyes fixed upon his own, staring at him as though spellbound.

Perhaps an hour had passed before the pupils’ whispers and caresses were exhausted. Never before had Goldmund lived through so long an hour. It grew quiet; they sat about somewhat awkwardly; Eberhard began to yawn. Then the maid urged them to go. They all rose and they shook the maid’s hand, Goldmund last. Then they all shook hands with the younger girl, Goldmund last again. Then Konrad climbed out through the window first, followed by Eberhard and Adolf. When Goldmund too was climbing out, he felt a hand hold him back by the shoulder. He could not stop; only when he stood outside on the ground did he turn, hesitantly. The young one with the braids was leaning from the window.

“Goldmund!” she whispered. He stood still.

“Will you come again sometime?” she asked. Her shy voice was barely a breath.

Goldmund shook his head. She stretched out both her hands, took hold of his head; he felt the small hands warm against his temples. She leaned far down, until her dark eyes were close before his own.

“Come back!” she whispered, and her mouth touched his in a child’s kiss.

He ran quickly after the others through the little garden, stumbled across the flower beds, smelled damp earth and manure, tore his hand on a rosebush, climbed the fence, and trotted after his companions, out of the village, toward the forest. “Never again!” his will commanded. “Tomorrow!” his heart pleaded, sobbing.

No one met the nightbirds. Unmolested, they made their way back to Mariabron, over the stream, through the mill, across the linden square, and by stealth over eaves and through the mullioned windows into the dormitory of the monastery.

Book I, Chapter XXV

Whoever wishes to reform an existing government in a free state should at least preserve the semblance of the old forms.

He who desires or attempts to reform the government of a state, and wishes to have it accepted and capable of maintaining itself to the satisfaction of everybody, must at least retain the semblance of the old forms; so that it may seem to the people that there has been no change in the institutions, even though in fact they are entirely different from the old ones. For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often even more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are. The Romans understood this well, and for that reason, when they first recovered their liberty, and had created two Consuls in place of a king, they would not allow these more than twelve lictors, so as not to exceed the number that had served the king.

Besides this, the Romans were accustomed to an annual sacrifice that could only be performed by the king in person; and as they did not wish that the people, in consequence of the absence of the king, should have occasion to regret the loss of any of their old customs, they created a special chief for that ceremony, whom they called the king of the sacrifice, and placed him under their high priest; so that the people enjoyed these annual sacrificial ceremonies, and had no pretext, from the want of them, for desiring the restoration of the kings. And this rule should be observed by all who wish to abolish an existing system of government in any state, and introduce a new and more liberal one.

For as all novelties excite the minds of men, it is important to retain in such innovations as much as possible the previously existing forms. And if the number, authority, and duration of the term of service of the magistrates be changed, the titles at least ought to be preserved. This, as I have said, should be observed by whoever desires to convert an absolute government either into a republic or a monarchy; but, on the contrary, he who wishes to establish an absolute power, such as ancient writers called a tyranny, must change everything, as we shall show in the following chapter.

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NEW RELEASES

• The Midnight Mayor by Jūza Unno

• The Second Turncoat by Benito Pérez Galdós

THE TWO FACES OF THE CITY

Every city has two faces. By day, T—— City is a modern capital of noise, traffic, and ten million hurrying strangers. After midnight, it becomes something else entirely — a vast, silent, deserted metropolis known only to the handful of souls who walk its streets while the rest of the world sleeps. The narrator, a writer of detective fiction who has trained himself to stay awake through the small hours, is one of those souls. The Midnight Mayor, a figure of extraordinary intelligence and uncertain sanity who claims authority over the sleeping city, is another.

One freezing March night, the narrator stumbles onto a murder in the canal district. He is knocked unconscious, wakes to find himself covered in blood, and learns he is the only suspect in a killing he did not commit. Trapped between the police hunting him by day and the shadow world that operates by night, he is drawn into the orbit of the Midnight Mayor and the secret machinery of a city that exists on an entirely different set of coordinates from the one its daytime citizens know.

Written in 1937 by Unno Jūza, the founding father of Japanese science fiction, The Midnight Mayor is a novel that defies genre: part noir mystery, part philosophical meditation on urban life, part speculative fiction about the reality that hides inside the ordinary. Translated by Vox Day, it has never before appeared in English. Those familiar with Philip K. Dick and especially China Mieville’s The City and the City will recognize this strange territory of a fascinating city that is not what it seems, narrated by a man who is not sure which version of himself is real. Now available on Amazon.

Excerpt

There was a twenty-two-meter road crossing the tramline (the one with no trams in sight) and stretching off to the right. Take that road and you could reach Kameido without having to go down to another canal. This wide road, too, was like the corridor of a crystal palace. Not a soul in sight. I turned onto it and had ambled maybe a hundred meters when someone let out a bloodcurdling scream. From the volume and the quality of the voice, it couldn’t have been anything but human. I’d prowled the midnight streets dozens of times, maybe hundreds, but I’d never heard a scream like that. I froze where I stood.

