A Personal Matter (個人的な体験 / Kojinteki na taiken)

No prominent U.S. book-club edition of A Personal Matter is a common trap the way mid-century American fiction is; the realistic pitfalls are different. (1) Confusing the 1968 Grove Press first English printing with later Grove trade or Grove Weidenfeld reprints and the ubiquitous later Grove/Black Cat paperback — check for brown cloth, the unclipped the printed price jacket, the copyright-page first-printing notation, and the absence of a letter code on the jacket's rear panel. (2) On the Japanese side, mistaking a later Shinchōsha reprint or, especially, the later Shinchō Bunko paperback for the 1964 boxed hardcover first — verify the August 1964 colophon date and the presence of the correct slipcase. Ex-library and jacket-clipped copies, and copies lacking the Japanese slipcase, are the most common downgrades.