The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches (Yuasa)
10 best books like The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches (Yuasa) (Matsuo Bashō): The Three-Cornered World, The Roads to Sata: A 2000-Mile Walk Through Japan, The Kojiki: Records of Ancient Matters, Anthology of Japanese Literature: From the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century, Li Po and Tu Fu: Poems, River of Stars: Selected Poems, The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan, The Spring of My Life and Selected Haiku, Hojoki: Visions of a Torn World, As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams: Recollections of a Woman in Eleventh-Century Japan
| Author | Natsume Sōseki |
| ISBN | 0720611563 |
"An artist abandons city life to wander into the mountains to meditate, but when he decides to stay at a near-deserted inn he soon finds himself drawn to the daughter of the innkeeper. This strange and beautiful woman is rumoured to have abandoned her husband and fallen in love with a priest at a nearby...
| Author | Alan Booth |
| ISBN | 1568361874 |
ALAN BOOTH'S CLASSIC OF MODERN TRAVEL WRITING
Traveling only along small back roads, Alan Booth traversed Japan's entire length on foot, from Soya at the country's northernmost tip, to Cape Sata in the extreme south, across three islands and some 2,000 miles of rural Japan. The Roads to Sata...
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 | Li Bai |
| ISBN | 0140442723 |
Li Po (AD 701-62) and Tu Fu (AD 712-70) were devoted friends who are traditionally considered to be among China's greatest poets. Li Po, a legendary carouser, was an itinerant poet whose writing, often dream poems or spirit-journeys, soars to sublime heights in its descriptions of natural scenes and...
| 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...
| 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...
| Author | Kobayashi Issa |
| ISBN | 1570621446 |
Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827), along with Basho and Buson, is considered one of the three greatest haiku poets of Japan, known for his attention to poignant detail and his playful sense of humor. Issa's most-loved work, The Spring of My Life, is an autobiographical sketch of linked prose and haiku in 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...
| 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 | Kenneth Rexroth |
| ISBN | 0811201813 |
The poems are drawn chiefly from the traditional Manyoshu, Kokinshu and Hyakunin Isshu collections, but there are also examplaes of haiku and other later forms. The sound of the Japanese texts i reproduced in Romaji script and the names of the poets in the calligraphy of Ukai Uchiyama. The translator's...
| Author | Robert Hass |
| ISBN | 0613339983 |
American readers have been fascinated since their exposure to Japanese culture late in the nineteenth century, with the brief Japanese poem called the hokku or haiku. The seventeen-syllable form is rooted in a Japanese tradition of close observation of nature, of making poetry from subtle suggestion....
| 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...
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 | Yoel Hoffmann |
| ISBN | 0804831793 |
"A wonderful introduction the Japanese tradition of jisei, this volume is crammed with exquisite, spontaneous verse and pity, often hilarious, descriptions of the eccentric and committed monastics who wrote the poems." —Tricycle: The Buddhist Review
Although the consciousness of...
| Author | William J. Higginson |
| ISBN | 4770014309 |
"The Haiku Handbook" is the first book to give the reader everything needed to begin writing or teaching haiku. It presents haiku poets writing in English, Spanish, French, German, and five other languages on an equal footing with Japanese poets. Not only are the four great Japanese masters of the haiku...
| Author | Ryōkan |
| ISBN | 0834805707 |
The hermit-monk Ryokan, long beloved in Japan both for his poetry and for his character, belongs in the tradition of the great Zen eccentrics of China and Japan. His reclusive life and celebration of nature and the natural life also bring to mind his younger American contemporary, Thoreau. Ryokan's...
| Author | Faubion Bowers |
| ISBN | 0486292746 |
Haiku should be just
small stones dropping down a well
with a small splash
- James Kirkup (8)
Haiku or the complexity of subtlety
As a big fan of etymology, I was captivated by this book's introduction. It is a clear and detailed recount of the history of haiku. The present enthralling...
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...
Crow With No Mouth: Ikkyu, Fifteenth Century Zen Master
| Author | Ikkyu |
| ISBN | 1556591527 |
When Zen master Ikkyu Sojun (1394-1481) was appointed headmaster of the great temple at Kyoto, he lasted nine days before denouncing the rampant hypocrisy he saw among the monks there. He in turn invited them to look for him in the sake parlors of the Pleasure Quarters. A Zen monk-poet-calligrapher-musician,...
On the Narrow Road: Journey Into a Lost Japan
Lesley Downer is amazing. A Londoner, her chosen field of expertise is all things Japanese.
And the books she writes! If this one is any indication, they’re wonderfully entertaining. And inexpensive. She’s a Goodreads author, too...
Ever read Shogun?
I think by now...
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...
