Anthology of Japanese Literature: From the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century
10 best books like Anthology of Japanese Literature: From the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Donald Keene): The Confessions of Lady Nijō, The Diary of Lady Murasaki, Fires on the Plain, Harp of Burma, Seven Japanese Tales, The Gossamer Years: The Diary of a Noblewoman of Heian Japan, The Apprenticeship of Big Toe P, The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan, The Tale of the Heike, One Hundred Leaves: A new annotated translation of the Hyakunin Isshu
| Author | Lady Nijō |
| ISBN | 0804709300 |
In about 1307 a remarkable woman in Japan sat down to complete the story of her life. The result was an autobiographical narrative, a tale of thirty-six years (1271-1306) in the life of Lady Nijo, starting when she became the concubine of a retired emperor in Kyoto at the age of fourteen and ending, several...
The Diary of Lady Murasaki
'When I go out to sit on the veranda and gaze,
I sem to be always conjuring up visions of the past'
The Diary recorded by Lady Murasaki (c. 973 c. 1020), author of The Tale of Genji, is an intimate picture of her life as tutor and companion to the young Empress Shoshi. Told in a series of vignettes,...
| Author | Shōhei Ōoka |
| ISBN | 0804813795 |
"Written with precise skill and beautifully controlled power. The translation by Ivan Morris is outstanding." —The New York Times
**Winner of the 1952 Yomiuri Prize**
This haunting novel explores the complete degradation and isolation of a man by war. Fires on the Plain is set...
| Author | Michio Takeyama |
| ISBN | 0804802327 |
Harp of Burma is Japan's haunting answer to Germany's famous requiem for the First World War, All Quiet on the Western Front.
Winner of the prestigious Mainichi Shuppan Bunkasho prize and the subject of an acclaimed film by Ichikawa Kon, Harp of Burma portrays a company of Japanese troops who...
| Author | Jun'ichirō Tanizaki |
| ISBN | 0679761071 |
I purchased this book in a bookstore off Piccadilly Circus waiting to meet someone. After hours of conversation, we separated, taking our respective tunnels to catch our trains. Every time I see this book, I remember that goodbye. Funny, the things that serve as fluttering markers to our memories.
I'm...
| Author | Michitsuna no Haha |
| ISBN | 0804811237 |
Kagero Nikki, translated here as The Gossamer Years, belongs to the same period as the celebrated Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikuibu.
This remarkably frank autobiographical diary and personal confession attempts to describe a difficult relationship as it reveals two tempestuous decades...
| Author | Rieko Matsuura |
| ISBN | 4770031165 |
The Apprenticeship of Big Toe P is a highly acclaimed work of fiction that won Japans most prestigious literary prize for women writers. A provocative, picaresque spin on a coming-of-age story, the novel tells of a young Japanese woman who wakes up one afternoon to discover that her big toe has turned...
| Author | Ono no Komachi |
| ISBN | 0679729585 |
Japanese poetry is said to be originated in human heart and mind and grows in to the myriad leaves of words. The collection of poems The Ink Dark Moon is from the Heian era of Japanese literature, the era is considered as Golden Age in the history of Japanese literature. The language in that era was very inflected...
If you like reading about brave and honorable warriors in a strange faraway land, you might like this -- just as you'd like some fantasies, even though these stories are based on historical facts.
This is the Japanese version of Homer. We don't really know the original author, but we know the...
The Hyakunin Isshu is a poetry anthology beloved by generations of Japanese since it was compiled in the 13th century. Many Japanese know the poems by heart as a result of playing the popular card game version of the anthology. Collecting one poem each from one hundred poets living from the 7th century...
| Author | Lady Sarashina |
| ISBN | 0140442820 |
In the mainstream of Japan's literary tradition, As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams not only reveals much that is most appealing in Japanese literature but also stands on its own as a remarkable and haunting portrait of a woman.