Just one scream. So I couldn’t say for certain, but it seemed to come from an alley off to the left, a little farther ahead. That’s when I thought about my position. You might laugh at that, but what I was actually weighing was whether a person in my situation had any business getting mixed up in something suspicious, at this hour, in a place like this. Back when I was just a literary young man with nothing to lose, it wouldn’t have mattered either way. But now, in addition to being “Kōgaya Seiji” the pen name, I held a real position under my real name. A respectable one, too. Far more promising, career-wise, than grinding out manuscripts for magazine money. I’d only just landed this position, and by all rights I should’ve been refraining from midnight strolls altogether. If I got dragged to the local police station and made to give my real name, and then clumsily invoked the rather embarrassing title I’d earned barely a week ago, I’d be a laughingstock to every detective in the precinct.

Worse, I’d bring trouble down on Mr. T, the benefactor who’d gone to great pains to secure me the position, and on all my new superiors. I’d have no leg to stand on. You’ll learn what my real profession is soon enough, but the reason I’m not telling you now stems from exactly this kind of concern. So bear with me a while longer.

That’s about where I should’ve quietly backed away from the whole scream business. But I think there are people in this world who’ll understand: even when you know beyond doubt what the right thing to do is, sometimes, depending on how you feel in the moment, you just can’t bring yourself to do it. That was me. I ordered my arms and legs to retreat, to turn around and walk the other direction. I practically shouted at them. But my arms and legs (they belonged to Kōgaya Seiji, apparently) didn’t feel a thing. They dragged my body, which might as well have been a living corpse, straight toward where the scream had come from.

I turned the corner. And sure enough, there they were: shadowy figures tangled together on the ground.

“Hey, what’s going on? What happened here…”

To my everlasting shame, Mr. Kōgaya Seiji, who’d been lodging in my body for years now, ignored every cease-and-desist order from Asama Shinjūrō (that’s my real name) and made me cry out like any common rubbernecker. Damn it. “Wha—” The two men on the other side, both dressed alike in Inverness capes and felt hats, let out startled yelps and nearly dropped the third person they’d been carrying between them.

“Is he hurt? Was it a robbery? A murder?”

I said this leaning in without the slightest restraint to get a look. The third man, unlike the other two, was dressed Western-style in an overcoat like mine. Thirty-four, thirty-five maybe. A bit bony, but the kind of thoroughly unremarkable face you’d find a dozen of on any street.

The two Inverness men glanced at each other, and one of them spoke up:

“See, this here’s a mate of ours, right. He’s had himself quite a lot to drink, legs gone all wobbly, and just now he goes and steps right into that ditch back there, takes a proper tumble. He’s hurt himself, but we’ve not the first idea where to find a doctor hereabouts. Terrible sorry to bother you, mister, but could you maybe go find us a doctor’s place nearby…”

He rattled all this off in a thick Kansai accent.

“Oh, fell in a ditch and got hurt, did he?”

I laughed out loud inside my head. Who did they think they were fooling? It took about two seconds of thought to tell the difference between a scream from falling in a ditch and that blood-freezing shriek I’d just heard. And there were two of them, yet they wanted to send me, a total stranger, running off alone to find a doctor. That didn’t sit right. Detective fiction isn’t written for nothing, you bastards. The irritation flared up in me hot and sudden. Not a good sign, that. Kōgaya Seiji had apparently conquered Asama Shinjūrō completely and was about to get us both into serious trouble.

Sure enough. Before I knew it, I’d pulled the pocket flashlight from my coat and swept the beam across the third man’s body.

“Ah—”

“Ah—”

Both sides cried out at once. Their shock was undoubtedly at the flashlight. Mine was at the fact that the third man, the one they’d said was merely injured, was stone dead. His face had gone completely gray, lips discolored, mouth hanging slack, eyes rolled back to the whites. He wasn’t breathing. Anyone could’ve diagnosed it at a glance. And what’s more (unfortunate for them), when they let the body hit the ground with a thud, it shifted slightly to one side. Something glinted on the left side of his back. A blade, sunk deep into the flesh. A short sword, most likely.

I gasped and leapt backward. But it was already too late. A crushing blow caught me square on the jaw. I didn’t even have time to cry out before I collapsed.

THE EDUCATION OF A SCOUNDREL

Madrid, 1819. The absolutist order is rotting from within, secret societies plot in cellars and salons, and the exhausted kingdom leans toward the revolt that will explode when Colonel Riego raises the cry of liberty. In such a season, only a fool commits to a cause, and Juan Bragas de Pipaón, a supreme survivor, is no fool. As he sees the winds begin to shift, he prepares to turn his coat again.

But The Second Turncoat is more than the further education of a scoundrel. Here the two worlds of the Second Series collide: Bragas’s oily, self-justifying memoir gives way to the tragic drama of Salvador Monsalud, the liberal idealist, and his half-brother Carlos Navarro, two men of one blood on opposite sides of Spain’s widening wound, bound by a woman neither can possess and a hatred neither can put down. Around them move a fanatic beauty who embodies the old Spain, a dying patriarch, and a nation about to tear itself in two.

By turns wickedly comic and darkly moving, this third novel of Galdós’s acclaimed Second Series interweaves private passion and public catastrophe with the mastery that made its author the Spanish Balzac. It stands on its own as a drama of divided loyalty and thwarted love, and draws together the threads of King Joseph’s Baggage and Memoirs of a Courtier of 1815 as the Monsalud cycle deepens. The translation, by Vox Day, marks its first appearance in the English language since its original publication 140 years ago. Now available on Amazon.

