Early Modern Japanese Literature - (Translations from the Asian Classics (Paperback)) Abridged by Haruo Shirane (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This abridged edition of Haruo Shirane's popular anthology, Early Modern Japanese Literature, retains the essential texts that have made the original volume such a valuable resource. The book introduces English-speaking readers to prose fiction genres, including dangibon, kibyoshi (satiric picture books), sharebon (books of wit and fashion), yomihon, kokkeibon (books of humor), gokan (bound books), and ninjobon (books of romance and sentiment). It also features poetic genres such as waka, haiku, senryu, and kyoka, and plays ranging from Chikamatsu's puppet plays to nineteenth-century kabuki. Readers will continue to benefit from the anthology's selection of significant essays, treatises, literary criticism, folk stories, and other noncanonical works, as well as the numerous prints that accompanied these works. They will also find Shirane's introductions and critical commentary, which guide the reader through the allusive and often elliptical nature of these incredible selections.

Review Quotes

[This] will serve as the standard anthology for some time to come.-- "Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies"

This book will become an indispensable reference, not only for students of Edo literature but also for those who have an interest in Japanese culture in general.-- "Asian Studies Review"

There has quite simply never been a collection like this one. It's an experience not to be missed, and it will give pleasure to many.--Thomas Rimer, author of The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature

This volume provides a cornucopia of early modern Japanese texts, from high to low, the cool reason of philosophy and literary criticism to 'hot' fiction for popular consumption, Rai Sanyo's history to Chikamatsu's historical drama, kanshi to haiku, autobiography to ghost stories. On the basis of this volume alone, one can mount a comprehensive course in Edo literature.--Sonja Arntzen, University of Toronto

About the Author

Haruo Shirane is Shincho Professor of Japanese Literature and Culture at Columbia University and 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. With Columbia University Press, he has published Traditional Japanese Literature; Classical Japanese: A Grammar; Classical Japanese Reader and Essential Dictionary; and Envisioning The Tale of Genji: Media, Gender, and Cultural Production.