Japanese Language and Literature

Haiku

Glossary-haiku

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Japan : a country study

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In the past twenty years, worldwide interest in Japanese literature, and in classical Japanese literature in particular, has grown remarkably. Before the 1960s, only Arthur Waley's translations of The Tale of Genji, portions of Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book, and his collection of Noh plays were widely circulated. Thirty years later, in addition to a new translation of Genji, fresh translations of prose, poetry, and theatre pieces originally composed from the beginnings of the Japanese literary tradition to the beginnings of modern developments in the later part of the nineteenth century have allowed both specialists and general readers to obtain a broad grasp of the remarkable developments of this thousand-year tradition by reading versions of these texts in English, and to some extent, in French and German as well.