Excerpt

Judge, friends, of my astonishment, my utter devastation. For a long while I stood with the paper in my hands, not knowing what course to take, unable to fix my ideas or resolve upon a single step, incapable of forming any clear judgment upon the matter. In my brain, chaos seethed. A horrible fear filled my spirit, a fear such as I have never known.

I passed some time in painful uncertainty. As if I were conscious that my body was a mass of packed yet loose sand that would crumble at the slightest movement, I dared not take a step or stir a finger. Little by little I recovered myself. I began to reason; I struggled to diminish the gravity of the affair, and curiosity forced its way into my spirit. Who had brought that threatening sheet? The man who wrote to me, my comrade of old, why had he devised so singular a means of communicating with me? Was it really he, or some idle jester? And whoever it might be, by what means had he contrived to deliver so monstrous a warning?

My house was no house of ghosts, though very old and large, fit enough, therefore, for the invisible denizens of shadow to walk its halls, if fear permitted them the entrance. Happily, I believed in neither sorcery nor the fanciful pranks of souls in torment. Not for an instant did I entertain such childishness. But I had at the same time the certainty, thanks to a thorough inspection I had carried out shortly after taking up residence, that my house, though it possessed two doors, harbored no novelistic passageways, no cellars, no hidden gates, no marvellous wardrobes, no trapdoors, nor any of those theatrical contrivances which in the playhouse and in books furnish the stuff of a surprising intrigue. My house, then, having no secrets, it was plain that one of the servants had been the bearer of the strange message.

They were three. The first, who went by the name of Farrancho, served me as errand-boy, valet, and on occasions of great urgency as amanuensis; a man of the most honest antecedents, by his understanding almost incapable of the sacraments, for he reasoned like a mule, yet by his moral character most estimable, to all appearances. Never did I catch him in a lie, a theft, or any fault whatever.

The second person of my household was a woman, a venerable matron sufficiently old and plain to be proof against amorous lapses, sufficiently young and cleanly to serve well and cook better; Martha for her diligence and mastery of domestic affairs, Magdalene for her piety. She had served nuns for twenty years, which is to say that she was prudence itself, sanctity personified, probity in effigy. She never busied herself with household gossip and appeared to lack the faculty of speech altogether, unless it were to employ certain pious formulas: never did she enter my room without intoning lugubriously the Carthusian refrain of we must die. Her obedience was blind, her solicitude boundless, her devotion as steadfast and mute as that of the good slave; her culinary art was silver, her silence gold. Even her name was admirable in its concision and sanctity. She was called doña Fe.

There was besides in the house another female; but she did not serve me (though I should have liked it well enough), but Jenara, whose maid she was. Paquita, a handsome girl, had been but a short while in the house, and I was not yet acquainted with the qualities of her character. She seemed an excellent young woman. My suspicions fell chiefly upon her, and after her upon Farrancho. Doña Fe remained free from any unfavorable supposition, for besides possessing a character of the utmost gravity, incapable of any deceit or intrigue, she was at that moment confined to her bed, afflicted by horrible pains in her face and ears.

Having reviewed in my mind the qualities of that domestic triumvirate, my attention returned to the principal matter, to the strange sheet that had come at so untimely an hour to disturb the tranquillity of an upright man, a diligent servant of his king and his country. The most singular feature of that most singular document was that its author, whether he were in truth Monsalud or some other ragamuffin of the same stripe, while soliciting my aid also offered me his protection, as the words you will not regret it seemed to indicate. But in the very next line he threatened me insolently. The words you will remember me gave me great unease. Could it all be a ridiculous farce? He who offers protection or punishment does so because he possesses power; and if Monsalud possessed power, why did he solicit my aid? Ought I to disregard the letter, or fix upon it my whole attention?

Thinking on this, there came to my memory recollections of the ardent character of my old friend; his figure rose before the eyes of my imagination, wild-haired, horrible, stained with the sinister pallor of Jacobinism. Turning once more to the letter, whose characters betrayed Salvador’s hand, I found fear once again master of my spirit, plunging me anew into vacillations without end.

The words of the letter indicated a firm resolution. What may appear obscure and enigmatic to my readers was not so to me at that time, it being common practice, indeed popular sport, to blacken with vile nicknames the persons of illustrious and most respectable men who consecrated their lives to the service of the realm. Thus the Fox was don Juan Esteban Lozano de Torres, Minister of Grace and Justice; the Tiger, my friend and protector don Buenaventura, recently elevated to the marquisate of M***; and the Elephant, don Ignacio Martínez Villela, Councillor of Castile and a man deeply entrenched at Court, though rumor had it at the time that he was a Freemason.

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Book I, Chapter XXIII

Well-ordered republics establish punishments and rewards for their citizens, but never set off one against the other.

The services of Horatius had been of the highest importance to Rome, for by his bravery he had conquered the Curatii; but the crime of killing his sister was atrocious, and the Romans were so outraged by this murder that he was put upon trial for his life, notwithstanding his recent great services to the state. Now, in looking at this matter superficially, it may seem like an instance of popular ingratitude; but a more careful examination, and reflection as to what the laws of a republic ought to be, will show that the people were to blame rather for the acquittal of Horatius than for having him tried. And the reason for this is, that no well-ordered republic should ever cancel the crimes of its citizens by their merits; but having established rewards for good actions and penalties for evil ones, and having rewarded a citizen for good conduct who afterwards commits a wrong, he should be chastised for that without regard to his previous merits. And a state that properly observes this principle will long enjoy its liberty; but if otherwise, it will speedily come to ruin. For if a citizen who has rendered some eminent service to the state should add to the reputation and influence which he has thereby acquired the confident audacity of being able to commit any wrong without fear of punishment, he will in a little while become so insolent and overbearing as to put an end to all power of the law.

