Misplaced Pages

Travelers of a Hundred Ages: Difference between revisions

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Browse history interactively← Previous editNext edit →Content deleted Content addedVisualWikitext
Revision as of 05:02, 25 January 2013 editTristan noir (talk | contribs)973 edits small tweaks to punctuation, diction← Previous edit Revision as of 05:08, 25 January 2013 edit undoTristan noir (talk | contribs)973 edits untangling a knot in one sentenceNext edit →
Line 1: Line 1:
'''''Travelers of a Hundred Ages''''' is a nonfiction work on the literary form of ] ] by ], who writes in his Introduction that he was introduced to Japanese diaries during his work as a translator for the United States in ] when he was assigned to translate captured diaries of soldiers; he found them moving enough that he continued to study that ]. Keene's book takes the form of self-contained long chapters (originally published as independent essays in Japanese in '']'') that deal with a single diary, each of which is valuable in its own right as a literary work <ref name="diaries-are-so-literature!"> "…but, as far as I know, only in Japan did the diary acquire the status of a literary genre comparable in importance to novels, essays, and other branches of literature that elsewhere are esteemed more highly than diaries." pg 1, Introduction of the Holt edition.</ref> This treatment is especially apparent when Keene writes of ]'s travel diaries, such as '']''), or as windows into the author's life, such as in the case of ]'s ''Meigetsuki'' ("Chronicle of the Clear Moon"). '''''Travelers of a Hundred Ages''''' is a nonfiction work on the literary form of ] ] by ], who writes in his Introduction that he was introduced to Japanese diaries during his work as a translator for the United States in ] when he was assigned to translate captured diaries of soldiers; he found them moving enough that he continued to study that ]. Keene's book takes the form of self-contained long chapters (originally published as independent essays in Japanese in '']'') that deal with a single diary, each of which is valuable in its own right as a literary work <ref name="diaries-are-so-literature!"> "…but, as far as I know, only in Japan did the diary acquire the status of a literary genre comparable in importance to novels, essays, and other branches of literature that elsewhere are esteemed more highly than diaries." pg 1, Introduction of the Holt edition.</ref> This treatment is especially apparent when Keene writes of ]'s travel diaries, such as '']'', or provides a window into an author's life, such as in the case of ]'s ''Meigetsuki'' ("Chronicle of the Clear Moon").


{{Infobox Book {{Infobox Book

Revision as of 05:08, 25 January 2013

Travelers of a Hundred Ages is a nonfiction work on the literary form of Japanese diaries by Donald Keene, who writes in his Introduction that he was introduced to Japanese diaries during his work as a translator for the United States in World War II when he was assigned to translate captured diaries of soldiers; he found them moving enough that he continued to study that genre. Keene's book takes the form of self-contained long chapters (originally published as independent essays in Japanese in Asahi Shimbun) that deal with a single diary, each of which is valuable in its own right as a literary work This treatment is especially apparent when Keene writes of Matsuo Bashō's travel diaries, such as The Narrow Road to the North, or provides a window into an author's life, such as in the case of Fujiwara no Teika's Meigetsuki ("Chronicle of the Clear Moon").

Travelers of a Hundred Ages: The Japanese as Revealed Through 1,000 Years of Diaries
AuthorDonald Keene
Cover artistCover design by Susan Hood
LanguageEnglish
SubjectJapanese diaries and literature
GenreAcademic
PublisherHenry Holt and Company, Inc.
Publication date1989
Publication placeUSA
Media typeTrade paperback
Pages468 (1st edition; including index)
ISBN] Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character
OCLC18835736
Dewey Decimal895.6/803 19
LC ClassPL741.1 .K44 1989

There are variant versions of Travelers of a Hundred Ages; the original English version published by Henry Holt deals with diaries between the 850s CE and up to c. 1850, while the Japanese version has a continuation that brings the time span up to c. 1925, in addition to certain chapters that were omitted from the Holt edition "because it seemed unlikely that they would interest readers outside Japan." An expanded edition was later published by Columbia University Press in 1999.

Thematically, the essays are grouped by historical period. Names are given Japanese-style, family name first.

Contents

"Heian Diaries"

Diaries of the Kamakura Period

Diaries of the Muromachi Period

Diaries of the Early Tokugawa Period

Bashō's Diaries

Diaries of the Later Tokugawa Period

References

  1. "…but, as far as I know, only in Japan did the diary acquire the status of a literary genre comparable in importance to novels, essays, and other branches of literature that elsewhere are esteemed more highly than diaries." pg 1, Introduction of the Holt edition.
  2. pg xi of the 1st Henry Holt edition, Preface.
Categories: