Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit brings her sophisticated literary methods and graceful method of analysis to this English translation of her book on the shishosetsu, one of the most important yet misunderstood genres in Japanese literature. This thorough and insightful study of the Japanese version of the I-novel provides a means of researching and interpreting the whole tradition of this genre, linking it to the forms of autobiographical fiction as well as to the cultural assumptions and ways of thinking of the classical period of Japanese history. Hijiya-Kirschnereit provides a model of systematic inquiry into literary traditions that will stimulate American and English japanologists used to different methods, providing a much-needed bridge between German japanologists and the rest of the field.