But to preserve a wholesome fear of punishment for evil deeds, it is necessary not to omit rewarding good ones; as has been seen was done by Rome. And although a republic may be poor and able to give but little, yet she should not abstain from giving that little; for even the smallest reward for a good action—no matter how important the service to the state—will always be esteemed by the recipient as most honorable. The story of Horatius Cocles and of Mutius Scaevola is well known; how the one, single-handed, kept back the enemy to give time for the destruction of a bridge, and how the other burned his hand off for having erred in his attempt to take the life of Porsenna, king of the Tuscans. As a reward for their eminent services the city of Rome gave to each of them two acres of land. The story of Manlius Capitolinus is equally well known; having saved the Capitol from the Gauls who were besieging it, he received from each of those who had been shut up in it with him a small measure of flour, which (according to the current prices of things in those days in Rome) was a reward of considerable value and importance. But when Manlius afterwards, inspired by envy or his evil nature, attempted to stir up a rebellion, and sought to gain the people over to himself, he was, regardless of his former services, precipitated from that very Capitol which it had been his previous glory to have saved.

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NEW RELEASES

• The Devil Castle of the Pacific by Jūza Unno

• Memoirs of a Courtier of 1815 by Benito Pérez Galdós

PRE-WORLD WAR II JAPANESE SCIENCE FICTION

Before Isaac Asimov, before Arthur C. Clarke, and before the golden age of American science fiction, a Japanese electrical engineer named Jūza Unno was writing novels about secret submarine bases, mechanical sea monsters, and the weaponization of the deep ocean. Published in 1939, The Devil Castle of the Pacific is the work of the man recognized in Japan as the founding father of Japanese science fiction, the author whose legacy runs from the pages of Shinseinen magazine through Space Battleship Yamato to the technological imagination of modern anime and manga. This is the first time any of his novels has appeared in English.

Mysterious disappearances are plaguing the Pacific. Ships vanish without a trace. A transpacific airliner goes silent. A German steamer sends a distress call and is gone before rescuers arrive. When a battered tin washes ashore containing a blood-smeared note describing an attack by a colossal sea creature, Naval Intelligence sends young oceanographer Tachikawa Tokio to investigate. What he finds beneath the waves is not a monster but something far more dangerous: a vast undersea fortress hidden inside a volcanic formation, stocked with submarines and a fleet of mechanical attack craft, operated by a rogue military force with plans to ignite a war between the great powers. Captured, imprisoned, and a thousand meters below the surface, Tachikawa must find a way to escape the fortress and warn Japan before the first shot is fired.

Written four years before the technology it imagined would reshape the Pacific War, The Devil Castle of the Pacific is a landmark of pre-war science fiction, a book that belongs in the same conversation as Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Wells’s The War of the Worlds, and a book that has waited nearly ninety years for English-speaking readers to discover it. The translation, by Kenji Weaver, is the first-ever English translation and is now available on Amazon.

Excerpt

Something was wrong in the Pacific. One incident after another, and no one could say why.

No one was watching more closely than Colonel Hara, chief of the Pacific Division at Naval General Staff Headquarters.

At that moment, Hara sat across a table from a sharp-eyed young man in one of the headquarters offices.

“Tachikawa. These disasters keep piling up out in the Pacific. What do you make of them?”

Colonel Hara was built like a wrestler: broad and solid, with ruddy cheeks, a close-cropped mustache, a receding hairline, and keen eyes set in a face that managed to be both kind and hard. Everything about him said career Navy.

“Well, sir—”

Tachikawa clenched his fists on his knees. He didn’t know what to make of them.

From what Hara had just told him: this spring, a transpacific passenger plane had vanished. Shortly after, a squadron of four bonito boats sailed south for the fishing grounds and never came back. Most recently, a German steamer had radioed a distress call. A Japanese vessel in the area rushed to the coordinates and found nothing. Not a shadow, not a trace. The German ship might as well have been a ghost.

True enough. Strange disasters had been piling up across the Pacific. But Tachikawa couldn’t explain them. He was an oceanographer, young, still doing research at the Fisheries Institute where he’d studied. He knew the science of the sea. Nobody had ever asked him to play detective.

Hara’s eyebrow twitched.

“The past incidents can wait. The reason I called you in today is something more urgent. Have a look at this.”

He pushed a small, battered tin across the table. He’d been turning it over in his fingers the whole time they talked.

“Sir? What is this?”

Tachikawa picked it up, frowning. The tin was round and small, just filling his palm. White enamel coated the sides, printed over in red, black, and blue with foreign lettering, though the enamel had chipped away in patches. The thing had been through rough handling. He turned it, reading the print. Some kind of premium oil, it seemed. American-made. The tin was surprisingly light, but when he tilted it, something inside shifted with a soft clunk.

He was curious now. But he had no idea what it meant.

