translated by Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda
 
“The dark waves were eerie, the water as deep and warm as the mouth of some vast leviathan, enveloping them with the warmth of a giant tongue. They were large, tepid waves that sucked them in and choked them. In the pale light of daybreak, they felt as beautiful as mermaids. They were just the right age to be mermaids.”
 
The Three Crabs is a story of rootlessness and dissolution set in post-war America centred around a party and crucial 24 hours in the life of a housewife. It focusses on a group of Japanese diaspora friends – their rivalries, their foibles, their infidelities – but its subject overall is America and what it does to people, culture, and senses of belonging. Sensitively translated, it has subtle shades of Carver after Lish; Fitzgerald, Richard Yates, but a sensibility all its own. If it were a painting, it might be a Hopper; if it were a series, it might be Madmen, but viewed and framed by a Japanese eye.
 
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Ōba Minako was born in 1930 and died in 2007. She debuted as a writer in 1968 with Sanbiki no kani (Three Crabs), which won the Akutagawa Prize, a prestigious literary prize awarded to new authors. She went on to write several dozen novels, essays, literary criticism, poetry, and a play. She also translated children’s books from English into Japanese and Japanese classics into modern Japanese. Ōba received numerous literary awards and played an active role in the Japanese literary world, serving as the first member of the Akutagawa Prize selection committee, vice president of the Japan P.E.N. Club, and head of the Women Writers’ Association. She was elected to the Japan Art Academy in 1991.
 
Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda is a literary translator. Born in Tokyo, raised in Texas, her translations include Ryunosuke Akutagawa's KAPPA (New Directions, 2023), Yuko Tsushima's WILDCAT DOME (FSG, 2025), Yoko Tawada's EXOPHONY (New Directions, 2025) and Natsuo Kirino's SWALLOWS (Knopf, 2025) and her work has appeared in LitHub, The Baffler, Monkey, and Chicago Review, among other places. She lives in New York City.