As I crossed a bridge of dreams : recollections of a woman in eleventh-century Japan
A Lady-in-waiting at a Heian court in medieval Japan records her personal feelings and reactions to social standards. Its shy and vulnerable author found happiness neither in her work at court nor with her family, and projected into her writing veiled longings that are both timeless and poignant.
Awesome nightfall : the life, times, and poetry of Saigyo
This book captures the power of Saigyo’s poetry and this previously overlooked poet’s keen insight into the social and political world of medieval Japan.
Basho’s Narrow road : spring & autumn passages : two works
Matsuo Basho (1644-94) is considered Japan’s greatest haiku poet. Narrow Road to the Interior (Oku no Hosomichi) is his masterpiece. Ostensibly a chronological account of the poet’s five-month journey in 1689 into the deep country north and west of the old capital, Edo, the work is in fact artful and …
Childhood years : a memoir
Set against the modernization of Japan and World War II, the personal diary of Jun’ichiro Tanizaki’s early years offers a moving look at one of Japan’s modern novelists.
Hojoki : visions of a torn world
Japan’s capital city of Kyoto was devastated by earthquake, storm, and fire in the late 12th century. Retreating from “this unkind world,” the poet and Buddhist priest Kamo-no-Chomei left the capital for the forested mountains, where he eventually constructed his famous “ten-foot-square” hut. From this solitary vantage point Chomei produced …
Narrow road to the interior and other writings
The most complete single-volume collection of the writings of one of the great luminaries of Asian literature. Basho (1644-1694) – who elevated the haiku to an art form of utter simplicity and intense spiritual beauty – is best known in the West as the author of Narrow Road to the …
Persona : a biography of Yukio Mishima
A critical biography of a modern Japanese literary giant, whose brilliant career ended in a spectacular ritual suicide.
The gossamer years : the diary of a noblewoman of Heian Japan
Kagero Nikki, translated here as The Gossamer Years, belongs to the same period as the celebrated Tale of Genji. This frank autobiography diary reveals two tempestuous decades of the author’s unhappy marriage and her growing indignation at rival wives and mistresses. To impetuous to be satisfied as a subsidiary wife, …
The pillow book
A translation of the idiosyncratic diary of a C10 court lady in Heian Japan. Along with the Tale of Genji, it is one of the major Japanese classics.
The pillow book of Sei Shonagon
Written by the court gentlewoman Sei Shonagon, ostensibly for her own amusement, The Pillow Book offers a fascinating exploration of life among the nobility at the height of the Heian period, describing the exquisite pleasures of a confined world in which poetry, love, fashion, and whim dominated, while harsh reality …
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