Hara pointed a thick finger at the lid.

“Go ahead. Open it. Examine what you find.”

“You’re sure?”

With permission granted, Tachikawa pried the lid open, wondering what he’d find inside.

The lid came free.

A slip of white paper, folded small, lay inside. He pinched it out and found something else still in the tin. He turned it over and tapped. A chunk of metal dropped into his palm, small as a copper coin but far thicker, jagged-edged and surprisingly heavy. It looked like shrapnel. And its surface wasn’t the color of bare iron. Something reddish-black and sticky coated it. A strange fragment altogether.

Nothing else in the tin.

A folded slip of paper and a filthy piece of metal.

That was all.

“Unfold the paper,” Hara said. “Read what’s written on it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Tachikawa unfolded it. He drew a sharp breath.

What had young Tachikawa seen on that scrap of paper to shock him so?

It was simple enough. The paper was smeared with what could only be human blood. Bloody fingerprints dotted the surface. Beneath them, someone had scrawled in pencil. Not carefully. Not steadily. The hand of a man writing in blind panic, the pencil driven across the page by sheer desperation. Tachikawa smoothed the paper flat and read:

“Morning of the 12th. Sea turned white and cloudy. One hour later, a great sea demon appeared off the port bow, raising a round head one meter across out of the water. Its neck stretched upward fifty meters. Glaring eyes. Its long body snaked across the waves, curving and twisting for four hundred meters. Before we could react it spat fire and hurled iron shot. Our ship smashed. All hands wounded. Sank in seven minutes. Avenge us. As proof I pulled a fragment from the wound in my leg and sealed it in this can. Ninth Hiraiso Maru. Written by Miura Sumikichi.”

An astounding report. But could any of it be believed? A sea demon that raised its head fifty meters, its body stretching four hundred meters across the waves? It sounded like something out of a fairy tale. A sea serpent from the old stories. In this age of science, who could take such nonsense seriously? Tachikawa Tokio, trained in modern marine science, could only read it as a tall tale.

THE 12TH BOOK OF THE EPISODIOS NACIONALES

“Open your ears, then, and hear how a clever and upright man might rise by the sole virtue of his own deserts.”

Thus begins the confession of Juan Bragas de Pipaón, a flatterer, informer, and self-made courtier, who rose from the obscurest den of the royal offices to a cushioned seat of power, and would have you believe he did it all through pure honesty and merit.

Madrid, 1814. Ferdinand VII has returned, torn up the Constitution, and loosed his vengeance on the liberals who once ruled in his name. In the shadow of that reaction, the ambitious Pipaón thrives: hunting fugitive deputies through the night, distributing bribes in the low quarters, flattering the powerful, betraying the fallen, and thanking God for his salary all the while. In his own telling he is a model of piety and virtue. What the reader sees is one of the most notorious scoundrels in Spanish literature, a man who condemns himself with every self-satisfied word.

Simultaneously dark and funny, Memoirs of a Courtier of 1815 shows Pérez Galdós at his most wickedly ironic. He paints a portrait of servility, corruption, and the shameless men who so often prosper when a nation is in turmoil The second novel of the Second Series of Episodios Nacionales, it stands on its own as a masterpiece of the unreliable narrator, and carries forward the sweeping chronicle of nineteenth-century Spain begun in King Joseph’s Baggage.

This first-ever English translation, by Vox Day, brings the full comic malice of Galdós’s courtier to the English-speaking world. It is now available on Amazon.

Excerpt

In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, I begin the history of a most principal part of my life: I mean to say that I begin to set down the string of labors, services, feats, and exertions by which I passed, in no great span of time, from the obscurest den of the royal government warrens to the warming of a cushioned seat in the Royal Council and Chamber of Castile.

Open your ears, then, and hear, and understand how a clever and upright man might rise and exalt himself by the sole virtue of his own deserts, without once setting foot upon the tortuous paths of intrigue, without flattering the ears of the great with the music of adulation, without setting a tariff upon his conscience or a base price upon his honor, as your paltry little climbers of the present day are wont to do, now that wholesome custom, modesty, sobriety, and Christian meekness have fled the world in shame, and the age is grown so beggarly of virtue that a man of worth is not to be found though you offered half a million rascally opportunists in exchange for him.

Blessed be God, father of the needy, sustainer of the weak, provider of the hungry, harborer of the forsaken, shelter of the naked, comfort of all the poor souls who wish to earn their bread, and steward of the larder to the ants, the birds, and the place-seekers! Blessed be God, I say, who has preserved unto me my salaries, perquisites, pensions, travel-money, emoluments, and incidental fees, that I might, at my ease and free of troublesome cares, recount every step of my fabulous career! Oh, why should I conceal it? A career such as mine has been matched by no more than four men since the stalk of public employment first sprouted from the fertile earth and the dusty paper corollas opened on the dossiers of Arbitrios, Propios, Tercias Reales, Noveno, Pósitos, Paja y Utensilios, Frutos Civiles, Mandas, Renta de la Abuela, Chapín de la Reina, and sundry other herbs that composed the pleasant garden of the Administration.

