This work presents the lives and times of eight prominent Japanese women who epitomize the tragedies and triumphs of eight characteristically female roles. In examining the lives of the mythological Empress Jingu, Jito Tenno (645-702), Murasaki Shikibu (970s-1000s), Tomoe Gozen (12th century), Hojo Masako (1157-1225), Hani Motoko (1873-1957), Takamine Hideko (b.1924) and Ariyoshi Sawako (1931-1984), the contributors provide a mosaic of Japanese history and culture that encompasses issues of women's status in various stages of Japanese history, the social climate conducive to positive female roles, the concept of Japanese womanhood in relation to the male hero types of each age and the popular need for strong female figures.

The Hyakunin Isshu, or One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each collection, is a sequence of one hundred Japanese poems in the tanka form, selected by the famous poet and scholar Fujiwara no Teika (1162-1241) and arranged, in part, to represent the history of Japanese poetry from the seventh century down to Teika's own day. The anthology is, without doubt, the most popular and widely known collection of poetry in Japan - a distinction it has maintained for hundreds of years. In this study, Joshua Mostow challenges the idea of a final or authoritative reading of the Hyakunin Isshu and presents a refreshing, persuasive case for a reception history of this seminal work. In addition to providing a new translation of this classic text and biographical information on each poet, Mostow examines issues relating to text and image that are central to the Japanese arts from the Heian into the early modern period. By using Edo-period woodblock illustrations as pictorializations of the poems - as "pictures of the heart," or meaning, of the poems - text and image are pieced together in a holistic approach that will stand as a model for further research in the interrelationship between Japanese visual and verbal art.

Throughout history, Japanese women have excelled in poetry - from the folk songs of the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) compiled in 712 and the court poetry of the 9th to the 14th centuries, on through the age of haikai and kanshi to the 19th century, into the contemporary period when books of women's poems have created a sensation.This anthology presents examples of the work of more than 100 Japanese women poets, arranged chronologically, and of all the major verse forms: choka, tanka, haikai (haiku), kanshi (verse written in Chinese), and free verse. The poems describe not just seasonal changes and the vagaries of love - which form the thematic core of traditional Japanese poetry - but also the devastations of war, childbirth, conflicts between child-rearing and work, experiences as refugees, experiences as non-Japanese residents in Japan, and more.Sections of poetry open with headnotes, and the editor has provided explanations of terms and references for those unfamiliar with the Japanese language. Other useful tools include a glossary of poetic terms, a chronology, and a bibliography that points the reader toward other works by and about these poets. There is no comparable collection available in English.Students and anyone who appreciates poetry and Japanese culture will treasure this magnificent anthology. Editor and translator Hiroaki Sato is a past winner of the PEN America translator prize and the Japan-United States Friendship Commission's 1999 literary translation award.

The description for this book, The Princeton Companion to Classical Japanese Literature, will be forthcoming.

This provocative collection of essays is a comprehensive study of the "father-daughter dynamic" in Japanese female literary experience. Its contributors examine the ways in which women have been placed politically, ideologically, and symbolically as "daughters" in a culture that venerates "the father." They weigh the impact that this daughterly position has had on both the performance and production of women's writing from the classical period to the present. Conjoining the classical and the modern with a unified theme reveals an important continuum in female authorship-a historical approach often ignored by scholars. The essays devoted to the literature of the classical period discuss canonical texts in a new light, offering important feminist readings that challenge existing scholarship, while those dedicated to modern writers introduce readers to little-known texts with translations and readings that are engaging and original. Contributors: Tomoko Aoyama, Sonja Arntzen, Janice Brown, Rebecca L. Copeland, Midori McKeon, Eileen Mikals-Adachi, Joshua S. Mostow, Sharalyn Orbaugh, Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen, Edith Sarra, Atsuko Sasaki, Ann Sherif.