"The travel writings of Matsuo Basho are of enormous literary importance, and so it is a joy to see them collected in this compact volume, in translations of exemplary elegance, faithfulness, and accessibility. The annotations are especially valuable: they show a solid grasp of the author's life, work, and times, and provide rich and detailed background information about allusions to Chinese and Japanese classics. Along with the high quality of the translations themselves, this thorough commentary makes the book a significant scholarly resource and will help readers appreciate the density and delicacy of Basho's writing. A very welcome addition to the English-language literature on one of the central poets of the Japanese tradition ." David B. Lurie, Columbia University

This anthology brings togethere in convenient form a rich selection of Japanese poetry in traditional genres dating back from the earliest times to the twentieth century. With more than 1,100 poems, it is the most varied and comprehensive selection of traditional Japanese poetry now available in English.
Ezra Pound called poetry "the most concentrated form of verbal expression," and the great poets of Japan wrote poems as charged and compressed as poems can be. The Japanese language, with its few consonates and even fewer vowels, did not lend itself to expansive forms, making small seem better and perhaps more powerful. There is also the historical context in which Japanese poetry developed--the highly refined society of the early courts of Nara and Kyoto. In this setting, poetry came to be used as much for communication between lovers and friends as for artistic expression, and a tradition of cryptic statement evolved, with notes passed from sleeve to sleeve or conundrums exchanged furtively in the night.
Add to this the high sense of decorum that dominated court society for centuries, and you have the conditions that led to the development of the classical uta
(also referred to as tanka
or waka
), the thrity-one-syllable form that acts as the foundation for virtually all poetry written in Japanese between 850 and 1900.
In choosing poems, the compiler has given priority to authors and works gnerally acknowledged as of great artistic and/or historical importance by Japanese scholars. For this reason, major poets such as Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, Izumi Shikibu, Saigyo, and Matsuo Basho are particualarly important collections such as Man'yoshu, Kokinshu, and Shinkokinshu. In addtion, the volume also contains samplings from genres such as the poetic diary, linked verse, Chinese forms, and comic verse.

While the rise of the charmingly simple, brilliantly evocative "haiku" is often associated with the seventeenth-century Japanese poet Matsuo Basho, the form had already flourished for more than four hundred years before Basho even began to write. These early poems, known as "hokku," are identical to "haiku" in syllable count and structure but function differently as a genre. Whereas each "haiku" is its own constellation of image and meaning, a "hokku" opens a series of linked, collaborative stanzas in a sequence called "renga."

Under the mastery of Basho, "hokku" first gained its modern independence. His talents contributed to the evolution of the style into the "haiku" beloved by so many poets around the world--Richard Wright, Jack Kerouac, and Billy Collins being notable devotees. "Haiku Before Haiku" presents 320 "hokku" composed between the thirteenth and early eighteenth centuries, from the poems of the courtier Nijo Yoshimoto to those of the genre's first "professional" master, Sogi, and his disciples. It features 20 masterpieces by Basho himself. Steven D. Carter introduces the history of "haiku" and its aesthetics, classifying these poems according to style and context. His rich commentary and notes on composition and setting illuminate each work, and he provides brief biographies of the poets, the original Japanese text in romanized form, and earlier, classical poems to which some of the "hokku" allude.

How to Read a Japanese Poem offers a comprehensive approach to making sense of traditional Japanese poetry of all genres and periods. Steven D. Carter explains to Anglophone students the methods of composition and literary interpretation used by Japanese poets, scholars, and critics from ancient times to the present, and adds commentary that will assist the modern reader. How to Read a Japanese Poem presents readings of poems by major figures such as Saigyo and Basho as well as lesser known poets, with nearly two hundred examples that encompass all genres of Japanese poetry. The book gives attention to well-known forms such as haikai or haiku, as well as ancient songs, comic poems, and linked verse. Each chapter provides examples of a genre in chronological order, followed by notes about authorship and other contextual details, including the time of composition, physical setting, and social occasion. The commentaries focus on a central feature of Japanese poetic discourse: that poems are often occasional, written in specific situations, and are best read in light of their milieu. Carter elucidates key concepts useful in examining Japanese poetics as well as the technical vocabulary of Japanese poetic discourse, familiarizing students with critical terms and concepts. An appendix offers succinct definitions of technical terms and essays on aesthetic ideals and devices.

How to Read a Japanese Poem offers a comprehensive approach to making sense of traditional Japanese poetry of all genres and periods. Steven D. Carter explains to Anglophone students the methods of composition and literary interpretation used by Japanese poets, scholars, and critics from ancient times to the present, and adds commentary that will assist the modern reader. How to Read a Japanese Poem presents readings of poems by major figures such as Saigyo and Basho as well as lesser known poets, with nearly two hundred examples that encompass all genres of Japanese poetry. The book gives attention to well-known forms such as haikai or haiku, as well as ancient songs, comic poems, and linked verse. Each chapter provides examples of a genre in chronological order, followed by notes about authorship and other contextual details, including the time of composition, physical setting, and social occasion. The commentaries focus on a central feature of Japanese poetic discourse: that poems are often occasional, written in specific situations, and are best read in light of their milieu. Carter elucidates key concepts useful in examining Japanese poetics as well as the technical vocabulary of Japanese poetic discourse, familiarizing students with critical terms and concepts. An appendix offers succinct definitions of technical terms and essays on aesthetic ideals and devices.

"The travel writings of Matsuo Basho are of enormous literary importance, and so it is a joy to see them collected in this compact volume, in translations of exemplary elegance, faithfulness, and accessibility. The annotations are especially valuable: they show a solid grasp of the author's life, work, and times, and provide rich and detailed background information about allusions to Chinese and Japanese classics. Along with the high quality of the translations themselves, this thorough commentary makes the book a significant scholarly resource and will help readers appreciate the density and delicacy of Basho's writing. A very welcome addition to the English-language literature on one of the central poets of the Japanese tradition ." -David B. Lurie, Columbia University

A court lady of the Heian era, an early modern philologist, a Meiji-period novelist, and a physicist at Tokyo University. What do they have in common, besides being Japanese? They all wrote zuihitsu -- a uniquely Japanese literary genre encompassing features of the nonfiction or personal essay and miscellaneous musings. For sheer range of subject matter and breadth of perspective, the zuihitsu is unrivaled in the Japanese literary tradition, which may explain why few examples have been translated into English. Springing from a variety of social, artistic, political, and professional discourses, zuihitsu is an undeniably important literary form practiced by all types of people who reveal much about themselves, their identities, and the times in which they lived. Zuihitsu also contain a good deal of humor, which is often underrepresented in translations of serious Japanese writing.This anthology presents a representative selection of more than one hundred zuihitsu from a range of historical periods written by close to fifty authors -- from well-known figures, such as Matsuo Basho, Natsume Soseki, and Koda Aya, to such writers as Tachibana Nankei and Dekune Tatsuro, whose names appear here for the first time in English.Writers speak on the experience of coming down with a cold, the aesthetics of tea, the physiology and psychology of laughter, the demands of old age, standards of morality, childrearing, the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, sleeplessness, undergoing surgery, and training a parrot to say thank you. Varying in length from paragraphs to pages, these works also provide moving descriptions of snowy landscapes, foggy London, Ueno Park's famous cherry blossoms, and the appeal of rainy vistas, and relate the joys and troubles of everyone from desperate samurai to filial children and ailing cats.