Genre: Biography/Memoir
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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 Interior, a travel diary of…
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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 carefully sculpted, rich in literary…
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Notebook of a ten square rush-mat sized world : a fugitive essay written in the year 1212
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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.
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The Sarashina diary
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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, this beautiful noblewoman of the…
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Twelve views from the distance
From one of the foremost poets in contemporary Japan comes this entrancing memoir that traces a boy’s childhood and its intersection with the rise of the Japanese empire and World War II. Originally published in 1970, this translation is the first available in English.
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Persona : a biography of Yukio Mishima
A critical biography of a modern Japanese literary giant, whose brilliant career ended in a spectacular ritual suicide.
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The pillow book of Sei Shonagon : the diary of a courtesan in tenth century Japan
Japan in the 10th century stood physically and culturally isolated from the rest of the world. Inside this bubble, a subtle and beautiful world was in operation, and its inhabitants were tied to the moment, having no interest in the future and disdain for the past. In a small diary, a young courtesan of the…
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A literary lady of old Japan.