Ishikawa Jun is an author largely unknown in the west, and it is regrettable that his anti-war literature has gone mostly unnoticed outside of Japan. From Mars' Song, a blistering attack of a "war without wisdom" to the Legend of Gold, a snapshot of the dreams and disappointments in the immediate post-war period, and finally the Raptor, a surreal look at the new peace in post-Occupation Japan, this collection of stories is a penetrating look at a controversial and tumultuous period in modern Japanese history.
Discussion of literature in wartime and immediate post-war Japan often centers on figures such as Kawabata and Mishima, but Ishikawa's gift for combining brazenness with subtlety added to his uncompromising resistance to the Japanese war machine makes his tales important additions to the canon of Japanese literature.