| The Sarashina Diary: A Woman's Life in Eleventh-Century Japan Contributor(s): Sugawara No Takasue No Musume, Sugawara (Author), Arntzen, Sonja (Translator), Itō, Moriyuki (Translator) |
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ISBN: 0231167180 ISBN-13: 9780231167185 Publisher: Columbia University Press OUR PRICE: $49.50 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: July 2014 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | Asian - Japanese - History | Asia - Japan - Biography & Autobiography | Women |
| Dewey: 952.01 |
| LCCN: 2013044356 |
| Series: Translations from the Asian Classics (Hardcover) |
| Physical Information: 1" H x 6" W x 9" (1.10 lbs) 264 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Japanese - Sex & Gender - Feminine |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: A thousand years ago, a young Japanese girl embarked on a journey from the wild East Country to the capital. She began a diary that she would continue to write for the next forty years and compile later in life, bringing lasting prestige to her family. Some aspects of the author's life and text seem curiously modern. She married at age thirty-three and identified herself as a reader and writer more than as a wife and mother. Enthralled by romantic fiction, she wrote extensively about the disillusioning blows that reality can deal to fantasy. The Sarashina Diary is a portrait of the writer as reader and an exploration of the power of reading to shape one's expectations and aspirations. As a person and an author, this writer presages the medieval era in Japan with her deep concern for Buddhist belief and practice. Her narrative's main thread follows a trajectory from youthful infatuation with romantic fantasy to the disillusionment of age and concern for the afterlife; yet, at the same time, many passages erase the dichotomy between literary illusion and spiritual truth. This new translation captures the lyrical richness of the original text while revealing its subtle structure and ironic meaning. The introduction highlights the poetry in the Sarashina Diary and the juxtaposition of poetic passages and narrative prose, which brings meta-meanings into play. The translators' commentary offers insight into the author's family and world, as well as the fascinating textual legacy of her work. |
Contributor Bio(s): Sugawara No Takasue No Musume, Sugawara No Takasue No Musume: - Takasue's Daughter, or Sugawara no Takasue no musume, was a Japanese author. "Sugawara no Takasue no musume" means a daughter of Sugawara no Takasue. Her real name is unknown.Arntzen, Sonja: - Sonja Arntzen is professor emerita of Literature at the University of Toronto. She is a scholar of Pre-modern Japanese literature, history, religion, thought, and classical Japanese language. She has translated The Kagero Diary: A Woman's Autobiographical Text from Tenth-Century Japan (U. of Michigan, 1997). With Columbia University Press, she has published Ikkyu and the Crazy Cloud Anthology: A Zen Poet of Medieval Japan (1987), Kana Classic: An Electronic Guide to Learning Classical Japanese Kana Writing (1998), and The Sarashina Diary: A Woman's Life in Eleventh-Century Japan.Itō, Moriyuki: - Moriyuki Itô holds a PhD from Tôhoku University, (1995). He taught from 1984 to 2005 at Hirosaki University. He is currently professor of Japanese Literature at Gakushûin Women's College in Tokyo. He has published many articles on the Sarashina Diary over a period of thirty years. His Sarashina nikki Kenkyû, (Research on the Sarashina Diary) published in 1995 is recognized as a definitive work on the subject. |