Passengers on the Hankyu Line

HIRO ARIKAWA is the multi-million-copy bestselling author of THE TRAVELLING CAT CHRONICLES and THE GOODBYE CAT. Passing through a scenic mountainous region of Japan, the famous Hankyu line is a privately run railway that connects Osaka and Kyoto and is famous for its maroon-coloured vintage-style carriages. One of its much-visited stops is the city of Takarazuka, where the author of this book lives. Published twenty years ago, this enduring Japanese classic has sold 1.4 million copies and has been published worldwide.

Allison Markin Powell won the PEN Translation Prize for her translation of Hiromi Kawakami’s The Ten Loves of Nishino and is also the translator of Kawakami’s Strange Weather in Tokyo and The Nakano Thrift Shop as well as Shunmyo Masuno’s The Art of Simple Living and works by Osamu Dazai, Fuminori Nakamura, and Kanako Nishi, among others. She was the guest editor of the first Japan issue of Words Without Borders and maintains the online database Japanese Literature in English. She lives in New York.