As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams: Recollections of a Woman in Eleventh-Century Japan
10 best books like As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams: Recollections of a Woman in Eleventh-Century Japan (Lady Sarashina): Rivalry: A Geisha's Tale, The Pillow Book, The Confessions of Lady Nijō, The Diary of Lady Murasaki, Tales of Moonlight and Rain, Anthology of Japanese Literature: From the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century, Seven Japanese Tales, The Gossamer Years: The Diary of a Noblewoman of Heian Japan, River of Stars: Selected Poems, In The Shade of Spring Leaves: The Life of Higuchi Ichiyo, With Nine of Her Best Stories
| Author | Kafū Nagai |
| ISBN | 0231141181 |
Originally published in 1918, Rivalry is regarded as the masterpiece of Nagai Kafu, a Japanese novelist known for his brilliant renderings of Tokyo in the early years of modern Japan. Stephen Snyder offers the first English translation of the complete, uncensored text, which has long been celebrated...
| Author | Sei Shōnagon |
| ISBN | 0231073372 |
"The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon" is a fascinating, detailed account of Japanese court life in the eleventh century. Written by a lady of the court at the height of Heian culture, this book enthralls with its lively gossip, witty observations, and subtle impressions.
Lady Shonagon was an erstwhile...
| 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,...
Tales of Moonlight and Rain
| Author | Ueda Akinari |
| ISBN | 0231139128 |
First published in 1776, the nine gothic tales in this collection are Japan's finest and most celebrated examples of the literature of the occult. They subtly merge the world of reason with the realm of the uncanny and exemplify the period's fascination with the strange and the grotesque. They were...
| Author | Donald Keene |
| ISBN | 0802150586 |
The sweep of Japanese literature in all its great variety was made available to Western readers for the first time in this anthology. Every genre and style, from the celebrated No plays to the poetry and novels of the seventeenth century, find a place in this book. An introduction by Donald Keene places...
| 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 | Akiko Yosano |
| ISBN | 1570621462 |
Yosano Akiko (1878-942) is one of the most famous Japanese writers of the twentieth century. She is the author of more than seventy-five books, including twenty volumes of original poetry and the definitive translation into modern Japanese of the Tale of the Genji. Although probably best known for...
In The Shade of Spring Leaves: The Life of Higuchi Ichiyo, With Nine of Her Best Stories
This rating is solely for Ichiyo's works; I didn't bother to read any of the biography, this was simply the only book I could find with all of her tales. They are fantastic. I think this should be read by anybody who is interested in feminist literature - they aren't feminist per se, but surprising for the...
| 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...
| Author | Kamo no Chōmei |
| ISBN | 1880656221 |
The single great work of literary witness in medieval Japan, Hojoki is a short social chronicle prompted by a series of calamities that overtook old Kyoto in the late 12th century. By building a rude home in the forest and eliminating desire, poet and Buddhist priest Chomei believed he would be spared...
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 | Ivan Morris |
| ISBN | 1568360290 |
The World of the Shining Prince, Ivan Morris's widely acclaimed portrait of the ceremonious, inbred, melancholy world of ancient Japan, has been a standard in cultural studies for nearly thirty years. Using as a frame of reference The Tale of Genji and other major literary works from Japan's Heian...
| Author | Ōgai Mori |
| ISBN | 0804810702 |
3.5 stars
It was a nice, simple read. I wish the storyline had been developed a little bit more thoroughly and I didn’t like the ambiguity of the ending. Books like this always surprise me, how women can be used as pawns. In this case, a young girl has been chosen by a well-off Japanese man to be...
| Author | Saikaku Ihara |
| ISBN | 0804801843 |
"Five charming novellas...which have astonishing freshness, color, and warmth." The New Yorker
First published in 1686, this collection of five novellas was an immediate bestseller in the bawdy world that was Genroku Japan, and the book's popularity has increased with age, making it today...
| Author | Royall Tyler |
| ISBN | 0140445390 |
Japanese no theatre or the drama of perfected art' flourished in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries largely through the genius of the dramatist Zeami. An intricate fusion of music, dance, mask, costume and language, the dramas address many subjects, but the idea of form is more central than meaning...
Memories of Silk and Straw: A Self-Portrait of Small-Town Japan
| Author | Junichi Saga |
| ISBN | 0870119885 |
Come, sit down by the fire, and listen to the grandparents tell stories about "how it was in the old days" in a small lakeside town just north of Tokyo.
Midwives and pawnbrokers, fishermen and thatchers spin tales of a different world--one that was still very much a part of Japan's ancient...
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...
