Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600-1900 (Abridged Edition) / Edition 1

by Haruo Shirane

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231144155
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	04/21/2008
Series:	Translations from the Asian Classics Series
Edition description:	abridged edition
Pages:	552
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

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.

Table of Contents

Preface
Historical Periods, Measurements, and Other Matters
1. Early Modern Japan
2. Ihara Saikaku and the Books of the Floating World
3. The Poetry and Prose of Matsuo Basho
4. Chikamatsu Monsaemon and the Puppet Theater
5. The Golden Age of Puppet Theater
6. Dangibon and the Birth of Edo Popular Literature
7. Comic and Satiric Poetry
8. Literati Meditations
9. Early Yomihon: History, Romance, and the Supernatural
10. Sharebon: Books of Wit and Fashion
11. Kibyoshi: Satiric and Didactic Picture Books
12. Kokkeibon: Comic Fiction for Commoners
13. Ninjobon: Sentimental Fiction
14. Gokan: Extended Picture Books
15. Ghosts and Nineteenth-Century Kabuki
16. Late Yomihon: History and the Supernatural Revisited

Editorial Reviews

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

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

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

[This] will serve as the standard anthology for some time to come.

Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies