The Surgery Room: Maiden’s Bookshelf

Another spectacular collaboration between a literary giant and the illustrator of Touken Ranbu! The Maiden’s Bookshelf series continues with this eerie classic from the great Izumi Kyoka.

＂But you couldn’t have known!＂
A mysterious encounter in the surgery room leads down the paths of memory after a young woman refuses anesthetic to protect her secret...

At once dreamlike and strikingly modern, Kyoka Izumi’s 1895 tale of doomed love has never been more wrenching than it is here, presented alongside Towoji Honojiro’s haunting and evocative illustrations.

Izumi (1873-1939) was one of the most revered authors of the weird in late Meiji and Taisho Japan. His surreal and hypnotic style draws heavily on the Romantic tradition and the premodern Japanese supernatural, and his rich, allusive prose is considered by many to be second to none.