Modern Japanese Literature is Donald Keene’s critically acclaimed companion volume to his landmark Anthology of Japanese Literature. Now considered the standard canon of modern Japanese writing translated into English, Modern Japanese Literature include
Kobo Abe (1924-1993) was one of Japan's most prominent contemporary writers. Born in Japan but raised in Manchuria, he is perhaps best known for his 1962 novel, The Woman in the Dunes, though he was also a prominent screenwriter, producer and director. Li
Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725) wrote some 130 plays, chiefly for the puppet theater, many of which are still performed today by puppet operators and Kabuki actors. Chikamatsu is thought to have written the first major tragedies about the common man. Thi
Chushingura (The Treasury of Loyal Retainers), also known as the story of the Forty-Six (or Forty-Seven) Ronin, is the most famous and perenially popular of all Japanese dramas. Written around 1748 as a puppet play, it is now better know in Kabuki perform
Blue Bamboo is a collection of seven short stories by one of Japan's preeminent postwar writers and prose stylists, Osamu Dazai. Not the typical romantic fantasies so often seen in Japanese writing, filled with water sprites and vengeful ghosts, these sto
This collection of previously unpublished work has been carefully chosen to present the most fully rounded portrait of Osamu Dazai, the tragic genius of 20th century Japanese literature. By turns hilarious, introspective, ironic, and mystical, these remar
Japanese No drama is one of the great art forms that has fascinated people throughout the world. The late Yukio Mishima, one of Japan's outstanding post-war writers, infused new life into the form by using it for plays that preserve the style and inner sp
Preface by Donald KeeneTaketori Monogatari, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter is the oldest surviving Japanese work of fiction; The Tale of Genji (written about 1010) referred to it as the "ancestor of all romances." The names of five suitors, resembling thos
