Description
Winner 2023-2024 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature, Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture
Compiled in the early tenth century, the Kokinshu is an anthology of some eleven hundred poems that aimed to elevate the prestige of vernacular Japanese poetry at the imperial court. From shortly after its completion to the end of the nineteenth century, it was celebrated as the cornerstone of the Japanese vernacular poetic tradition. The composition of classical poetry, other later poetic forms such as linked verse and haikai, and vernacular Japanese literary writing in its entirety (including classic works such as Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji and Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book) all draw from the Kokinshu.
This book offers an inviting and immersive selection of roughly one-third of the anthology in English translation. Torquil Duthie focuses on rendering the poetic language of the Kokinshu as a whole, in such a way that readers can understand and experience how its poems work together to create a literary world. He emphasizes that classical Japanese poems do not stand alone as self-contained artifacts but take part in an ongoing intertextual conversation. Duthie provides translations and interpretations of the two prefaces to the Kokinshu, which deeply influenced Japanese literary aesthetics. The book also includes critical essays on various aspects of the anthology and its history. This translation helps specialist and nonspecialist readers alike appreciate the beauty and richness of the Kokinshu, as well as its significance for the Japanese literary tradition.
About the Author
Torquil Duthie is professor of Japanese literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Man'yoshu and the Imperial Imagination in Early Japan (2014).
Reviews
These eminently readable and often beautiful translations will appeal to a new generation of readers in Japanese studies and beyond. The accompanying essays survey the genesis and afterlives of the collection and offer significant new insights on the original language of the poems and how to appreciate them in translation. -- Joseph T. Sorensen, author of Optical Allusions: Screens, Paintings, and Poetry in Classical Japan (ca. 800-1200)
From the cries of the warbler in spring to the lonely nights of longing for a lover, Duthie offers fresh translations from each book of the Kokinshu, while grounding us in histories of scripts, reading and writing practices, and the power of poetry in premodern Japan. -- Christina Laffin, author of Rewriting Medieval Japanese Women: Politics, Personality, and Literary Production in the Life of Nun Abutsu
This book should appeal to anyone interested in Japanese poetry, both for its evocative rendering of selections from the Kokinshu and for its concisely informative account of the classic waka anthology. -- Gustav Heldt, translator of The Kojiki: An Account of Ancient Matters
Awards
Winner of Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature, Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture 2023-2024.
Book Information
ISBN 9780231207638
Author Torquil Duthie
Format Paperback
Page Count 432
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press
Compiled in the early tenth century, the Kokinshu is an anthology of some eleven hundred poems that aimed to elevate the prestige of vernacular Japanese poetry at the imperial court. From shortly after its completion to the end of the nineteenth century, it was celebrated as the cornerstone of the Japanese vernacular poetic tradition. The composition of classical poetry, other later poetic forms such as linked verse and haikai, and vernacular Japanese literary writing in its entirety (including classic works such as Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji and Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book) all draw from the Kokinshu.
This book offers an inviting and immersive selection of roughly one-third of the anthology in English translation. Torquil Duthie focuses on rendering the poetic language of the Kokinshu as a whole, in such a way that readers can understand and experience how its poems work together to create a literary world. He emphasizes that classical Japanese poems do not stand alone as self-contained artifacts but take part in an ongoing intertextual conversation. Duthie provides translations and interpretations of the two prefaces to the Kokinshu, which deeply influenced Japanese literary aesthetics. The book also includes critical essays on various aspects of the anthology and its history. This translation helps specialist and nonspecialist readers alike appreciate the beauty and richness of the Kokinshu, as well as its significance for the Japanese literary tradition.
About the Author
Torquil Duthie is professor of Japanese literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Man'yoshu and the Imperial Imagination in Early Japan (2014).
Reviews
These eminently readable and often beautiful translations will appeal to a new generation of readers in Japanese studies and beyond. The accompanying essays survey the genesis and afterlives of the collection and offer significant new insights on the original language of the poems and how to appreciate them in translation. -- Joseph T. Sorensen, author of Optical Allusions: Screens, Paintings, and Poetry in Classical Japan (ca. 800-1200)
From the cries of the warbler in spring to the lonely nights of longing for a lover, Duthie offers fresh translations from each book of the Kokinshu, while grounding us in histories of scripts, reading and writing practices, and the power of poetry in premodern Japan. -- Christina Laffin, author of Rewriting Medieval Japanese Women: Politics, Personality, and Literary Production in the Life of Nun Abutsu
This book should appeal to anyone interested in Japanese poetry, both for its evocative rendering of selections from the Kokinshu and for its concisely informative account of the classic waka anthology. -- Gustav Heldt, translator of The Kojiki: An Account of Ancient Matters
Awards
Winner of Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature, Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture 2023-2024.
Book Information
ISBN 9780231207638
Author Torquil Duthie
Format Paperback
Page Count 432
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press
