Anthony Thwaite

Geoffrey Bownas

A broad-reaching anthology contains accessible translations of more than 700 poems and includes selections from periods ranging from the Nara and Heian to the Kamakura and Muramachi eras, in a treasury that includes examples of tanka, haiku and complex forms. Reprint.

The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

CLASSIC FICTION. From the author of Rashomon comes a Swiftian satire of Japanese society thinly disguised as the fictitious Kappaland. Peopled with creatures from Japanese folklore, Kappaland serves as a vehicle for the humorous examination of the moral foibles of Japanese society in the early 20th century.

Kappa

A prefatory section on Japanese prosody provides an illustrative background for this poetic collection

三島由紀夫

New Writing in Japan

Report

Japan's Strategy for the 1980's in Industrial, Electrical & Electronic Equipment

Pauline Brown

The ritual of rainmaking is one of half a dozen Japanese folk practices and festivals described in this book. The story of rainmaking ceremonies begins with personal experience and then draws on the work of Japanese folklorists to record significant local variations and to construct a general account of the history and purpose of the ceremony. Field research was conducted during study visits to Kyoto, to Tenri in Nara Prefecture and to Shiga Prefecture. The chapter order follows the year cycle, from New Year via early summer purificatory festivals and rainmaking ceremonial to the feast of Bon, which with New Year ceremonies divides the year. Alongside these community or public rites are described private or family rituals concerned with birth, marriage and death. The introductory chapter relates aspects of Japanese culture, myth and language to the constant features of folk practice recorded or extant in 1950s Japan. Originally published in 1963.

Geoffrey Bownas

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