Kurodahan Press
Entry updated 17 November 2025. Tagged: Publisher.
Small Press begun in 2002 by three expatriate Westerners based in Japan, Kurodahan Press focused on bringing a wide range of Japanese texts to Anglophone readers. Kurodahan's goals, according to co-founder Edward Lipsett, were "to preserve and circulate contemporary and historical observations of Asia [and] produce informative and entertaining translations." Kurodahan published works in multiple genres including history, crime, Horror and weird, sf and Fantasy, and World War Two. The publisher's Speculative Japan series was instrumental in bringing some of the most important Japanese speculative fiction voices to Anglophone audiences, including those of Yūsaku Kitano, Sakyō Komatsu, Mariko Ōhara, Kōshū Tani and Yasutaka Tsutsui. Science fiction publications included Kitano's tale of a Cyborg turtle, Kame kun ["Mr. Turtle"] (2016) and Tani's story of war and planetary colonization, Erinusu – Kaigenrei ["The Erinys Incident"] (2018). Author and editor Ken Asamatsu worked with Kurodahan to bring a wealth of Cthulhu Mythos-inspired tales to Anglophone readers with the four-volume anthology series he edited: Lairs of the Hidden Gods (anth 2005-2007 4vols). Following these books were Asamatsu's own Kunyan no Joō ["Queen of K'n-Yan"] (2008) and Kthulhu Reich (2019), along with Hideyuki Kikuchi's Cthulhu-Western Ashin kettōden: kuturū uesutan ["West of Innsmouth: A Cthulhu Western"] (2021) and Katsufumi Umehara's Ni jū rasen no akuma ["The Cthulhu Helix"] (2023). Vampiric: Tales of Blood and Roses from Japan (anth 2019) edited by Heather Dubnick explored the ways in which the Vampire tradition in Japan has evolved after contact with Western concepts of that figure. The uncanny and the weird were also highlighted in the three-volume Kaiki: Uncanny Tales from Japan (anth 2009-2012 3vols) edited by Masao Higashi, the collection Kidō Okamoto: Master of the Uncanny (coll 2020), and Ranpo Edogawa's dark mysteries and thrillers from Japan's golden age of crime and mystery fiction.
The Kurodahan Press Translation Prize, which ran from 2008 to 2020, was a blind-juried prize for the best translation of a selected Japanese short story, which was then published in the Speculative Japan anthology. Kurodahan Press shut down in 2025. [RSCo]
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