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Profiling individual, legendary authors, best-selling author Jerry Hopkins combines his research and his own experiences as a longtime expatriate with an intimate knowledge of Asia and offers us a unique perspective on the impact of Eastern culture in Western literature. From the time of Marco Polo's trek across the Central Asian desert to the empire of the mighty Kahn, no other place on earth, not the languid South Pacific or even deepest, darkest...
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This classic Japanese story by Soseki Netsume-the foremost novelist of the Meiji Period-is a masterpiece of Japanese literature. This book demonstrates Soseki Natsume's ability to dissect and elucidate the human personality in all its complexity. Here, his facile blending of narrative, extended monologue and sharp dialog leaves the reader with an almost personal knowledge of the characters. We are introduced to Keitaro, a recent college graduate hunting...
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This classic introduction to the Chinese literature is a fundamental step towards the West's understanding of the rich literary legacy of China. Readable, condensed, entertaining, the selections contained in this book belong to enduring world literature; the "Great Society" envisioned by Confucius; the "Fireside Chats" of K'ang Hei; the supercilious letter of the Emperor Ch'ien Lung to King George of England; the "Memorial: on the Bone of Buddha";...
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First published as Nihyaku Toka in 1906, The 210th Day is published here for the first time in English. Focusing on two strongly contrasting characters, Kei and Roku, as they attempt to climb the rumbling Mount Aso as it threatens to erupt, it is a celebration of personal experience and subjective reaction to an event in the author's life. During their progress up the mountain-where they encounter a storm on the 210th day (the lunar calendar day traditionally...
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Written in eight days, in December 1905, and published in the January 1906 issue of the magazine Teikoku Bungaku (Imperial Literature), Shumi no iden (The Heredity of Taste) is Soseki Natsume's only anti-war work. Chronicling the mourning process of a narrator haunted by his friend's death, the story reveals Soseki's attitude to the atrocity of war, specifically to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, and to the personal tragedies and loss of individuality...
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This haiku book provides an invaluable guide to developing your own haiku-writing skills, with clear explanations, brilliant examples, and innovative writing exercises. It also offers an introduction to related Japanese poetic forms including: o Senryu commentaries on human nature that are often humorous or ironic o Haibun short, autobiographical narratives accompanied by a haiku o Tanka imaginative poems full of highly personal, emotional expressions...
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Japanese and Western Literature delves deeply into Japanese culture to discover the concepts that relate and differentiate Japanese and Western literary creations. Paralleling Japanese literary creations and fundamental thought with those of the West, the author draws many illuminating comparisons: for example, between the novels of Murasaki Shikibu and Marcel Proust, between the Portuguese poet Torga and the haiku master Issa, and between the picaresque...
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Professor Aston's A History of Japanese Literature has a permanent place on the bookshelves of all lovers of Japan. William George Aston, who pioneered in the translation of Japanese literature into English, made many original contributions to Japanese studies. His writing is fresh and informative. The periods reviewed range from the ancient days, when Japan's history was just dawning, to the Meiji Restoration of 1868, when all aspects of Japanese...
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A History of Chinese Literature is THE classic introduction to Chinese literature, which has given to the world exquisite poetry and such classics as Monkey, The Analects of Confucius, the works of Chuang Tzu, and other writings over a time span of 2,500 or more years. Author, Professor Giles, a legendary scholar of Chinese, was best known for the Wade-Giles romanization system. In this book he considered all forms of Chinese literature including:...
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The fourteen distinct voices of this collection tell fourteen very different stories spanning sixty years of twentieth-century Japanese literature. They include a nostalgic portrait of an aristocratic Meiji family in Kafu Nagai's "The Fox," a surprisingly cheerful celebration of postwar chaos in Sakaguchi Ango's "One Woman and the War," a chilly assessment of the modern society in Watanabe Junichi's "Invitation to Suicide," and much more. The writers...
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First published in 1686, this collection of five novellas was an immediate bestseller in the bawdy world that was Genroku Japan, and the book's popularity has increased with age, making it today a literary classic like Boccaccio's Decameron, or the works of Rabelais. The book follows five determined women in their always amorous, erotic and usually illicit adventures. The five heroines are Onatsu, already wise in the ways of love the tender age of...
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This collection of translated tales is from the most famous work in all of Japanese classical literature-the Konjaku Monogatari Shu. This collection of traditional Japanese folklore is akin to the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer or Dante's Inferno-powerfully entertaining tales that reveal striking aspects of the cultural psychology, fantasy, and creativity of medieval Japan-tales that still resonate with modern Japanese readers today. The ninety stories...
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China's most popular traditional novel, Journey to the West is the thrilling story of the Monkey King and his epic quest, with his trusted companions, to redeem himself. They face fantastic foes, demons and monsters during their amazing adventures traveling to the Western paradise. No matter what obstacle was put before him, the clever, wily Monkey King always got what he wanted-unimaginable strength, eternal life, even his own position in the Celestial...
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Kagero Nikki, translated here as The Gossamer Years, belongs to the same period as the celebrated Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikuibu. This remarkably frank autobiographical diary and personal confession attempts to describe a difficult relationship as it reveals two tempestuous decades of the author's unhappy marriage and her growing indignation at rival wives and mistresses. Too impetuous to be satisfied as a subsidiary wife, this beautiful (and...
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For the first time, English readers have access to Soseki's Spring Miscellany. Originally published as Eijitu Shohin in serial form in the Asahi newspaper in 1909, before appearing in book form, Spring Miscellany is an pastiche of twenty-five sketches, referred to as shohin (little items), heir to the great zuihitsu tradition of discursive prose. These personal vignettes are clearly autobiographical and reveal Soseki's kaleidoscopic view of his private...
16) Harp of Burma
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Harp of Burma is Japan's haunting answer to Germany's well-known requiem for the First World War, All Quiet on the Western Front. The subject of an acclaimed film by Ichikawa Kon, Harp of Burma portrays a company of Japanese troops who are losing a desperate campaign against British forces in the tropical jungles of Burma. The young soldiers discover that the trials of war involve more than just opposing the enemy. The foreign climate and terrain,...
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This classic work of Japanese literature is considered the masterpiece of Japanese novelist Seken Munasanya. This Scheming World (Seken Munasanyo) was published in 1692, one year before the author's death. It represents the culmination of Saikaku's perceptive genius, and in structure, is one of the most consolidated of all his works. Most of the stories are told as incidents or episodes relating to New Year's Eve, when in those days it was the custom...
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Kobayashi Issa Haiku, the traditional Japanese verse form composed of seventeen syllables, can express a dramatic scene or philosophical idea in a single line of verse. In this collection, haiku poet Yuzuru Miura has selected and translated poems by past masters such as Basho and Buson, as well as haiku by contemporary poets. Fireflies, pheasants, a summer shower, winter snow, camellias all the favorite haiku subjects are included among the one hundred...
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Sang Thong: A Dance-Drama from Thailand, a beloved treasure of Thailand's classical theater is now available for the first time in English. Composed by King Rama II and his court poets early in the 19th century, this captivating dance-drama blends ribald humor, sharp observation, and graceful poetry. Its incidents are based on age-old Asian legends and on vigorous folk-traditions of the Thai countryside, where King Rama II had been raised as a commoner...
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Chapters from fourteen best-selling classic novels published between 1842 and 1919 are compiled here for today's readers. The selections not only give a rare un-stereotyped look at the day-to-day life in grandma's time but also reveal a wealth of good reading that has long been forgotten. Tales about sheepherding contest, a family Sunday evening around the fireplace, a great snowstorm, a new minister in town, an American who inherits an English estate,...
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