It is true that, if I attained great heights, I received some handsome blows upon that blessed ladder, struggling tooth and nail with those who wished to climb ahead of me. If I rose far and fast, I also clung to some excellent coattails. But let no man say that my life is stained, as are the lives of others who cut a fine figure in their careers, with base and shameful deeds. No indeed; before all else stands the immaculate whiteness of my Christian soul. God is my witness that never once did I put my hand in another man’s pocket… Good heavens, what a horror! I would sooner have let myself be roasted upon a gridiron than take from the coffers of the Treasury a single farthing of those that lay there, duly entered in the books of account… Begone, accursed Lucifer! Vade retro! I detest violent measures, particularly when the prudent, self-regarding man wants not for a thousand ingenious expedients, judicious subtleties, and most skilful devices to remedy his shortfalls. I was not the inventor of such remedies; I learned them from most learned masters, laden with emoluments, decorations, and titles of excellence, who passed for the firmest pillars of the state and of the Church, from which I conclude that the aforesaid stratagems could hardly have been sinful. I shall say no more for the present, for in due time and season the keenness of my wit shall be made plain, and neither the philosopher nor the moralist will be able to do otherwise than approve.

“And who are you?” my readers will surely ask. I am he, I reply, who in the first years of his administrative life was called Juan Bragas, a name which, to speak truth, has no music to distinguish it, nor the least savor of elegance, nor any ring or suggestion of nobility. And so, no sooner had I begun to draw my foot from the mire than I added to my parents’ surname the name of my birthplace; which being Pipaón in Rioja de Álava, I came to style myself don Juan Bragas de Pipaón. This sounded with fine pomp in my ears, and I would repeat my own name aloud to bask in its grandeur, which by the mere effect of its syllables announced the person of an ambassador, a councillor of the Indies, a fiscal of the Rota, or a governor of Seville. Later, as the Bragas no longer struck me as being in the best taste, I suppressed it altogether, remaining for the present world and for posterity as don Juan de Pipaón, a name brief and round, that leaves harmonious echoes wherever it is pronounced, and to which the little tail of a marquisate or earldom, such as I have set my sights upon, would not come amiss.

Blessed be God, I say again, who never forsakes the needy; blessed be the bountiful hand that gives to each his remedy, now a morsel of bread if he suffer hunger, now a good friend to aid him if he harbor little ambitions of advancement. What would have become of me had I not stumbled face to face upon that most noble, that peerless personage, who perceived my aptitudes and bore me from the Purgatory of obscurity and want to the Paradise of favor, fame, and plenty? A better man was never born of woman, nor has there been seen an equal genius for all that fell within the jurisdiction of supreme intrigue, by virtue of which gifts he was the great head of those times, and a marvelous present bestowed by God upon the fortunate Spanish nation, that he might deliver her from the sorry state in which she found herself.

To support Castalia House’s historic translation efforts and receive a new translated ebook every week, support the Alexandria project, and get future access to Castalia Unlimited, become a paid subscriber to this substack. And to receive a deluxe leatherbound book every three months, subscribe to Castalia Library.

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Book I, Chapter XXII

What we should note in the case of the three Roman Horatii and the Alban Curatii.

Tullus, king of Rome, and Metius, king of Alba, agreed that that people should be master of the other whose three champions should overcome those of the other in an appointed combat. All three of the Curatii were killed, and only one of the Roman Horatii survived; and consequently Metius, king of the Albans, and his people, became subject to the Romans. When this surviving Horatius returned to Rome he met his sister, who was contracted in marriage to one of the slain Curatii; and when he heard her lamenting the death of her lover he killed her. He was judicially tried for this crime, and after a long discussion was acquitted, not so much on account of his own merit as on account of the prayers of his father. Now there are three things to be noted in these occurrences: the first, that one should never risk his whole fortune with only a portion of his forces; the second, that in a well-ordered state a man’s merits should never extenuate his crimes; and the third, that it is never wise to enter into agreements the observance of which is doubtful.

For the loss of independence is a matter of such supreme importance to a state that it is not to be supposed that any king or people will ever remain satisfied that the action of three of their citizens should subject them to servitude; as was seen in the case of Metius, who, although immediately upon the victory of the Horatii he confessed himself conquered and promised obedience to Tullus, yet on the very first expedition in which he had to take part against the Veienti he attempted by fraud to evade his obligations, like one who perceives too late the imprudence of the agreement he has made. Having said enough upon this third point, we will treat more fully of the others in the following chapters.

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NEW RELEASES

• The Book of the Black Death by Oguri Mushitaro

• The Marchese of Roccaverdina by Luigi Capuana

THE BOOK OF THE BLACK DEATH

Half a century before Umberto Eco sealed monks inside an abbey with a serial killer and a poisoned Aristotle, Oguri Mushitarō locked a detective inside a Gothic castle with a grimoire, a glowing corpse, and a prophecy of six murders written in the hand of a dead man. Serialized in 1934, The Book of the Black Death is the novel Eco might have written had he been born in Tokyo and raised on Charcot, Cagliostro, and the Kabbalistic Exegesis rather than Aquinas and Borges. Its detective, Norizumi Rintarō, is William of Baskerville’s mad Japanese twin, a polymath who deploys heraldry, toxicology, and medieval sorcery with equal fluency, and whose erudition is both the instrument of his investigation and the source of its deepest dangers. Recognized in Japan as one of the four greatest mystery novels ever written in the language, it has never before appeared in English.

