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The Tales of Ise

10 best books like The Tales of Ise (Anonymous): Thousand Cranes, The Pillow Book, The Diary of Lady Murasaki, The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches (Yuasa), The Kojiki: Records of Ancient Matters, Anthology of Japanese Literature: From the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century, The Gossamer Years: The Diary of a Noblewoman of Heian Japan, As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams: Recollections of a Woman in Eleventh-Century Japan, 1000 Poems from the Manyōshū, Essays in Idleness and Hôjôki

Thousand Cranes
AuthorYasunari Kawabata
ISBN0679762655
An alternate cover of this ISBN can be found here.

Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata’s Thousand Cranes is a luminous story of desire, regret, and the almost sensual nostalgia that binds the living to the dead.
 
While attending a traditional tea ceremony in the aftermath of...
The Pillow Book
AuthorSei Shōnagon
ISBN0231073372
"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...
The Diary of Lady Murasaki
AuthorMurasaki Shikibu
'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 Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches (Yuasa)
AuthorMatsuo Bashō
ISBN0140441859
In later life Basho turned to Zen Buddhism, and the travel sketched in this volume relfect his attempts to cast off earthly attachments and reach out to spiritual fulfillment. The sketches are written in the "haibun" style--a linking of verse and prose. The title piece, in particular, reveals Basho...
The Kojiki: Records of Ancient Matters
AuthorŌ no Yasumaro
ISBN0804836752
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,...
Anthology of Japanese Literature: From the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century
AuthorDonald Keene
ISBN0802150586
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...
The Gossamer Years: The Diary of a Noblewoman of Heian Japan
AuthorMichitsuna no Haha
ISBN0804811237
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...
As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams: Recollections of a Woman in Eleventh-Century Japan
AuthorLady Sarashina
ISBN0140442820
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...
1000 Poems from the Manyōshū
AuthorŌtomo no Yakamochi
ISBN0486439593
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,...
Essays in Idleness and Hôjôki
AuthorYoshida Kenkō
ISBN0141192100
These two works on life's fleeting pleasures are by Buddhist monks from medieval Japan, but each shows a different world-view. In the short memoir Hojoki, Chomei recounts his decision to withdraw from worldly affairs and live as a hermit in a tiny hut in the mountains, contemplating the impermanence...
Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō
AuthorYoshida Kenkō
ISBN0231112556
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...
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