Translation Works
To Japanese
The 1st Selected Works
TITLE
Undercurrents: Episodes from a Life on the Edge
(Waga jinsei no toki no toki)
AUTHOR
Shintaro Ishihara
Translator
ENGLISH / Wayne P. Lammers published
RUSSIAN / Alexander Mesheryakov published
Originally Published by:
Shinchosha (1990)
(1993)(pb)
KEY POINTS
  • Some of the best short works of a writer whose debut novel, Season of the Sun, was awarded the Akutagawa Prize
SYNOPSIS
Forty works that portray moments of bliss following glimpses of and brushes with death
 
A trailblazer in the field of scuba diving, "he" undertook many kinds of work during one period, including such unique tasks as recovering a suspicious package from the sea floor on behalf of a Chinese person from somewhere or other. Once, "he" brought me a gift of a large fish he had caught in the ocean and began telling the story of being left behind in the ocean by his boat. ("Adrift")
 
While relatively small at less than a meter in length, the Erabu black-banded sea krait is a particularly venomous sea snake. Its vestigial teeth make it seem unlikely to be able to bite a human, but its venom is still amazingly powerful. I have never seen the Erabu black-banded sea krait return to the bottom of the ocean after a breather on the surface or approach divers with curiosity the way other relatively large sea snakes do. What I have seen it do is shoot straight up toward the surface of the ocean. My diver friends, much to my unease, once asked me to show them how to catch this sea snake, so I tried, but…. ("The Speckled Band")
 
Just by breathing, people can sometimes get drunk on nitrogen the same way they get drunk on liquor. It appears that this can happen at depths of 40 meters or more, and the deeper one goes, the stronger the intoxication. I once saw a diving companion suffer a bout of nitrogen narcosis that was almost fatal. ("Nitrogen Narcosis")
 
GENRE: Essays
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