Eduard Klopfenstein is an emeritus professor of Japanese Studies at the East Asian Seminar of the University of Zurich and is considered one of the most influential Japanologists in the German-speaking world. The volume "Aufbruch zur Welt hin" gathers his most important writings on modern Japanese literature and culture in general, as well as on Japanese prose and poetry in the 20th century. In addition to overview presentations, the volume includes studies on the life and works of well-known Japanese authors such as Fukazawa Shichiro, Tanikawa Shuntaro, Shiba Ryotaro, and Nobel Prize winner Kawabata Yasunari. For many decades, Eduard Klopfenstein has been committed to promoting translations from Japanese into German and is the editor of several series in which Japanese literature is published in German for the first time, including the Japanese edition at be.bra verlag since 1994.