In the Celtic Renaissance château known as the Hall of Black Death, a family descended from the Medici through the sorceress-consort Bianca Capello has kept four foreign musicians sealed within its walls for forty years. When the first violinist is found dead with her corpse glowing with an unearthly phosphorescence and the locked room undisturbed, a document surfaces in the hand of the mansion’s long-dead patriarch. It is a prophecy naming six members of the household and the method by which each will be slain.

As Norizumi races to prevent the next murder, he finds himself contending not only with a killer of extraordinary cunning but with the accumulated sorcery and science of four centuries, encrypted in a grimoire that was old when the Inquisition was young.

The translation, by Vox Day, is the first-ever English translation of Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken. Now available on Amazon for Kindle and audiobook.

Excerpt

The six-panel apocalypse that Kuga Shizuko had laid before them was a document concealing content of the utmost grim brutality beneath an exterior drawn in crude, archaic lines and shapes of considerable drollery. And yet there could be no question that in this case it constituted the foundation of every element. Should they fail to penetrate it at this juncture, the wall it erected would stand through a thousand further rounds of interrogation and examination, and it was plain that it would halt the investigation where it stood. Thus, even as Shizuko was delivering her astonishing interpretation, Norizumi had sunk his chin upon his chest and sat in the posture of one asleep, his concentration absolute, and the inner anguish of that meditation must have exceeded anything in his experience. For the fact remained: a murder in which there was no murderer. The method of reading the Egyptian barque and the corpse-figures as correlated elements could not be denied. And yet, to the surprise of all, when he at last raised his face, vitality was visibly flooding into it, and a ferocious expression rose to the surface.

“I understand. But Madame Kuga, the principle underlying this document contains none of that Swedenborg theology. What appears deranged is in truth an orderly logical form. And the geometric theory of spatial structure, which is said to govern all phenomena, serves here too as the absolute invariant unit. Therefore, if this document can be placed in correspondence with the laws of the natural universe, it follows that something must be abstractable from it.” The prosecutor could only gape at the spectacle of Norizumi plunging headlong into what could only be called an unprecedented domain of supra-empirical reasoning. Mathematical logic, it was true, was held to be the guiding principle of all laws; yet even in The Bishop Murder Case, had not the Riemann-Christoffel tensor served merely as a representation of a criminal concept? And here was Norizumi, attempting to apply such mathematics to the practical analysis of a crime, stepping out into the vacant, boundless world of abstract thought.

“Oh, I see…” Shizuko laughed without concealment. “That reminds me of the foolish science student who, after attending a lecture on the Lorentz contraction, began drawing all his straight lines crooked. Very well then, shall I ask you to express analytically the result of adding a Fourth Dimension to Minkowski’s four-dimensional world?”

Norizumi flicked away her laughter with a sidelong glance and gently admonished her before continuing: “Now then, if one were asked to name the most brilliant page in the history of cosmic-structure speculation, it would surely be that hypothesis duel: the debate between Einstein and de Sitter concerning the curvature of space. De Sitter, at the time, argued that the curvature derived from the intrinsic geometric properties of space itself, and in the same stroke he refuted Einstein’s anti-sun theory. But Madame Kuga, when one juxtaposes those two theories, the mainspring of the apocalypse document emerges from between them.” Uttering what sounded for all the world like the words of a man who had lost his reason, he drew the following diagram and commenced his explanation.

“Let us begin with the anti-sun theory. Einstein proposed that a ray of light emitted by the sun would travel along the rim of a spherical universe and return to its point of origin. In doing so, when it first reached the outermost limit of the universe, it would create a first image there; then, continuing its journey of millions of years around the outer sphere, it would arrive at the antipodal point behind the sun and create a second image. But by that time, the sun would long since have perished and become nothing more than a dark star.

“That is to say, the entity corresponding to the image would no longer exist in the world of the living.

THE MARCHESE OF ROCCAVERDINA

A Sicilian nobleman murders his former servant out of jealousy, then watches an innocent man go to prison for the crime. So begins Luigi Capuana’s masterpiece of psychological destruction.

The marchese of Roccaverdina had arranged everything perfectly. His former mistress Agrippina Solmo was married off to Rocco Criscione under an impossible pact: the marriage was to be in name only. When the marchese came to believe the pact had been broken, he killed Rocco on a dark road outside town. Another man was convicted. The marchese was free.

But freedom proved more terrible than any punishment. Haunted by a confessor who demands he turn himself in, tormented by the great Crucifix that watches him from the walls of his own house, and unable to love the wife he married to restore respectability, the marchese begins a long descent from guilt into obsession, from obsession into delirium, and from delirium into madness.

Published in 1901, Il Marchese di Roccaverdina is the crowning achievement of Italian verismo, the literary movement that sought to portray life with unflinching realism. Capuana, who with Giovanni Verga defined the movement, created in the marchese one of the great psychological portraits in European fiction: a man destroyed not by the law, not by society, but by the inexorable workings of his own conscience.

Now available on Amazon for Kindle and audiobook.

Excerpt

Each time he entered the camerone, as the salon of the baronessa di Lagomorto was called, don Silvio La Ciura was seized by a feeling of admiration that rendered him even more timid than usual.

He had remained standing, one point of his priest’s hat pressed to his lips, and seemed almost lost amid the old furniture that gave the long, narrow room an air of decrepitude and abandonment.

