The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan
10 best books like The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan (Ivan Morris): Rivalry: A Geisha's Tale, The Pillow Book, The Confessions of Lady Nijō, The Diary of Lady Murasaki, The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 1: Ancient Japan, The Gossamer Years: The Diary of a Noblewoman of Heian Japan, A Tale of False Fortunes, 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 | 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 Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 1: Ancient Japan
| Author | Delmer M. Brown |
| ISBN | 0521223520 |
Not a narrative but rather, as is the way of Cambridge Histories, an anthology of scholarly chapters on various topics that cover the era involved; herein Ancient Japan. This includes pre-history, stone age, the various early settlements that we know about more from archaeology than from written...
| 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 | Fumiko Enchi |
| ISBN | 0824821874 |
A Tale of False Fortunes is a masterful translation of Enchi Fumiko's (1905-1986) modern classic, Namamiko monogatari. Written in 1965, this prize-winning work of historical fiction presents an alternative account of an imperial love affair narrated in the eleventh-century romance A Tale of Flowering...
| 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 | Liza Dalby |
| ISBN | 0099428997 |
In this beautifully written and lavishly illustrated book Liza Dalby traces the history of the kimono - its designs, uses, aesthetics and social significance.
The colourful and stylised kimono, the national garment of Japan, expresses not only Japanese fashion and design taste but also...
| Author | Donald Keene |
| ISBN | 0802150950 |
Modern Japanese Literature is Donald Keene’s critically acclaimed companion volume to his landmark Anthology of Japanese Literature. Now considered the standard canon of modern Japanese writing translated into English, Modern Japanese Literature includes concise introductions to the writers,...
| 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...
Shinto: Origins, Rituals, Festivals, Spirits, Sacred Places
| Author | C. Scott Littleton |
| ISBN | 0195218868 |
Shinto provides a succinct, authoritative and accessible introduction to one of the great religious traditions. The book is organized around nine key themes: Origins and Historical Development, Aspects of the Divine, Sacred Texts, Sacred Persons, Ethical Principles, Sacred Space, Sacred Time,...
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...
| 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...
Sources of Japanese Tradition (Volume I)
| Author | William Theodore de Bary |
| ISBN | 0231086040 |
This book didn’t interest me at first sight, however, I decided to read it bit by bit wherever it pleased me because it’s one of the two-volume set compiled by Ryusaku Tsunoda, Wm. Theodore de Bary and Donald Keene. I’m sorry I rarely know the first compiler but I’ve known Professors de Bary and...
Shogun: The Life of Tokugawa Ieyasu
| Author | A.L. Sadler |
| ISBN | 4805310421 |
One of the most successful rulers in Japanese history and one of the most cunning military strategists in world history, Tokugawa Ieyasu overcame countless dangers and intrigues in his country's most violent age to become the man who finally united all of Japan. His accomplishments and work cemented...
The Great Wave: Gilded Age Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics, and the Opening of Old Japan
| Author | Christopher E.G. Benfey |
| ISBN | 0375503277 |
When the United States entered the Gilded Age after the Civil War, argues cultural historian Christopher Benfey, the nation lost its philosophical moorings and looked eastward to “Old Japan,” with its seemingly untouched indigenous culture, for balance and perspective. Japan, meanwhile,...
A History of Japan to 1334
| Author | George Bailey Sansom |
| ISBN | 0804705232 |
This is a straightforward narrative of the development of Japanese civilization to 1334 by the author of Japan: A Short Cultural History. While complete in itself, it is also the first volume of a three-volume work which will be the first large-scale, comprehensive history of Japan.
Taken...
The Secrets of Mariko: A Year in the Life of a Japanese Woman and Her Family
| Author | Elisabeth Bumiller |
| ISBN | 0679772626 |
As it follows a Japanese housewife named Mariko Tanaka over the course of a year, The Secrets of Mariko transcends reportage to yield the kind of human insights we expect from literature. Meet Mariko, a cheerful, overscheduled woman who cares for three children, two aging parents, and an unresponsive...
