Yukio Mishima

Donald Keene

Pseud

Mishima Yukio

Professor Yukio Mishima

Ivan Morris

Geoffrey Sargent

Nine short stories by the Japanese literary genius provide insights into the struggles and problems of his contemporary countrymen

Death in Midsummer, and Other Stories

Osamu Dazai

Flowers of Buffoonery

Anthology of Japanese Literature: From the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century (UNESCO Collection of Representative Works: European)

"Today Yoshimasa is remembered primarily as the builder of the Temple of the Silver Pavilion and as the ruler at the time of the Onin War (1467-1477), after which the authority of the shogun all but disappeared. Unable to control the daimyos - provincial military governors - he abandoned politics and devoted himself to the quest for beauty. It was then, after Yoshimasa resigned as shogun and made his home in the mountain retreat now known as the Silver Pavilion, that his aesthetic taste came to define that of the Japanese: the no theater flourished, Japanese gardens were developed, and the tea ceremony had its origins in a small room at the Silver Pavilion. Flower arrangement, ink painting, and shoin-zukua-i architecture began or became of major importance under Yoshimasa. Poets introduced their often barely literate warlord-hosts to the literary masterpieces of the past and taught them how to compose poetry.

The Creation of the Soul of Japan

Yoshimasa and the Silver Pavilion

Translated selections from literary writings of the last 80 years reflects strongly the social, political and cultural Japanese background

An Anthology

Modern Japanese Literature

Izumo Takeda

Shōraku Miyoshi

Senryū Namiki

Presents a translation of the eighteenth-century Japanese drama.

A Puppet Play

Chūshingura

Collection of Japanese works including poetry, prose and drama

Anthology of Japanese Literature, from the Earliest Era to the Mid-nineteenth Century

Essays on Japanese diaries written from the ninth to the nineteenth centuries present a literary history of the art of journal writing in Japan while providing insight into Japanese life and culture

Travelers of a Hundred Ages

Donald Keene shares more than half a century of his adventures as a student of Japan. Keene begins with an account of his bittersweet childhood in New York; then he describes his initial encounters with Asia and Europe and the way in which World War II complicated that experience. He captures the sights, scents, and sounds of Japan as they first enveloped him, and talks of the unique travels and well-known intellectuals who later shaped the contours of his academic career. --from publisher description.

An American in the Heart of Japan

Chronicles of My Life

From 1868 to the Present Day

The fourth book in a multivolume history of modern Japanese literature by one of the world's most accomplished translators and scholars of Japanese culture and literature, this volume offers unparalleled insight into Japanese poetry, drama, and criticism.

Japanese Literature of the the Modern Era - Poetry, Drama, Criticism

Dawn to the West

Rather than resist the vast social and cultural changes sweeping Japan in the nineteenth century, the poet Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902) instead incorporated new Western influences into his country's native haiku and tanka verse. By reinvigorating these traditional forms, Shiki released them from outdated conventions and made them more responsive to newer trends in artistic expression. Altogether, his reforms made the haiku Japan's most influential modern cultural export. Using extensive readings of Shiki's own writings and accounts of the poet by his contemporaries and family, Donald Keene charts Shiki's revolutionary (and often contradictory) experiments with haiku and tanka, a dynamic process that made the survival of these traditional genres possible in a globalizing world. Keene particularly highlights random incidents and encounters in his impressionistic portrait of this tragically young life, moments that elicited significant shifts and discoveries in Shiki's work. The push and pull of a profoundly changing society is vividly felt in Keene's narrative, which also includes sharp observations of other recognizable characters, such as the famous novelist and critic Natsume Soseki. In addition, Keene reflects on his own personal relationship with Shiki's work, further developing the nuanced, deeply felt dimensions of its power.

A Life of Masaoka Shiki

The Winter Sun Shines In

Anthology of Japanese Literature to the Nineteenth Century

日本文学の手引

No Longer Human ... Translated ... by Donald Keene

Donald Keene, the preeminent authority on Japanese literature, crafts a definitive and vivid history of the life and times of the emperor who opened Japan to the West. When Emperor Meiji began his rule, in 1867, Japan was a splintered empire, dominated by the shogun and the daimyos, and cut off from the outside world. Before long, the shogun surrendered to the emperor, a new constitution was adopted, and Japan emerged as a modern, industrialized state. Despite the length of his reign, little has been written about the strangely obscured figure of Meiji himself. Donald Keene sifts the available evidence to present a rich portrait not only of Meiji but also of rapid and sometimes violent change during this pivotal period in Japan's history. We move with the emperor through his early, traditional education; observe his behavior at court, his marriage, and his relationships with various consorts; and follow his maturation into a "Confucian" sovereign dedicated to simplicity, frugality, and hard work. Later, during Japan's wars with China and Russia, we witness Meiji's struggle to reconcile his personal commitment to peace and his nation's increasingly militarized experience of modernization.

Meiji and His World, 1852-1912

Emperor of Japan

Three short novels by contemporary authors whose themes stem from the days before the westernization of Japan. The Songs of Oak Mountain: Based on a legend with a modern message of cheerful fortitude in a situation of unique horror. Ohan: A psychological study of a marriage and in particular of the submissive, inarticulate, self-sacrificing wife who was the ideal. It is the first extensive piece of fiction by a modern Japanese woman writer to be published in this country. Asters: Set in the thirteenth century, it introduces the reader to a world of magic and to a hero fascinated with cruelty and death.

Donald Keene

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