The Jomon Period is the era before writing that extends from the late Pleistocene to 410 BCE. Little is known about the religious and daily life of the earliest Japanese peoples. But they left us with the best-studied and oldest ceramic sequences in the world. Some of the oldest dates to around 15,000 years ago…
Category: History
Tales of Ise
Tales of Ise is referenced throughout early Japanese literature. If you hadn’t read it, you won’t catch some of the meaning Sei Shonagon, Lady Nijo, Murasaki Shikibu, and other writers make through their references. Tales of Ise is a collection of 209 short stories and anecdotes written and collected somewhere between 850 CE and 950 CE….
Sei Shonagon’s Pillow Book
Sei Shonagon’s Pillow Book offers a look at the Imperial court from around 993 to the end of 1000, when she served as a lady-in-waiting for Empress Teishi. We don’t know Sei Shonagon’s true name. The name passed down to us combines the first character (Sei) of her clan name, Kiyowara, and her role at…
The Confessions of Lady Nijo
The Confessions of Lady Nijo is an example of Japan’s traditional women’s literature: the diary. Her father was the head of the Minamoto clan: Major Counselor Masatada, who served the Emperor from 1228-1272. Her mother was the niece of an Honorary Empress. Nijo herself was a lady-in-waiting and the concubine to the Retired Emperor Go-Fukakusa…
The Gossamer Journal
The Gossamer Journal is the memoir of a woman we know only as Michitsuna’s Mother. Michitsuna is the son she had through her marriage with Fujiwara no Kaneie. Michitsuna’s Mother, whom I will call the Gossamer Lady to follow literary convention, was born perhaps around 937 (we don’t know for certain) and died in 995….
Poems from the Frontier of Japan
Most people think of Basho and haiku when they think about Japanese poems. Japanese poetry encompasses more than lovely nature images. The word literature conjures, at least for me, feelings of stuffiness and boredom. It’s easy to forget that what we deem literature, that is, writing representative of a time period, was the love poems…