Wednesday 9 January 2019

№ 18 reading list: Japanese literature II

№ 18 reading list: Japanese literature II · Lisa Stefan


New Year, new Japanese reading list, finally. Some of you have been waiting for this one. I had nailed down the list but had to make a couple of adjustments, as two English translations of books I wanted to read now were unavailable at the library; they will be on the third one. The Pillow Book by Sei Shonagon is, like The Tale of Genji which was on the first, a classic by a Japanese lady of the court, written around the year 1000, during the Heian period in Japanese history. I know of an English translation by Ivan Morris, published in 1967, but I'm reading a newer one by Meredith McKinney, published by Penguin Classics.

№ 18 reading list:
1  The Pillow Book  by Sei Shonagon
2  No Longer Human  by Osamu Dazai
3  Scandal  by Shusaku Endo
4  The Old Capital  by Yasunari Kawabata
5  Quicksand  by Junichiro Tanizaki
6  Death in Midsummer and Other Stories  by Yukio Mishima
7  Lost Japan  by Alex Kerr

Translated by, in this order: 1) Meredith McKinney; 2) Donald Keene; 3) Van C. Gessel;
4) J. Martin Holman; 5) Howard Hibbett; 6) Edward G. Seidensticker, Ivan Morris et al.;
7) Alex Kerr and Bodhi Fishman.

The blog post title says Japanese literature but this time I had to add one non-fiction to the list, Lost Japan by Alex Kerr, originally written in Japanese. You may have seen it on my Instagram. It was a Christmas present from my oldest, who also gave me Edward W. Said's Orientalism. She chose well, right? Most of the books on the list are relatively short - I have almost finished three - so you can expect me sharing another reading list at the beginning of February.

Happy New Year!



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