The Gossamer Years: The Diary of a Noblewoman of Heian Japan
10 best books like The Gossamer Years: The Diary of a Noblewoman of Heian Japan (Michitsuna no Haha): Rivalry: A Geisha's Tale, The Pillow Book, The Confessions of Lady Nijō, The Diary of Lady Murasaki, The Kojiki: Records of Ancient Matters, Anthology of Japanese Literature: From the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century, The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan, One Hundred Leaves: A new annotated translation of the Hyakunin Isshu, The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan, As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams: Recollections of a Woman in Eleventh-Century Japan
| 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,...
The Kojiki: Records of Ancient Matters
| Author | Ō no Yasumaro |
| ISBN | 0804836752 |
Translation is a tough work, and the challenge is compounded when the original is written in archaic language because the meaning of words change over time.
I've been wondering why the Japanese gods Izanagi and Izanami have been accused of incest. It's because of the word 妹. In modern Japanese,...
| 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 | 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...
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 | 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 | 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 | 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...
List of Illustrations
Foreword, by Donald Keene
Introduction & Notes
Further Reading
Note on the Translation and Text
--The Tales of Ise
A Note on the Commentary
Commentary
Appendix 1: Glossary of Literary and Social Conventions
Appendix...
| Author | Tōson Shimazaki |
| ISBN | 0860081915 |
Espeluznante, a la par que bellísima, imagen de uno de los lados de la sociedad nipona que menos nos gusta considerar: su clasismo y su racismo, representado en esta ocasión en el trato que se da a los "etas", o miembros de castas inferiores.
Toson, en la estela de Zola, nos da una visión de Japón...
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...
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...
Musui's Story: The Autobiography of a Tokugawa Samurai
| Author | Kokichi Katsu |
| ISBN | 0816512566 |
A series of picaresque adventures set against the backdrop of a Japan still closed off from the rest of the world, Musui's Story recounts the escapades of samurai Katsu Kokichi. As it depicts Katsu stealing, brawling, indulging in the pleasure quarters, and getting the better of authorities, it also...
