Classical Japanese - Annotated by Haruo Shirane (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Classical Japanese: A Grammar" is a comprehensive, and practical guide to classical Japanese. Extensive notes and historical explanations make this volume useful as both a reference for advanced students and a textbook for beginning students. The volume, which explains how classical Japanese is related to modern Japanese, includes detailed explanations of basic grammar, including helpful, easy-to-use tables of grammatical forms; annotated excerpts from classical premodern texts.

Classical Japanese: A Grammar - Exercise Answers and Tables (ISBN: 978-0-231-13530-6) is now available for purchase as a separate volume.

Book Synopsis

Classical Japanese: A Grammar is a comprehensive, and practical guide to classical Japanese. Extensive notes and historical explanations make this volume useful as both a reference for advanced students and a textbook for beginning students. The volume, which explains how classical Japanese is related to modern Japanese, includes detailed explanations of basic grammar, including helpful, easy-to-use tables of grammatical forms; annotated excerpts from classical premodern texts.

Classical Japanese: A Grammar - Exercise Answers and Tables (ISBN: 978-0-231-13530-6) is available for purchase as a separate volume.

Review Quotes

A significant contribution to the field of premodern Japanese language and literary studies.--Stephen D. Miller "Monumenta Nipponica"

This comprehensive guide... includes in-depth explanations, exercises and literary excerpts useful to beginners as well as advanced speakers.-- "Columbia College Today"

About the Author

Haruo Shirane is Shincho Professor of Japanese Literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. He is the author of The Bridge of Dreams: A Poetics of The Tale of Genji and Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Basho; and an editor of Inventing the Classics: Modernity, National Identity, and Japanese Literature and Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600-1900.