Waiting for the baronessa to appear from one of the four doors that reached to the cornice, having cast a rapid glance at the dusty portraits, the blackened and cracked paintings, the baroque-framed mirrors—tarnished and half-eaten by damp—that covered the walls; at the chests of drawers painted a pale green with white flowers and à la Pompeiana borders and medallions on the fronts; at the slender chairs with gilded backs, at the armchairs and the two sofas in the Empire style, upholstered in red damask already faded and worn, don Silvio had stopped to contemplate the large unframed painting in which one could just make out the bald head of Saint Peter, those of five other figures—servant women and soldiers—surrounding him in the praetorium of Pilate, and a rooster on the balustrade of the portico, its beak open in the act of crowing.

He would have liked to see that painting in a church, on the altar of a chapel, and not there, irreverently placed atop the spinet—varnished a dull yellow with black trim, supported by three slender square legs—that stood against the wall, its keyboard facing the large window. But he did not dare suggest once more to the baronessa the idea of donating it to the parish.

The painting had been brought from Rome in the seventeenth century by one of her husband’s ancestors, and she wished to preserve intact all the family keepsakes, just as she had found them the day she came from the house of the Roccaverdina to that of the Ingo-Corillas, barons of Lagomorto, bride to the young baron don Alvaro more than half a century before.

The rustle of a skirt on the varnished tiles of the floor revealed the baronessa’s presence to the priest only as she passed close by him on her way to settle into that corner of the sofa where she was accustomed to curl up on the rare occasions when she received a visit from a relative or from persons of the most intimate acquaintance. Don Silvio was among these.

Tall, thin as a rail, deeply lined but still ruddy, with snow-white hair parted in two bands that covered her ears and made her face look smaller within the folds of the black silk kerchief knotted beneath her chin, dressed in a light grey fabric and wearing on her bony, tapering hands grey lisle half-gloves, the baronessa had entered without a sound through the door to which don Silvio had at that moment been turning his back.

The priest made a deep bow, approached to kiss her hand as soon as she, having seated herself, indicated an armchair to him; then, with a humble bearing and a thin voice, he began:

“Jesus Christ sends me...”

“Jesus Christ sends you to me too often!” the baronessa interrupted, smiling benevolently.

“He turns to those who are able to give charity and do so willingly,” replied don Silvio.

And so saying, he seemed to wish to make smaller still his slight, thin person, which in its sunken eye-sockets and hollow, pallid cheeks bore the marks of the fasts and penances with which he mortified his wretched body.

“Jesus Christ, however,” the baronessa resumed, shaking her head, “remembers the poor who have nothing to eat, and forgets that rich and poor alike already stand in need of rain for the grain, for the vines, for the olive trees!”

“It will rain, in due time, if our sins do not stand in the way.”

“You do penance for all of us, you do,” the baronessa added.

“I am a greater sinner than any!”

“Tell Him so, tell Jesus Christ: We need rain, Lord! We need rain!”

“I shall tell Him,” replied the good priest, with simplicity. “In the meantime, I come to commend to you once more that poor woman, the wife of Neli Casaccio. Now that her husband is in prison, the poor creature is perishing of want, with four children who can be of no help to her. She swears, before God and the saints, that her husband is innocent.”

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Book I, Chapter XXI

Princes and republics who fail to have national armies are much to be blamed.

Such princes and republics of modern times as have no national troops for defence or attack ought well to be ashamed of it; for they should bear in mind that, according to the example of Tullus, their not having armies of their own is not from the want of men fit for military service, but that the fault is wholly theirs, in not knowing how to make soldiers of their men. For when Tullus ascended the throne, after forty years of peace, he did not find a man that had ever borne arms in war; but as he contemplated making war, he neither attempted to avail himself of the Samnites, the Tuscans, nor of any other people accustomed to fight, but, like a most sagacious prince, he resolved to employ only his own subjects; and such was his skill and courage that he promptly created an excellent army within his own kingdom. And there is nothing more true than that, if there are no soldiers where there are men, it is not owing to any natural or local defect, but is solely the fault of the prince; in proof of which I cite the following most recent example.

Everybody knows that quite lately the king of England attacked the kingdom of France, and employed for that purpose no other soldiers except his own subjects; and although his own kingdom had been for over thirty years in profound peace, so that he had at first neither soldiers nor captains who had seen any active military service, yet he did not hesitate with such troops to assail a kingdom that had many experienced commanders and good soldiers, who had been continually under arms in the Italian wars. He was enabled to do this because he was a sagacious prince, and his kingdom was well ordered, so that in time of peace the military art had not been neglected. Pelopidas and Epaminondas, both of Thebes, after having liberated that city and rescued her from the yoke of the Spartan rule, found themselves in a city accustomed to servitude, and in the midst of an effeminate people. Such, however, was their wisdom and valor that they did not hesitate to put the Thebans under arms, and to take the field with them against the Spartans, whom they defeated. The historian who tells this says, that these two great citizens proved in a short time that it was not Lacedaemon alone that gave birth to warriors, but that they were produced in all countries where men were found capable of instructing others in the art of war; as was seen in the case of Tullus, who trained the Romans to war. And Virgil could not state this fact and express his approbation of it better than in the following words: “And Tullus converted his indolent men into brave soldiers.”

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