The most famous work of Japanese literature and the world's first novel--written a thousand years ago and one of the enduring classics of world literature.

Written centuries before the time of Shakespeare and even Chaucer, The Tale of Genji marks the birth of the novel--and after more than a millennium, this seminal work continues to enchant readers throughout the world.

Lady Murasaki Shikibu and her tale's hero, Prince Genji, have had an unmatched influence on Japanese culture. Prince Genji manifests what was to become an image of the ideal Heian era courtier; gentle and passionate. Genji is also a master poet, dancer, musician and painter. The Tale of Genji follows Prince Genji through his many loves and varied passions. This book has influenced not only generations of courtiers and samurai of the distant past, but artists and painters even in modern times--episodes in the tale have been incorporated into the design of kimonos and handicrafts, and the four-line poems called waka which dance throughout this work have earned it a place as a classic text in the study of poetry.

This version by Kencho Suematsu was the first-ever translation in English. Condensed, it's a quarter length of the unabridged text.

Not speaking is the wiser part,
And words are sometimes vain,
But to completely close the heart
In silence, gives me pain.

--Prince Genji, in The Tale of Genji

Half a century after his shocking samurai-style suicide, Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) remains a deeply controversial figure. Though his writings and life-story continue to fascinate readers around the world, Mishima has often been scorned by scholars, who view him as a frivolous figure whose work expresses little more than his own morbid personality.

In Mishima, Aesthetic Terrorist, Andrew Rankin sets out to challenge this perception by demonstrating the intelligence and seriousness of Mishima's work and thought. Each chapter of the book examines one of the central ideas that Mishima develops in his writings: life as art, beauty as evil, culture as myth, eroticism as transgression, the artist as tragic hero, narcissism as the death drive. Along with fresh readings of major works of fiction such as The Temple of the Golden Pavilion and Patriotism, the book introduces less familiar works in different genres. Special prominence is given to Mishima's essays, which contain some of his most brilliant writing. Mishima is concerned with such problems as the loss of certainties and absolute values that characterizes modernity, and the decline of strong identities in a world of increasing uniformity and globalization. In his cultural criticism Mishima makes an impassioned defense of free speech, and he rails against all forms of authoritarianism and censorship.

Rankin reads Mishima's artistic project, up to and including his spectacular death, as a single, sustained lyric, an aggressive piece of performance art unfolding in multiple media. For all his rebellious energies, Mishima's work is suffused with a sense of ending--the end of art, the end of eroticism, the end of culture, the end of the world--and it is governed by a decadent aestheticism which holds that beautiful things radiate their most intense beauty on the cusp of their destruction. Erudite and authoritative, yet written in clear, accessible prose, Mishima, Aesthetic Terrorist is essential reading for all those who seek a deeper understanding of this radical and provocative figure.

Those who wish to deepen their acquaintance with Murasaki's wondrous world will certainly find Puette's guide most helpful. --The Japan Times

This is the most complete reader's guide available on Japan's highly revered novel, the eleventh-century classic, The Tale of Genji, by Murasaki Shikibu, referred to by Nobel Laureate Yasunari Kawabata as the highest pinnacle of Japanese literature. Written specifically to accompany the translation of the work by Arthur Waley and Edward G. Seidensticker, this guide offers detailed summaries and thematic commentaries, as well as cross-referenced notes on the novel's many characters. It also charts the essential progress of The Tale of Genji and introduces the reader to the more subtle complexities, literary devices, and conventions of Lady Murasaki's Heian Japan.

No longer does the reader have to try and guess the novel's cultural and historical milieu. The author presents brief, illustrated essays on historical, philosophical, and cultural features of the novel, and discusses such relevant aspects as the balance between the tenets of Shintoism and Buddhism, the pervasive concepts of karma in human relationships, and the poetic aspects of aware. Both general readers and literature students will find the background information contained in this companion indispensable to their reading and interpretation of this complex novel.

