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...
The sweep of Japanese literature in all its great variety was made available to Western readers for the first time in this anthology. Every genre and style, from the celebrated No plays to the poetry and novels of the seventeenth century, find a place...
A superb introduction to modern Japanese fiction as well as a memoir of his own love affair with Japanese literature and culture, this volume consists of chapters on five modern Japanese novelists whom Donald Keene knew personally: Yasunari Kawabata, Yuki...
When Emperor Meiji began his rule, in 1867, Japan was a splintered empire, dominated by the shogun and the daimyos, who ruled over the country's more than 250 decentralized domains and who were, in the main, cut off from the outside world, staunchly...
Beginning with documents from the founding of the Tokugawa shogunate, the collections essays, manifestos, religious tracts, political documents, and memoirs reflect major Japanese religious, philosophical , social and political movements.
Concentrating on the pre-modern era between 1600 and 1867, this text provides a definitive history of Japanese literature. The text treats each of the new, popular genres that arose, including haiku, Kabuki, and the witty, urbane prose of the newly ascend...
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
Donald Keene combines informative works on two forms of classical Japanese theater into a single volume. The No text looks at all aspects of this traditional theater form including its history, its stage and props, the use of music and dance in its perfor...
Chushingura (The Treasury of Loyal Retainers), also known as the story of the Forty-Six (or Forty-Seven) Ronin, is the most famous and perenially popular of all Japanese dramas. Written around 1748 as a puppet play, it is now better know in Kabuki perform...