The Columbia anthology of Japanese essays : zuihitsu from the tenth to the twenty-first century

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The Columbia anthology of Japanese essays : zuihitsu from the tenth to the twenty-first century

edited and translated by Steven D. Carter

Columbia University Press , EBSCO [distributor], c2014

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Access: Printing and downloading limited to 6 pages (EBSCOhost)

Description based on online resource; title from title page screen (EBSCOhost, viewed on October 28, 2016)

Published simultaneously in print version

Includes bibliographical references

Contents of Works

  • The pillow book / Sei Shōnagon
  • Essays in idleness / Yoshida no Kenkō
  • Conversations with Shōtetsu / Shōtetsu
  • "To unify the nation and restore civil society" / Ichijō Kaneyoshi
  • "Cottage of dreams" and "Three loves" / Shōhaku
  • A Tenbun miscellany / The Fujiwara Lay Monk
  • Laughs to keep you awake / Anrakuan Sakuden
  • "On Ōhara" / Kinoshita Chōshōshi
  • Haikai prose / Matsuo Bashō
  • Amusements / Amenomori Hōshū
  • Window musings / Matsuzaki Kanran
  • A miscellany of stories / Morita Morimasa
  • Chats with myself / Dazai Shundai
  • Jeweled comb basket / Motoori Norinaga
  • Idle chats beneath a northern window / Tachibana Nankei
  • Blossoms and the moon / Matsudaira Sadanobu
  • Year by year : a miscellany / Ishiwara Masaakira
  • Behind the koto / Murata Harumi
  • Shunparō's jottings / Shiba Kōkan
  • Unusual people of the modern age and Kanden's crop of jottings / Ban Kōkei
  • Hoary stories / Tadano Makuzu
  • Haikai prose / Natsume Seibi
  • Clouds of floating grasses
  • Autumn ensemble / Higuchi Ichiyō
  • Short works from long days / Natsume Sōseki
  • "Snow" / Tokutomi Roka
  • "Desk" / Tayama Katai
  • "Fireworks" / Nagai Kafū
  • "Laughter" / Terada Torahiko
  • "Various thoughts on the Great Kantō earthquake" and "My moral precepts for everyday life" / Kikuchi Kan
  • "Master Hyakken's idle fantasies," "Bumpy road," and "A long fence" / Uchida Hyakken
  • "The image of an author" / Dazai Osamu
  • "Baby sparrow," "Turtledoves," and "Morning glories" / Shiga Naoya
  • Esprit and humor / Kawamori Yoshizō
  • "Sleepless nights" and "A bed for my books" / Osaragi Jirō
  • "On being down with a cold" / Kawakami Tetsutarō
  • "The road" / Shōno Junzō
  • "Kitchen," "Raindrops," and "A memento of the season" / Kōda Aya
  • "On surgery" and "Rainy day" / Kōno Taeko
  • "Looking for gloves" / Mukōda Kuniko
  • One, we count, then-- / Takenishi Hiroko
  • Sunday musings / Hiraiwa Yumie
  • Not much of a book, but please--and Just be sure you're not a bother to anyone / Dekune Tatsurō
  • "Myna bird" / Kizaki Satoko
  • "Concerning the order of culture" / Shiroyama Saburo
  • "On zuihitsu" / Sakai Junko

Description and Table of Contents

Description

A court lady of the Heian era, an early modern philologist, a Meiji-period novelist, and a physicist at Tokyo University. What do they have in common, besides being Japanese? They all wrote zuihitsu -- a uniquely Japanese literary genre encompassing features of the nonfiction or personal essay and miscellaneous musings. For sheer range of subject matter and breadth of perspective, the zuihitsu is unrivaled in the Japanese literary tradition, which may explain why few examples have been translated into English. Springing from a variety of social, artistic, political, and professional discourses, zuihitsu is an undeniably important literary form practiced by all types of people who reveal much about themselves, their identities, and the times in which they lived. Zuihitsu also contain a good deal of humor, which is often underrepresented in translations of "serious" Japanese writing.This anthology presents a representative selection of more than one hundred zuihitsu from a range of historical periods written by close to fifty authors -- from well-known figures, such as Matsuo Basho, Natsume Soseki, and Koda Aya, to such writers as Tachibana Nankei and Dekune Tatsuro, whose names appear here for the first time in English.Writers speak on the experience of coming down with a cold, the aesthetics of tea, the physiology and psychology of laughter, the demands of old age, standards of morality, childrearing, the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, sleeplessness, undergoing surgery, and training a parrot to say "thank you." Varying in length from paragraphs to pages, these works also provide moving descriptions of snowy landscapes, foggy London, Ueno Park's famous cherry blossoms, and the appeal of rainy vistas, and relate the joys and troubles of everyone from desperate samurai to filial children and ailing cats.

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