An NYRB Classics Original

A humble clerk and his loving wife scrape out a quiet existence on the margins of Tokyo. Resigned, following years of exile and misfortune, to the bitter consequences of having married without their families' consent, and unable to have children of their own, Sōsuke and Oyone find the delicate equilibrium of their household upset by a new obligation to meet the educational expenses of Sōsuke's brash younger brother. While an unlikely new friendship appears to offer a way out of this bind, it also soon threatens to dredge up a past that could once again force them to flee the capital. Desperate and torn, Sōsuke finally resolves to travel to a remote Zen mountain monastery to see if perhaps there, through meditation, he can find a way out of his predicament.

This moving and deceptively simple story, a melancholy tale shot through with glimmers of joy, beauty, and gentle wit, is an understated masterpiece by one of Japan's greatest writers. At the end of his life, Natsume Sōseki declared The Gate, originally published in 1910, to be his favorite among all his novels. This new translation captures the oblique grace of the original while correcting numerous errors and omissions that marred the first English version.

This extensive selection of Tanikawa Shuntaro's poetry reflects the full depth and breadth of his work, from his appearance as a fresh new voice to the mastery of his later poetry. It traces his artistic development and his shift in focus from man's cosmic destiny to the pathos of everyday life and a more internalized struggle with the nature of human expression. Lovers of poetry will find the experience exhilarating.

The only such collection in English, this volume will prove indispensable to students and scholars of Japanese literature, as it opens a valuable new perspective on postware Japanese literature.

The Introduction clarifies the social and artistic background of Tanikawa's extraordinary work and career, illuminating major themes as his poetry evolves over time.

Since its publication in Japan ten years ago, Origins of Modern Japanese Literature has become a landmark book, playing a pivotal role in defining discussions of modernity in that country. Against a history of relative inattention on the part of Western translators to modern Asian critical theory, this first English publication is sure to have a profound effect on current cultural criticism in the West. It is both the boldest critique of modern Japanese literary history to appear in the post-war era and a major theoretical intervention, which calls into question the idea of modernity that informs Western consciousness.
In a sweeping reinterpretation of nineteenth-and twentieth-century Japanese literature, Karatani Kojin forces a reconsideration of the very assumptions underlying our concepts of modernity. In his analysis, such familiar terms as origin, modern, literature, and the state reveal themselves to be ideological constructs. Karatani weaves many separate strands into an argument that exposes what has been hidden in both Japanese and Western accounts of the development of modern culture. Among these strands are: the discovery of landscape in painting and literature and its relation to the inwardness of individual consciousness; the similar discovery in Japanese drama of the naked face as another kind of landscape produced by interiority; the challenge to the dominance of Chinese characters in writing; the emergence of confessional literature as an outgrowth of the repression of sexuality and the body; the conversion of the samurai class to Christianity; the mythologizing of tuberculosis, cancer, and illness in general as a producer of meaning; and the discovery of the child as an independent category of human being.
A work that will be important beyond the confines of literary studies, Karatani's analysis challenges basic Western presumptions of theoretical centrality and originality and disturbs the binary opposition of the West to its so-called other. Origins of Modern Japanese Literature should be read by all those with an interest in the development of cultural concepts and in the interrelating factors that have determined modernity.

In medieval Japan (14th-16th centuries), it was customary for elite families to entrust their young sons to the care of renowned Buddhist priests from whom they received a premier education in Buddhist scriptures, poetry, music, and dance. When the boys reached adolescence, some underwent coming-of-age rites, others entered the priesthood, and several extended their education, becoming chigo, or Buddhist acolytes. Chigo served their masters as personal attendants and as sexual partners. During religious ceremonies--adorned in colorful robes, their faces made up and hair styled in long ponytails--they entertained local donors and pilgrims with music and dance. Stories of acolytes (chigo monogatari) from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries form the basis of the present volume, an original and detailed literary analysis of six tales coupled with a thorough examination of the sociopolitical, religious, and cultural matrices that produced these texts.

Sachi Schmidt-Hori begins by delineating various dimensions of chigo (the chigo title, personal names, gender, sexuality, class, politics, and religiosity) to show the complexity of this cultural construct--the chigo as a triply liminal figure who is neither male nor female, child nor adult, human nor deity. A modern reception history of chigo monogatari follows, revealing, not surprisingly, that the tales have often been interpreted through cultural paradigms rooted in historical moments and worldviews far removed from the original. From the 1950s to 1980s, research on chigo was hindered by widespread homophobic prejudice. More recently, aversion to the age gap in historical master-acolyte relations has prevented scholars from analyzing the religious and political messages underlying the genre. Schmidt-Hori's work calls for a shift in the hermeneutic strategies applied to chigo and chigo monogatari and puts forth both a nuanced historicization of social constructs such as gender, sexuality, age, and agency, and a mode of reading propelled by curiosity and introspection.

