‘Modernity and Tradition in Japanese Literature, Art, Politics and Religion’: the very subtitle of this volume hints at the breadth of scholarship that Roy Starrs has brought to the table. For the majority of us who devote ourselves to the field of Japanese Studies, the trajectory is clear: years spent honing methodological, theoretical and analytical skills on a narrowly defined topic at the PhD level and the pressure to produce that first monograph lead, in so many cases, to the first book born of extensive revisions to the dissertation. Thereafter, the directions may vary: some will find themselves drawn to a position at a Liberal Arts college where the emphasis may be on developing genuine interdisciplinary breadth; others will move on to a post-doctoral post where the emphasis may well be on delving ever deeper into the subject explored in the original dissertation. And, between these, there exists a plethora of other career trajectories.

Each to his or her own. And far be it for any of us to attempt to draw a template of the ideal pathway through an academic career. The most cursory glance at the Table of Contents of this majestic volume, however, offers testimony to both the breadth and depth of Roy's academic expertise. On the one hand, the list of publications incorporated at the end of this volume is testament to the author's ongoing – and lifelong – fascination with developments in the field of Japanese literature, especially works of the twentieth century. And it should be noted that he did begin by publishing a (doubtless somewhat revamped) version of his UBC dissertation which focused on nihilism in the novels of Mishima Yukio; and, for all the other, arguably more popular studies that had already appeared following the latter's sensational suicide in the early 1970s, Roy's Deadly Dialectics: Sex, Violence and Nihilism in the World of Mishima Yukio was widely praised as the first such study to treat this material through an indisputably academic lens. I well remember first encountering this work: the content was gripping and answered many of the questions I had about this controversial author. What remains with me more than the content, however, was a throw-away line on the dust jacket of the volume announcing that ‘Roy Starrs is currently working on book-length studies of two other titans of twentieth-century Japanese literature, Shiga Naoya and Kawabata Yasunari’.