Japan’s novelist Natsume Soseki remains relevant for us today. Soseki grew up during the upheaval after the fall of the Shogun and the rise of the Meiji period. He numbered among the first Japanese to live in a Westernized Japan. His experiences of modernization mirror what we experience today with our own transition into attentionization,…
Tag: japanese literature
Winter Haiku Collection
As the heat of summer wears on, winter haiku gives us a chance to think on cold days and all the pleasures of winter. Hot tea. Hot chocolate. Blankets. This collection of haiku includes Basho, Buson, Issa, and a few others. It’s far from exhaustive. Haiku is a style of poetry that requires plain language…
A Taste of Haiku
Haiku is a traditional Japanese poem consisting of three lines and 17 syllables. Unlike Western poetry, haiku rarely rhymes. This poetry conveys layers of meaning by using natural imagery. Zen Buddhism appears throughout haiku, and a specific branch of poetry, called jisei, or death poem, were written just before the writer died in battle or…
The Forty-seven Ronin, A.B. Mitford’s Authoritative Account
Note: This account dates to 1871 and contains unconventional spellings for transliterations. For example, daimyo is spelled daimio. It also uses British-English spellings of words such as honour. I decided to retain these spellings and retain the old grammar rules to help you become used to these conventions. As you dig through old stories (the…
The World’s First Novel: The Tale of Genji
Back in the 11th century, a Japanese woman wrote the world’s first modern novel. The novel remained unknown in the West until after the Meiji Restoration and the rise of modernism in literature. In 1925, Arthur Waley’s translation of the work released, shocking novelists of the time (Phillips, 2010). The Tale of Genji stands as…