Are the works of contemporary Japanese novelists, as Nobel Prize winner Oe Kenzaburo has observed, mere reflections of the vast consumer culture of Tokyo and the subcultures of the world at large? Or do they contain their own critical components, albeit in altered form? Oe and Beyond surveys the accomplishments of Oe and other writers of the postwar generation while looking further to examine the literary parameters of the Post-Oe generation. Despite the unprecedented availability today of the work of many of these writers in excellent English translations, some twenty years have passed since a collection of critical essays has appeared to guide the interested reader through the fascinating world of contemporary Japanese fiction. Oe and Beyond is a sampling of the best research and thinking on the current generation of Japanese writers being done in English.

The essays in this volume explore such subjects as the continuing resonances of the atomic bombings; the notion of transnational subjects; the question of the de-canonization (as well as the re-canonization) of writers; the construction (and deconstruction) of gender models; the quest for spirituality amid contemporary Japanese consumer affluence; post-modernity and Japanese infantilism; the intertwining connections between history, myth-making, and discrimination; and apocalyptic visions of fin de siecle Japan. Contributors pursue various methodological and theoretical approaches to reveal the breadth of scholarship on modern Japanese literature. The essays reflect some of the latest thinking, both Western and Japanese, on such topics as subjectivity, gender, history, modernity, and the postmodern.

Oe and Beyond includes essays on Endo Shusaku, Hayashi Kyoko, Kanai Mieko, Kurahashi Yumiko, Murakami Haruki, Murakami Ryu, Nakagami Kenji, Oe Kenzaburo, Ohba Minako, Shimada Masahiko, Takahashi Takako, and Yoshimoto Banana.

Contributors: Davinder L. Bhowmik, Philip Gabriel, Van C. Gessel, Adrienne Hurley, Susan J. Napier, Sharalyn Orbaugh, Jay Rubin, Atsuko Sakaki, Ann Sherif, Stephen Snyder, Mark Williams, Eve Zimmerman.

Kaleidoscope Japan takes the reader on a rollercoaster ride through the fascinating, diverse and colourful world of Japanese letters. Whether you are familiar with the influences, movements, and characters behind some of the greatest-and earliest-works in world literature or are taking your first tentative steps into a realm of genius detectives, curmudgeonly drunks, and lecherous princes, there will be something in each of these essays for you.

From popular Tokyo literary bars, through cats, dolls and robots, to a nation repeatedly reinventing itself after catastrophe, Kaleidoscope Japan is a new lens through which the storytelling of The Land of the Rising Sun can be read and understood leaving readers with a well-rounded perspective of Japan, its social history and culture, and the nation's finest writers.

Kaleidoscope Japan is 21 engaging and well-researched essays thematically grouped to cover Japanese Literature, Writers and Ruin; Influencers, Dolls and Devices; Robots, Runners and Riders; Cats, Tatts and Christians; and Booze, Books and Bonking. The essays can be read sequentially or in a kaleidoscopic order that mirrors the reader's particular interests, as an immersive experience or a dip-in, dip-out approach.

Kaleidoscope Japan is highly recommended for anyone who is interested in Japan, who wants their horizons expanded, or who wants to hear the stories behind the stories.

The Nihon Shoki, translated as The Chronicles of Japan, is the second oldest book of classical Japanese history. The book is also called the Nihongi (The Japanese Chronicles). It is more elaborate and detailed than the Kojiki, the oldest book, and has proven to be an important tool for historians and archaeologists as it includes the most complete historical record of ancient Japan. The Nihongi was finished in 720 AD under the editorial supervision of Prince Toneri and with the assistance of Yasumaro no O. The book begins with the Japanese creation myth, explaining the origin of the world and the first seven generations of divine beings, and continues its account through to events of the 8th century. It is believed to record accurately the latter reigns of Emperor Tenji, Emperor Temmu and Empress Jito. It describes episodes from mythological eras and diplomatic contacts with other countries. The Nihongi was written in classical Chinese, as was common for official documents at that time. Yasumaro no O (died August 15, 723) was a Japanese nobleman, bureaucrat, and chronicler. He is most famous for compiling and editing, with the assistance of Hieda no Are, the Nihongi and the Kojiki, the two oldest books on Japanese history.