Born in A.D. 1008 at the height of the Heian period, Lady Sarashina (as she...
| Author | Chikamatsu Monzaemon |
| ISBN | 0231111010 |
Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725) wrote some 130 plays, chiefly for the puppet theater, many of which are still performed today by puppet operators and Kabuki actors. Chikamatsu is thought to have written the first major tragedies about the common man. This edition of four of his most important plays...
| Author | Takeda Izumo |
| ISBN | 0231035314 |
Chushingura (The Treasury of Loyal Retainers), also known as the story of the Forty-Six (or Forty-Seven) Ronin, is the most famous and perenially popular of all Japanese dramas. Written around 1748 as a puppet play, it is now better know in Kabuki performances. In the twentieth century, cinema and...
| Author | Naoya Shiga |
| ISBN | 0870113623 |
Shiga Naoya "dismissed Mishima's fiction as all 'fantasy' with little 'sense of reality.' (Shiga was another writer Mishima admired who did not reciprocate his sentiments.)"
(Persona: A Biography of Yukio Mishima)
There's certainly a sense of reality to "A Dark Night's Passing";...
| Author | Ō no Yasumaro |
| ISBN | 0804836744 |
Wow. This was almost unreadable. Part of me feels obligated to give it a higher star rating just because the preservation of the earliest known Japanese history is worthy regardless of whether it's enjoyable to read. But I just couldn't. Perhaps this is an expression pf my Western bias, but I was expecting...
The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse
| Author | Anthony Thwaite |
| ISBN | 0141190949 |
Poetry remains a living part of the culture of Japan today. The clichés of everyday speech are often to be traced to famous ancient poems, and the traditional forms of poetry are widely known and loved. The congenial attitude comes from a poetical history of about a millennium and a half. This classic...
| Author | Ōtomo no Yakamochi |
| ISBN | 0486439593 |
Dating from the 8th century and earlier, the Manyoshu is the oldest Japanese poetry anthology; it is also widely considered to be the best. The 1,000 poems (out of a total of more than 4,500) in this famous selection were chosen by a distinguished scholarly committee based on their poetic excellence,...
| Author | Ivan Morris |
| ISBN | 0804833362 |
This collection shows the qualities that make Japanese literature among the world's finest.
Including "Under Reconstruction," considered to be the first modern Japanese short story, this book presents the short stories of Japan as among the world's most satisfying.
Edited by...
| Author | Saikaku Ihara |
| ISBN | 0811201872 |
[From back.]
One of the great writers of Japan, Ihara Saikaku (1623-93) wrote of the lowest class in the Tokugawa world — the townsmen who were rising in wealth and power but not in official status. The title story in this collection of 12 works, told by an aging beauty whose highly erotic nature...
| Author | Akiko Yosano |
| ISBN | 0887273734 |
Akiko Yosano's Tangled Hair, published in 1901, had a sensational impact on Japanese literature, and we are pleased to make this highly praised translation (originally published 30 years ago) available once again in a revised Cheng & Tsui edition. Akiko reshaped the tanka, the most popular form...
The Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories
| Author | Theodore W. Goossen |
| ISBN | 0192803727 |
This collection of short stories, including many new translations, is the first to span the whole of Japan's modern era from the end of the nineteenth century to the present day. Beginning with the first writings to assimilate and rework Western literary traditions, through the flourishing of the...
Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa
| Author | Yukichi Fukuzawa |
| ISBN | 0231083734 |
Here is the autobiography of a remarkable man. Yukichi Fukuzawa's life covered the 66 years between 1835 and 1901, a period which comprised greater and more extraordinary changes than any other in the history of Japan. In his country's swift transformation from an isolated feudal state to a full-fledged...
Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō
| Author | Yoshida Kenkō |
| ISBN | 0231112556 |
Written sometime between 1330 and 1332, the Essays in Idleness, with their timeless relevance and charm, hardly mirror the turbulent times in which they were born. Despite the struggle between the Emperor Go-Daigo and the usurping Hojo family that rocked Japan during these years, the Buddhist priest...
A Discourse by Three Drunkards on Government
| Author | Nakae Chōmin |
| ISBN | 0834801922 |
A Discourse by Three Drunkards on Government takes the form of a debate between a spokesman for Western ideals of democracy and progress, and an advocate for adherence to traditional samurai values. Their discussion is moderated by the imperturbable Master Nankai, who loves nothing more than to drink...
| Author | H. Paul Varley |
| ISBN | 0824821521 |
For nearly three decades Japanese Culture has garnered high praise as an accurate and well-written introduction to Japanese history and culture. This widely used undergraduate text is now available in a new edition. Thoroughly updated, the fourth edition includes expanded sections on numerous...
