Michael Emmerich is an associate professor in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of “The Tale of Genji”: Translation, Canonization, and World Literature, the editor of Read Real Japanese Fiction and New Penguin Parallel Texts: Short Stories in Japanese, and the translator of numerous books from the Japanese, most recently Bullfight, The Hunting Gun, and Life of a Counterfeiter, all by Inoue Yasushi.