Japan's oldest surviving narrative, the eighth-century Kojiki, chronicles the mythical origins of its islands and their ruling dynasty through a diverse array of genealogies, tales, and songs that have helped to shape the modern nation's views of its ancient past. Gustav Heldt's engaging new translation of this revered classic aims to make the Kojiki accessible to contemporary readers while staying true to the distinctively dramatic and evocative appeal of the original's language. It conveys the rhythms that structure the Kojiki's animated style of storytelling and translates the names of its many people and places to clarify their significance within the narrative. An introduction, glossaries, maps, and bibliographies offer a wealth of additional information about Japan's earliest extant record of its history, literature, and religion.

This seminal book is the first sustained critical work that engages with the varieties of literature following the triple disasters--the earthquake, tsunami, and meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear plant.

Winner of the Kobayashi Hideo Award, The Fall of Language in the Age of English lays bare the struggle to retain the brilliance of one's own language in this period of English-language dominance. Born in Tokyo but raised and educated in the United States, Minae Mizumura acknowledges the value of a universal language in the pursuit of knowledge yet also embraces the different ways of understanding offered by multiple tongues. She warns against losing this precious diversity.

Universal languages have always played a pivotal role in advancing human societies, Mizumura shows, but in the globalized world of the Internet, English is fast becoming the sole common language of humanity. The process is unstoppable, and striving for total language equality is delusional--and yet, particular kinds of knowledge can be gained only through writings in specific languages.

Mizumura calls these writings texts and their ultimate form literature. Only through literature and, more fundamentally, through the diverse languages that give birth to a variety of literatures, can we nurture and enrich humanity. Incorporating her own experiences as a writer and a lover of language and embedding a parallel history of Japanese, Mizumura offers an intimate look at the phenomena of individual and national expression.

Revelations is an exploration of the unique storytelling style of the critically acclaimed anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica. It deciphers the visual symbolism, narrative metaphor, and literary themes of the series to give the reader enhanced insight into the characters, their motivations, and the story hidden beneath the surface of this surprisingly dark and complex tale. Why would Homura rebel against her best friend? What does the half moon represent? This book answers the big questions, while giving the reader the necessary understanding to decode the rest for themselves. Interspersed with insights from the cast members who brought the characters to life, this is the ultimate companion to the show that is redefining the magical girl genre. This edition has a black and white interior. Color version available at https: //www.amazon.com/Revelations-Depth-Themes-Symbols-Puella/dp/153715446X/ref=tmm_pap_title_1?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1477674497&sr=8-1

This collection of short stories, including many new translations, is the first to span the whole of Japan's modern era from the end of the nineteenth century to the present day. Beginning with the first writings to assimilate and rework Western literary traditions, through the flourishing of the short story genre in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the Taisho era, to the new breed of writers produced under the constraints of literary censorship, and the current writings reflecting the pitfalls and paradoxes of modern life, this anthology offers a stimulating survey of the development of the Japanese short story.

Various indigenous traditions, in addition to those drawn from the West, recur throughout the stories: stories of the self, of the Water Trade (Tokyo's nightlife of geishas and prostitutes), of social comment, love and obsession, legends and fairytales. This collection includes the work of two Nobel prize-winners: Kawabata and Oe, the talented women writers Hirabayashi, Euchi, Okamoto, and Hayashi, together with the acclaimed Tanizaki, Mishima, and Murakami.

The introduction by Theodore Goossen gives insight into these exotic and enigmatic, sometimes disturbing stories, derived from the lyrical roots of Japanese literature with its distinctive stress on atmosphere and beauty.

Written by imperial command in the eighth century, The Kojiki: Records of Ancient Matters is Japan's classic of classics, the oldest connected literary work and the fundamental scripture of Shinto.

