Download or read book The Pillow Book of the Flower Samurai written by Barbara Lazar and published by Tinder Press. This book was released on 2012-07-05 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I am Kozaisho: Fifth daughter, Woman-For-Play, teller of stories, lover, wife and Flower Samurai. In the rich, dazzling, brutal world of twelfth century Japan, one young girl begins her epic journey, from the warmth of family to the Village of Outcasts. Marked out by an auspicious omen, she is trained in the ancient warrior arts of the samurai. But it is through the power of storytelling that she learns to fight her fate, twisting her life onto a path even she could not have imagined...
Download or read book Japanese Death Poems written by and published by Tuttle Publishing. This book was released on 1998-04-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A wonderful introduction the Japanese tradition of jisei, this volume is crammed with exquisite, spontaneous verse and pithy, often hilarious, descriptions of the eccentric and committed monastics who wrote the poems." --Tricycle: The Buddhist Review Although the consciousness of death is, in most cultures, very much a part of life, this is perhaps nowhere more true than in Japan, where the approach of death has given rise to a centuries-old tradition of writing jisei, or the "death poem." Such a poem is often written in the very last moments of the poet's life. Hundreds of Japanese death poems, many with a commentary describing the circumstances of the poet's death, have been translated into English here, the vast majority of them for the first time. Yoel Hoffmann explores the attitudes and customs surrounding death in historical and present-day Japan and gives examples of how these have been reflected in the nation's literature in general. The development of writing jisei is then examined--from the longing poems of the early nobility and the more "masculine" verses of the samurai to the satirical death poems of later centuries. Zen Buddhist ideas about death are also described as a preface to the collection of Chinese death poems by Zen monks that are also included. Finally, the last section contains three hundred twenty haiku, some of which have never been assembled before, in English translation and romanized in Japanese.
Download or read book Translating Mount Fuji written by Dennis Charles Washburn and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dennis Washburn traces the changing character of Japanese national identity in the works of six major authors: Ueda Akinari, Natsume S?seki, Mori ?gai, Yokomitsu Riichi, ?oka Shohei, and Mishima Yukio. By focusing on certain interconnected themes, Washburn illuminates the contradictory desires of a nation trapped between emulating the West and preserving the traditions of Asia. Washburn begins with Ueda's Ugetsu monogatari (Tales of Moonlight and Rain) and its preoccupation with the distant past, a sense of loss, and the connection between values and identity. He then considers the use of narrative realism and the metaphor of translation in Soseki's Sanshiro; the relationship between ideology and selfhood in Ogai's Seinen; Yokomitsu Riichi's attempt to synthesize the national and the cosmopolitan; Ooka Shohei's post-World War II representations of the ethical and spiritual crises confronting his age; and Mishima's innovative play with the aesthetics of the inauthentic and the artistry of kitsch. Washburn's brilliant analysis teases out common themes concerning the illustration of moral and aesthetic values, the crucial role of autonomy and authenticity in defining notions of culture, the impact of cultural translation on ideas of nation and subjectivity, the ethics of identity, and the hybrid quality of modern Japanese society. He pinpoints the persistent anxiety that influenced these authors' writings, a struggle to translate rhetorical forms of Western literature while preserving elements of the pre-Meiji tradition. A unique combination of intellectual history and critical literary analysis, Translating Mount Fuji recounts the evolution of a conflict that inspired remarkable literary experimentation and achievement.
Download or read book The Flowers and Gardens Of Japan written by Ella Du Cane and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2005. Japan is often called the land of flowers. This book gives an account of those flowers that occur in the country that are most remarkable for their beauty and profusion and that are most typically Japanese. There are also pages on landscape gardening.
Download or read book Unbinding The Pillow Book written by Gergana Ivanova and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An eleventh-century classic, The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon is frequently paired with The Tale of Genji as one of the most important works in the Japanese canon. Yet it has also been marginalized within Japanese literature for reasons including the gender of its author, the work’s complex textual history, and its thematic and stylistic depth. In Unbinding The Pillow Book, Gergana Ivanova offers a reception history of The Pillow Book and its author from the seventeenth century to the present that shows how various ideologies have influenced the text and shaped interactions among its different versions. Ivanova examines how and why The Pillow Book has been read over the centuries, placing it in the multiple contexts in which it has been rewritten, including women’s education, literary scholarship, popular culture, “pleasure quarters,” and the formation of the modern nation-state. Drawing on scholarly commentaries, erotic parodies, instruction manuals for women, high school textbooks, and comic books, she considers its outsized role in ideas about Japanese women writers. Ultimately, Ivanova argues for engaging the work’s plurality in order to achieve a clearer understanding of The Pillow Book and the importance it has held for generations of readers, rather than limiting it to a definitive version or singular meaning. The first book-length study in English of the reception history of Sei Shōnagon, Unbinding The Pillow Book sheds new light on the construction of gender and sexuality, how women’s writing has been used to create readerships, and why ancient texts continue to play vibrant roles in contemporary cultural production.
