Furin Chime Press is a small independent imprint devoted to works that bridge cultures, languages, and forms. It supports projects for their depth, curiosity, and the strength of their ideas.
Its publishing and editorial focus includes vanishing literatures, works in translation, and emerging or experimental writing – projects that might otherwise fall beyond the conventional scope.
The press maintains an independent ethos of creative and thoughtful publishing. Alongside its own editions, Furin Chime Press remains open to collaboration with writers and artists whose work aligns with its spirit, on a non-commercial and mutually creative basis.
The aim is to foster a cooperative space that values the individuality of each writer’s voice and the independence of their ideas.
Those who share this outlook, or who feel their work might be at home within it, are warmly invited to make contact.
Books
The Innocent, by Saneatsu Mushanokoji
Translated by Michael Guest
Published with the official permission of the Mushanokoji estate.
The first complete English translation of Saneatsu Mushanokoji’s 1911 novella Omedetaki Hito. A seminal work in the development of the Japanese I-novel, the novella follows a young scholar’s obsessive idealisation of a seventeen-year-old girl whom he has never spoken to.
Set during the cultural transformation of Meiji Japan, The Innocent explores identity, imagination, desire, and the cultivation of the individual self. The Furin Chime edition includes a translator’s preface providing literary and historical context.
Furin Chime Press, 2024. Available in paperback, hardcover and Kindle editions.
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-6487517-5-5
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-6487517-6-2
Tatami Days: Getting a Life in Japan, by Michael Guest
A cross-cultural memoir of life in Japan during the 1990s, combining personal narrative with observations of Japanese higher education, employment, popular culture, and everyday social life.
Beginning with the author’s arrival in Japan with no practical knowledge of the country, the book follows his progress through language teaching and academic life, friendships and relationships, travel, and the sometimes disorienting experience of establishing a home and career in an unfamiliar culture.
Furin Chime Press, 2018; revised edition, 2020. Available in paperback, hardcover and Kindle editions.
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-6487517-0-0
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-6487517-1-7
The Knight’s Motto, by Sylvanus Cobb, Jr.
Edited by Michael Guest and Brian Armour
During the reign of Charlemagne, an elite Paladin knight escorts a Bohemian princess into the neighbouring kingdom of Moravia. As the cavalcade enters the domain of a corrupt king, the hidden motives behind the mission begin to emerge.
One of Cobb’s last historical romances, the novel combines adventure, intrigue, and courtly romance with a strong moral concern for honour, truthful leadership, and humane authority.
This Furin Chime edition has been newly edited from the nineteenth-century text, correcting typographical problems found in scanned and machine-read versions. It includes an editorial preface and explanatory chapter endnotes.
Furin Chime Press, Vanishing Literature Series, 2020. Available in paperback and Kindle editions.
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-6487517-2-4
Earlier editorial work
Essentially Oriental: Selected Writings of R. H. Blyth
Edited by Kuniyoshi Munakata and Michael Guest
Essentially Oriental presents a thematic selection from R. H. Blyth’s writings on Japanese and other Eastern literatures, including haiku, Zen parables, Chinese ghost stories, Korean tales, and essays on culture, history and aesthetics.
Michael Guest co-edited the volume in Japan with Professor Kuniyoshi Munakata, leader of the Noh Shakespeare Company of Japan and a long-standing student of Blyth. It was published under the imprint of Hokuseido Press, Tokyo.
Hokuseido, one of Japan’s earliest English-language publishers and the publisher of Lafcadio Hearn, has since ceased operating. The volume is included here as part of Guest’s earlier experience in book editing and production, before Furin Chime Press.
Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, 1994.
Paperback ISBN: 4-590-00954-4
Hardcover ISBN: 4-590-00953-6
Out of print.
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