The new issue of MĀNOA: A Pacific Journal of International Writing, volume 29 number 2, is a collection of Japanese literature in translation edited by Leza Lowitz and Frank Stewart.

From the editors:

Mountain/Home presents new translations of selected Japanese works from the medieval period to the present. The volume opens with traditional folktales, court poetry, Edo Period poetry, and contemporary fiction—all from “One Hundred Literary Views of Mount Fuji,” a collection of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction related to Japan’s national symbol. The works reveal how Japanese attitudes toward Mount Fuji have changed over time, particularly after the country was opened to the West in the nineteenth century.

Table of Contents

One Hundred Literary Views of Mount Fuji: Mount Fuji has been celebrated by poets, novelists, and playwrights for almost 1,500 years, from Japan’s earliest literary works to the present. Peter MacMillan provides these translations and introductions.

• The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter: Taketori Monogatari, a tenth-century tale, recounts the origin of Mount Fuji’s name and is one of the earliest examples of Japanese literary fiction.
• Love Song and Reply: These poems are from the Gosen Wakashū, a major tenth-century anthology of Japanese poetry. Many of the waka in the collection are “dialogue poems,” written in pairs by men and women of the court, speaking the cloaked language of secret love affairs, seductions, and laments.
• from The Confessions of Lady Nijo: Lost for over six hundred years, Lady Nijo’s manuscript was discovered by a Japanese scholar in the Imperial Library in 1940.
• A Tale of a Mount Fuji Cave: This story from the Kamakura Period tells of a journey to the mouth of hell and back.
• Two Haiku by Matsuo Bashō: His poetry broke from the decadent style of the time, finding instead a resonance with nature, simplicity, spontaneity, and originality.
• Sanshirō: In this excerpt from Natsume Soseki’s 1908 coming-of-age novel, the protagonist, Ogawa Sanshiro, is twenty-three years old.

Continue reading “Mountain/Home: New Translations from Japan (MĀNOA 29:2)”