This edited volume investigates the use of multimodal communicative resources in a variety of Japanese narrative genres. The book is divided into five parts: an introduction and four genre-specific sections of varying sizes. Chs. 2, 3, and 4 cover casual conversation, Ch. 5 addresses elicited narratives about an animated film, Chs. 6 and 7 analyze talk shows and interviews, and Chs. 8 and 9 discuss university lectures. The introductory chapter by editor Polly Szatrowski provides a summary of the volume's contents and a thorough overview of existing linguistic and interactional research on Japanese narratives. The chapter ends with a discussion of the broader themes addressed in the volume, such as the involvement of story recipients, and the use of prosody and nonverbal devices in interaction. Ch. 2, by Yuriko Sunakawa, discusses a storyteller's manipulation of prosody and voice quality in conversation to build emotional involvement with her recipient in a story about an absent third party. In Ch. 3, Chisato Koike describes how elided referents in a series of joint storytelling sequences are disambiguated through nonverbal cues, finding that pointing gestures indicate the elided referent in a segment of talk. Ch. 4, by Mariko Karatsu, focuses on the use of Japanese distal demonstratives to display aligned assessment of a referent based on independent experiences of it.

The volume then shifts to more formal genres. In Ch. 5, Fumio Watanabe compares American English and Japanese use of clause repetition and demonstratives in elicited narrations of a short animation film. He finds commonality in the function of these devices but difference in form and frequency of use. Ch. 6, by Atsuko Honda, is an analysis of a talk-show interview, showing how the host employs continuers, repetitions in clarification requests, and stance displays to encourage the guest and support her positive face, while still maintaining the objectivity appropriate to the role of host. Ch. 7, by Tomoko Kumagai & Naoyuki Kitani, discusses how initial and second stories in sociolinguistic interviews are designed by participants to fit into the interview framework and to establish interpersonal relationships with other interviewees. In Ch. 8, Yoshio Takahashi categorizes narratives in university lectures based on their discourse function, and discusses how each function contributes to the content of the lecture. Finally, Ch. 9, by Szatrowski, is an analysis of a literature professor's use of strategies from face-to-face conversation, such as tellability, to create recipient involvement in a large university lecture.

The chapters in this volume effectively demonstrate how both verbal and nonverbal devices in Japanese storytelling are used to involve story recipients and negotiate shared understanding and prior knowledge. The book includes an interesting discussion of accommodation to recipient needs resulting from Japanese-specific linguistic practices, such as elided referents, as well as addressing how such devices are adjusted based on genre. This book will be valuable for readers interested in cross-linguistic narrative, multimodal interaction, and narrative genre.