This first-time English translation of the Wakan roei shu includes insightful annotations after each passage and several explanatory essays.

Compiled around 1235, the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, or Ogura's 100 Poems by 100 Poets, is one of the most important collections of poetry in Japan. Though the poets include emperors and empresses, courtiers and high priests, ladies-in-waiting and soldier-calligraphers, the collection is far more than a fascinating historical document. As the translators of this new edition note in their Introduction, "these beautiful poems have endured because their themes are universal and readily understood by contemporary readers".

Since it was first published more than forty years ago, Sources of Japanese Tradition, Volume 2, has been considered the authoritative sourcebook for readers and scholars interested in Japan from the eighteenth century to the post-World War II period. Now greatly expanded to include the entire twentieth century, and beginning in 1600, Sources of Japanese Tradition presents writings from modern Japan's most important philosophers, religious figures, writers, and political leaders. The volume also offers extensive introductory essays and commentary to assist in understanding the documents' historical setting and significance. Wonderfully varied in its selections, this eagerly anticipated expanded edition has revised many of the texts from the original edition and added a great many not included or translated before. New additions include documents on the postwar era, the importance of education in the process of modernization, and women's issues. Beginning with documents from the founding of the Tokugawa shogunate, the collection's essays, manifestos, religious tracts, political documents, and memoirs reflect major Japanese religious, philosophical, social, and political movements. Subjects covered include the spread of neo-Confucian and Buddhist teachings, Japanese poetry and aesthetics, and the Meiji Restoration. Other documents reflect the major political trends and events of the period: the abolition of feudalism, agrarian reform, the emergence of political parties and liberalism, and the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars. The collection also includes Western and Japanese impressions of each other via Western religious missions and commercial and cultural exchanges. These selections underscore Japanese and Western apprehension of and fascination with each other. As Japan entered the twentieth century, new political and social movements-Marxism, anarchism, socialism, feminism, and nationalism-entered the national consciousness. Later readings in the collection look at the buildup to war with the United States, military defeat, and American occupation. Documents from the postwar period echo Japan's struggle with its own history and its development as a capitalist democracy.

This book uses the haikai verse and paintings of the brilliant, innovative artist Yosa Buson (1716-1783) as a focal point from which to explore how Japanese writers competed for artistic authority in a time when popular responses to economic, technological, and social changes were creating the beginnings of a modern literature. The first part of the book discusses Buson's role in the Bashō Revival movement, situating his haikai in the context of the social networks that writers of his time both relied on and resisted. The second part explores Buson's hokku, linked verse, and haiga (haikai painting). The book concludes with a discussion of Buson's reception in the modern period, and includes translations of his principal works.

In Volume 2 of Columbia's comprehensive anthology of modern Japanese literature, thoughtfully selected and carefully translated readings portray the vast changes that have transformed Japanese culture since the end of the Pacific War. Beginning with the Allied Occupation in 1945 and concluding with the early twenty-first century, these stories, poems, plays, and essays reflect Japan's heady transition from poverty to prosperity, its struggle with conflicting ideologies and political beliefs, and the growing influence of popular culture on the country's artistic and intellectual traditions. Organized chronologically and by genre within each period, readings include fiction by Hayashi Fumiko and Oe Kenzaburo; poems by Ayukawa Nobuo, Katsura Nobuko, and Saito Fumi; plays by Mishima Yukio and Shimizu Kunio; and a number of essays, among them Eto Jun on Natsume Soseki and his brilliant novel Kokoro (The Heart of Things), and Kawabata Yasunari on the shape of his literary career and the enduring influence of classical Japanese literature. Some authors train a keen eye on the contemporary world, while others address the historical past and its relationship to modern culture. Some adopt an even broader scope and turn to European models for inspiration, while others look inward, exploring psychological and sexual terrain in new, often daring ways. Spanning almost six decades, this anthology provides a thorough introduction to a profound period of creative activity.

Western scholars have tended to read Heian literature through the prism of female experience, stressing the imbalance of power in courtship and looking for evidence that women hoped to move beyond the constraints of marriage politics. Paul Schalow’s original and challenging work inherits these concerns about the transcendence of love and carries them into a new realm of inquiry—the suffering of noblemen and the literary record of their hopes for transcendence through friendship. He traces this recurring theme, which he labels "courtly male friendship," in five important literary works ranging from the tenth-century Tale of Ise to the early eleventh-century Tale of Genji. Whether authored by men or women, the depictions of male friendship addressed in this work convey the differing perspectives of male and female authors profoundly shaped by their gender roles in the court aristocracy. Schalow’s analysis clarifies in particular how Heian literature articulates the nobleman’s wish to be known and appreciated fully by another man.

With its vivid descriptions of courtly society, gardens, and architecture in early eleventh-century Japan, The Tale of Genji—recognized as the world’s first novel—has captivated audiences around the globe and inspired artistic traditions for one thousand years. Its female author, Murasaki Shikibu, was a diarist, a renowned poet, and, as a tutor to the young empress, the ultimate palace insider; her monumental work of fiction offers entry into an elaborate, mysterious world of court romance, political intrigue, elite customs, and religious life. This handsomely designed and illustrated book explores the outstanding art associated with Genji through in-depth essays and discussions of more than one hundred works. The Tale of Genji has influenced all forms of Japanese artistic expression, from intimately scaled albums to boldly designed hanging scrolls and screen paintings, lacquer boxes, incense burners, games, palanquins for transporting young brides to their new homes, and even contemporary manga. The authors, both art historians and Genji scholars, discuss the tale’s transmission and reception over the centuries; illuminate its place within the history of Japanese literature and calligraphy; highlight its key episodes and characters; and explore its wide-ranging influence on Japanese culture, design, and aesthetics into the modern era. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Verdana}

Using close readings of a range of premodern and modern texts, Atsuko Sakaki focuses on the ways in which Japanese writers and readers revised—or in many cases devised—rhetoric to convey "Chineseness" and how this practice contributed to shaping a national Japanese identity. The volume begins by examining how Japanese travelers in China, and Chinese travelers in Japan, are portrayed in early literary works. An increasing awareness of the diversity of Chinese culture forms a premise for the next chapter, which looks at Japan’s objectification of the Chinese and their works of art from the eighteenth century onward. Chapter 3 examines gender as a factor in the formation and transformation of the Sino-Japanese dyad. Sakaki then continues with an investigation of early modern and modern Japanese representations of intellectuals who were marginalized for their insistence on the value of the classical Chinese canon and literary Chinese. The work concludes with an overview of writing in Chinese by early Meiji writers and the presence of Chinese in the work of modern writer Nakamura Shin’ichiro. A final summary of the book’s major themes makes use of several stories by Tanizaki Jun’ichiro.

Chronologically presents Chinese civilization, covering antiquity figures such as Confucius, Mencius, and Laozi; the Han dynasty, including readings from the "I Jing"; the development of Buddhism, including Daoism and Mahayana Buddhism; Neo-Confucianism; and thought in late imperial China.