A more factual history called the Nihongi or Nihon Shoki (Chronicles of Japan) was completed in A.D. 720, but The Kojiki remains the better known, perhaps because of its special concern with the legends of the gods, with the divine descent of the imperial family, and with native Shinto. Both works have immense value as records of the development of Japan into a unified state with a well-defined character. Indeed, even the mythological aspects were accepted as fact throughout most of subsequent Japanese history--until the defeat and disillusionment of the nation in 1945.

This classic text is a key to the historical roots of the Japanese people--their early life and the development of their character and institutions--as well as a lively mixture of legend and history, genealogy, and poetry. It stands as one of the greatest monuments of Japanese literature because it preserves more faithfully than any other book the mythology, manners, language and traditions of Japan. It provides, furthermore, a vivid account of a nation in the making.

The work opens when chaos had begun to condense, but force and form were not yet manifest, and there was nought named, nought done ... It recounts the mythological creation of Japan by the divine brother and sister Izanami and Izanagi; tales of the Sun Goddess and other deities; the divine origin of Jimmu the first emperor; and the histories of subsequent reigns. Epic material is complemented by a fresh bucolic vein expressed in songs and poetry.

This famous translation by the British scholar Basil Hall Chamberlain is enhanced by notes on the text and an extensive introduction discussing early Japanese society, as well as The Kojiki and its background. Important for its wealth of information, The Kojiki is indispensable to anyone interested in things Japanese.

The seven essays in this book present an in-depth reading of The Tale of Genji. They are entitled Genji and Murasaki: Between Love and Pride; Genji and Suzaku: The Disaster of the Third Princess; Genji and Suzaku: The Possibility of Ukifune; Genji and the Luck of the Sea; Pity Poor Kaoru; Two Post-Genji Tales on The Tale of Genji; and Feminine Veils over Visions of the Male.

By any measure, Japan's modern empire was formidable. The only major non-western colonial power in the 20th century, Japan controlled a vast area of Asia and numerous archipelagos in the Pacific Ocean. The massive extraction of resources and extensive cultural assimilation policies radically impacted the lives of millions of Asians and Micronesians, and the political, economic, and cultural ramifications of this era are still felt today.

The Japanese empire lasted from 1869-1945. During this time, how was the Japanese imperial project understood, imagined, and lived? Reading Colonial Japan is a unique anthology that aims to deepen knowledge of Japanese colonialism(s) by providing an eclectic selection of translated Japanese primary sources and analytical essays that illuminate Japan's many and varied colonial projects. The primary documents highlight how central cultural production and dissemination were to the colonial effort, while accentuating the myriad ways colonialism permeated every facet of life. The variety of genres the explored includes legal documents, children's literature, cookbooks, serialized comics, and literary texts by well-known authors of the time. These cultural works, produced by a broad spectrum of ordinary Japanese citizens (a housewife in Manchuria, settlers in Korea, manga artists and fiction writers in mainland Japan, and so on), functioned effectively to reinforce the official policies that controlled and violated the lives of the colonized throughout Japan's empire.

By making available and analyzing a wide-range of sources that represent media during the Japanese colonial period, Reading Colonial Japan draws attention to the powerful role that language and imagination played in producing the material realities of Japanese colonialism.

Tokyo, in the early aughts, was a weird place. Lonely single men wanted to marry action figures instead of women. High school girls worked at maid cafes and were paid to act like Manga characters. Nightclubs filled with kids in anime cosplay who danced to remixed versions of cartoon theme songs.

People's private obsessions, once confined to bedrooms and computer screens, were transforming entire city blocks.

Long before global media, Pharrell Williams, and millions of tourists twigged to the strange new energy emerging from Japan, author Patrick Macias was there, chronicling the emergence of Cool Japan in a famous blog entitled An Eternal Thought in the Mind of Godzilla. Now with biting humor and cultural insight, he looks back on the trends, personalities, and happenings that dominated the bleeding edge of Japanese pop culture in those years. You'll meet maids who imitate Michael Jackson, anime producers sent to prison for guns and drugs, school girls determined to resurrect surf rock, nightclubbers who worship uncool foreigners, and all manner of wide-eyed ex-pats, weirdoes, and dreamers who came to Tokyo in search of a stranger, more surreal version of life.