Basho (1644-94) is perhaps the best known Japanese poet in both Japan and the West, and this book establishes the ground for badly needed critical discussion of this critical figure by placing the works of Basho and his disciples in the context of broader social change.
Classical Japanese: A Grammar is a comprehensive, and practical guide to classical Japanese. It includes detailed explanations of basic grammar and explains how classical Japanese is related to modern Japanese. This companion volume includes exercise answers and tables.
Originally written in the mid-thirteenth century, The Tales of the Heike chronicles the epic Genpei war, a civil conflict that marked the end of the power of the Heike clan and changed the course of Japanese history. Featuring a vivid cast of characters, the book depicts the emerging world of the medieval samurai and recounts in absorbing detail the chaos of the battlefield, the intrigue of the imperial court, and the gradual loss of courtly tradition. This new, abridged translation presents the work's most gripping episodes and includes woodblock illustrations, a glossary of characters, and an extended bibliography.
In 2005, the celebrated scholar of Japanese literature Haruo Shirane published Classical Japanese: A Grammar. Now, with Classical Japanese Reader and Essential Dictionary, he completes his two-volume textbook for learning classical, or literary, Japanese--the primary written language in Japan from the seventh to the mid-twentieth century. The text contains carefully selected readings that address a wide array of grammatical concerns and that steadily progress from easy to difficult. The selections encompass a wide range of historical periods and styles, including essays, fiction, and poetry from such noted works as The Tale of Genji, The Tales of Ise, The Pillow Book, The Tales of the Heike, and Essays in Idleness, and such authors as Ihara Saikaku, Matsuo Basho, Ueda Akinari, Motoori Norinaga, and Fukuzawa Yukichi. Each reading is accompanied by a short English introduction, a vocabulary list, and extensive grammatical notes, and ends with a comprehensive grammatical annotation. The classical Japanese-English dictionary composes the last third of the book and features approximately 2,500 key words, highlighting those used most frequently. The first of its kind, this volume is a vital tool for students, scholars, and translators of classical Japanese.
"Elegant representations of nature and the four seasons populate a wide range of Japanese genres and media. In Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons, Haruo Shirane shows how, when, and why this practice developed and explicates the richly encoded social, religious, and political meanings of this imagery. Shirane discusses textual, cultivated, material, performative, and gastronomic representations of nature. He reveals how this kind of 'secondary nature, ' which flourished in Japan's urban environment, fostered and idealized a sense of harmony with the natural world just at the moment when it began to recede from view. Illuminating the deeper meaning behind Japanese aesthetics and artifacts, Shirane also clarifies the use of natural and seasonal topics as well as the changes in their cultural associations and functions across history, genre, and community over more than a millennium. In this book, the four seasons are revealed to be as much a cultural construction as a reflection of the physical world."--Back cover.