Download or read book The Book Of Five Rings written by Miyamoto Musashi and published by Sanage Publishing House Llp. This book was released on 2023-04-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NA
Download or read book The Pillow Book of Lady Wisteria written by Laura Joh Rowland and published by Minotaur Books. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Pillow Book of Lady Wisteria, Laura Joh Rowland once again has written a book in which "an exotic setting, seventeenth-century Japan, and a splendid mystery...make for grand entertainment" (New York Daily News). In the carefully ordered world of seventeenth-century Japan, the Yoshiwara pleasure quarter is a place where men of all classes can drink, revel, and enjoy the favors of beautiful courtesans. But on a cold winter's dawn, Sano Ichiro--the shogun's Most Honorable Investigator of Events, Situations, and People--must visit Yoshiwara on a most unpleasant mission. Within a house of assignation reserved for the wealthiest, most prominent men, a terrible murder has occurred. In a room that reeks of liquor and sex, the shogun's cousin and heir, Lord Mitsuyoshi, lies dead, a flowered hairpin embedded in his eye, in the bed of the famous courtesan, Lady Wisteria. The shogun demands quick justice, but Sano's path is blocked by many obstacles, including the disappearance of Wisteria and her pillow book, a diary that may contain clues. The politics of court life, the whims of the shogun, and interference by his long time rival, Edo's Chief Police Commissioner Hoshina, also hinder Sano in his search for the killer. Sano's wife, Lady Reiko, is eager to help him, but he fears what she may uncover. When suspicion of murder falls upon Sano himself, he must find the real murderer to solve the case and clear his name.
Download or read book written by 紫式部 and published by . This book was released on 2007-06 with total page 1136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Rot Riot and Rebellion written by Rex Bowman and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2013-08-13 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Jefferson had a radical dream for higher education. Designed to become the first modern public university, the University of Virginia was envisioned as a liberal campus with no religious affiliation, with elective courses and student self-government. Nearly two centuries after the university’s creation, its success now seems preordained—its founder, after all, was a great American genius. Yet what many don’t know is that Jefferson’s university almost failed. In Rot, Riot, and Rebellion, award-winning journalists Rex Bowman and Carlos Santos offer a dramatic re-creation of the university’s early struggles. Political enemies, powerful religious leaders, and fundamentalist Christians fought Jefferson and worked to thwart his dream. Rich students, many from southern plantations, held a sense of honor and entitlement that compelled them to resist even minor rules and regulations. They fought professors, townsfolk, and each other with guns, knives, and fists. In response, professors armed themselves—often with good reason: one was horsewhipped, others were attacked in their classrooms, and one was twice the target of a bomb. The university was often broke, and Jefferson’s enemies, crouched and ready to pounce, looked constantly for reasons to close its doors. Yet from its tumultuous, early days, Jefferson’s university—a cauldron of unrest and educational daring—blossomed into the first real American university. Here, Bowman and Santos bring us into the life of the University of Virginia at its founding to reveal how this once shaky institution grew into a novel, American-style university on which myriad other U.S. universities were modeled.
Download or read book Across the Nightingale Floor written by Lian Hearn and published by . This book was released on 2016-01-27 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Across the Nightingale Floor is Book 1 in the five-part Tales of the Otori series. More than four million copies have been sold in over 36 countries.'The best story of magic, love, sex, revenge and suspense to have come this way since Philip Pullman' Independent On Sunday (UK) In his fortress at Inuyama, the murderous warlord Iida Sadamu surveys his famous nightingale floor. Constructed with exquisite skill, it sings at the tread of each human foot. No assassin can cross it unheard. Brought up in a remote village among the Hidden, a reclusive and spiritual people, Takeo has learned only the ways of peace. Why, then, does he possess the deadly skills that make him so valuable to the sinister Tribe? These supernatural powers will lead him to his violent destiny within the walls of Inuyama - and to an impossible longing for a girl who can never be his. His journey is one of revenge and treachery, beauty and magic, and the passion of first love. 'masterful storytelling ... a fantastic read' The Age Coming soon - the spellbinding new TALE OF SHIKANOKO, set 300 years before Otori: THE EMPEROR OF THE EIGHT ISLANDS (Books 1 & 2 in THE TALE OF SHIKANOKO) and THE LORD OF THE DARKWOOD (Books 3 & 4).PRAISE FOR THE TALES OF THE OTORI 'An engrossing fantasy saga of literary quality.' The Age'Lian Hearn's marvellous storytelling talent ... makes reading these books a moment of pure bliss.' Le Monde'an enthralling and original work of fantasy' The Times
Download or read book The Cambridge History of Japanese Literature written by Haruo Shirane and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-12-31 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cambridge History of Japanese Literature provides, for the first time, a history of Japanese literature with comprehensive coverage of the premodern and modern eras in a single volume. The book is arranged topically in a series of short, accessible chapters for easy access and reference, giving insight into both canonical texts and many lesser known, popular genres, from centuries-old folk literature to the detective fiction of modern times. The various period introductions provide an overview of recurrent issues that span many decades, if not centuries. The book also places Japanese literature in a wider East Asian tradition of Sinitic writing and provides comprehensive coverage of women's literature as well as new popular literary forms, including manga (comic books). An extensive bibliography of works in English enables readers to continue to explore this rich tradition through translations and secondary reading.
