Travelers of a Hundred Ages [Paperback]

Donald Keene (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1992

At once an intimate account of the diarists' lives and a testimony to the greater struggles and advances of Japanese culture, this book illuminates the hidden and largely unknown worlds of imperial courts, Buddhist monasteries, country inns, and merchants' houses.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"It brings no comfort, I know, to brood over things, but I have become accustomed on sleepless nights to leave my door ajar and wait for the moon to rise, hoping to make it my companion," wrote a teenaged Japanese nun in her diary in 1240. With conversational erudition, Keene ( Dawn to the West ) surveys a genre of unique importance in Japanese literature. Whether written in a consciously literary vein or mainly to record the facts of daily life, the diary "is often a kind of confession, and no confession can be effective unless another person hears it." In Japan, diaries dating from the ninth century on have served as records of travels, court conduct and misconduct, warfare, nature observed, lust indulged and monastic life; taken form in prose, poetry or both, in Chinese or Japanese; and been kept by men and women, be they lay chroniclers, priests or revered poets (e.g., Basho). Keene, professor of Japanese literature at Columbia University, makes the enormous range of Japanese diaries accessible to the English-speaker, examining 60-odd specimens from among the earliest (circa 847) to the more recent (1854), eager always for "the pleasure of discovering people" who "reach out to us over the centuries."
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

The Japanese have always been such inveterate diarists that the diary has become for them a recognized literary form, although the term needs some redefinition for Western readers. Keene, an authority on Japanese literature, here translates (with some editing) a series of over 60 articles he wrote on this form in Japanese for the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. Given the origin of publication, these articles are short (generally 800 to 1600 words), which restricts them in both content and style. They cover diaries written from 847 to 1854, and reveal much of Japanese literary and social history, as well as the intimate connection among diaries, poetry, and women writers. Because much of the material presumes some acquaintance with Japanese, this book will be most useful to those wishing to broaden their knowledge of a unique part of Japanese literature.
- Donald J. Pearce, Univ. of Minnesota Lib., Duluth
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Co (P) (August 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805016554
• ISBN-13: 978-0805016550
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.8 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,509,928 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Anthology or commentary?, April 14, 2008

By 

Maria Thomen "Teacher Maria" (Dominican Republic) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Travelers of a Hundred Ages (Paperback)

This is a very scholarly book, but it was unclear to me whether it was an anthology of Japanese literature (some of the diaries are very short, so that was possible) or the professors explanations and commentaries regarding the different works mentioned. I will find use for it, but it is not what I expected when I ordered it.