Modern Asian literature series

(p.9) Zeami Originally published in Japanese as Zeami. (Tokyo: Kawadeshobo-shinsha) Copyright (c) 1964 Masakazu Yamazaki (p.97) Sanetomo Originally published in Japanese as Sanetomo shuppan. (Tokyo: Shincho-sha) Copyright (c) 1973 Masakazu Yamazaki

"In April 1926, the Japanese poet Taneda Santoka (1882-1940) set off on the first of many walking trips, journeys in which he tramped thousands of miles through the Japanese countryside. These journeys were part of his religious training as a Buddhist monk as well as literary inspiration for his memorable and often painfully moving poems. The works he wrote during this time comprise a record of his quest for spiritual enlightenment." "Although Santoka was master of conventional-style haiku, which he wrote in his youth, the vast majority of his works, and those for which he is most admired, are in free-verse form. He also left a number of diaries in which he frequently recorded the circumstances that had led to the composition of a particular poem or group of poems. In For All My Walking, master translator Burton Watson makes Santoka's life story and literary journeys available to English-speaking readers and students of haiku and Zen Buddhism. He allows us to meet Santoka directly, not by withholding his own opinions but by leaving room for us to form our own. Watson's translations bring across not only the poetry but also the emotional force at the core of the poems." "This volume includes 245 of Santoka's poems and of excerpts from his prose diary, along with a chronology of his life and a compelling introduction that provides historical and biographical context to Taneda Santoka's work."--Jacket.

Tanka, a classical Japanese verse form like haiku, has experienced a resurgence of interest among twentieth-century poets and readers. Arguably the central genre of Japanese literature, the 31-syllable lyric made up the great majority of Japanese poetry from the ninth to the nineteenth century and was the inspiration for such poetry as haiku and renga. Tanka has begun to attract considerable attention in North America in recent years. Modern Japanese Tanka is the first comprehensive collection available in English. Tanka retains the aesthetic sensibilities that circumscribe Japanese culture, but just as Japan has changed during this tumultuous century, tanka has undergone equally radical shifts. Responding to artistic and social movements of the West, tanka has incorporated influences ranging from Marxism to Avant-Garde. Modern Japanese Tanka includes four hundred poems by twenty of Japan's most renowned poets who have made major contributions to the history of tanka in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With his graceful, eloquent translations, Makoto Ueda captures the distinct voices of these individual poets, providing biographical sketches of each as well as transliterating Japanese text below each poem. His introduction gives an excellent overview of the development of tanka in the last one hundred years.