Download or read book Hiroshima written by John Hersey and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2020-06-23 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hiroshima is the story of six people—a clerk, a widowed seamstress, a physician, a Methodist minister, a young surgeon, and a German Catholic priest—who lived through the greatest single manmade disaster in history. In vivid and indelible prose, Pulitzer Prize–winner John Hersey traces the stories of these half-dozen individuals from 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, when Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a city, through the hours and days that followed. Almost four decades after the original publication of this celebrated book, Hersey went back to Hiroshima in search of the people whose stories he had told, and his account of what he discovered is now the eloquent and moving final chapter of Hiroshima.
Download or read book When the Emperor Was Divine written by Julie Otsuka and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling, award-winning author of The Buddha in the Attic and The Swimmers, this commanding debut novel paints a portrait of the Japanese American incarceration camps that is both a haunting evocation of a family in wartime and a resonant lesson for our times. On a sunny day in Berkeley, California, in 1942, a woman sees a sign in a post office window, returns to her home, and matter-of-factly begins to pack her family's possessions. Like thousands of other Japanese Americans they have been reclassified, virtually overnight, as enemy aliens and are about to be uprooted from their home and sent to a dusty incarceration camp in the Utah desert. In this lean and devastatingly evocative first novel, Julie Otsuka tells their story from five flawlessly realized points of view and conveys the exact emotional texture of their experience: the thin-walled barracks and barbed-wire fences, the omnipresent fear and loneliness, the unheralded feats of heroism. When the Emperor Was Divine is a work of enormous power that makes a shameful episode of our history as immediate as today's headlines.
Download or read book An Introduction to Japanese Syntax Grammar Language written by Michiel Kamermans and published by . This book was released on 2010-03 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Starting at the very basics and working its way up to important language constructions, "An introduction to Japanese" offers beginning students, as well as those doing self-study, a comprehensive grammar for the Japanese language. Oriented towards the serious learner, there are no shortcuts in this book: no romanised Japanese for ease of reading beyond the introduction, no pretending that Japanese grammar maps perfectly to English grammar, and no simplified terminology. In return, this book explains Japanese the way one may find it taught at universities, covering everything from basic to intermediary Japanese, and even touching on some of the more advanced constructions.
Download or read book Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan written by and published by . This book was released on 1920 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Teahouse Fire written by Ellis Avery and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007-12-04 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Like attending seasons of elegant tea parties—each one resplendent with character and drama. Delicious.”—Maxine Hong Kingston The story of two women whose lives intersect in late-nineteenth-century Japan, The Teahouse Fire is also a portrait of one of the most fascinating places and times in all of history—Japan as it opens its doors to the West. It was a period when wearing a different color kimono could make a political statement, when women stopped blackening their teeth to profess an allegiance to Western ideas, and when Japan’s most mysterious rite—the tea ceremony—became not just a sacramental meal, but a ritual battlefield. We see it all through the eyes of Aurelia, an American orphan adopted by the Shin family, proprietors of a tea ceremony school, after their daughter, Yukako, finds her hiding on their grounds. Aurelia becomes Yukako’s closest companion, and they, the Shin family, and all of Japan face a time of great challenges and uncertainty. Told in an enchanting and unforgettable voice, The Teahouse Fire is a lively, provocative, and lushly detailed historical novel of epic scope and compulsive readability.
Download or read book The Samurai s Wife written by Laura Joh Rowland and published by Minotaur Books. This book was released on 2000-04-25 with total page 565 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling murder mystery set in seventeenth-century Japan, filled with finely drawn characters and suspenseful plot twists, Laura Joh Rowland's The Samurai's Wife is a novel as complex, vivid, and artful as the glorious, lost world it portrays. Far from the Shogun's court at Edo, Most Honorable Investigator Sano Ichiro begins the most challenging case of his career. Upon the insistence of his strong-willed and beautiful wife Reiko, Sano arrives with her at the emperor's palace to unmask the murderer--who possesses the secret of kiai, "the spirit city," a powerful scream that can kill instantly. A high Kyoto official is the victim. Treading carefully through a web of spies, political intrigue, forbidden passions, and intricate plots, Sano and Reiko must struggle to stay ahead of the palace storm--and outwit a cunning killer. But as they soon discover, solving the case means more than their survival. For if they fail, Japan could be consumed in the bloodiest war it has ever seen...
