This is my second book by Mishima. My first was the Sound of the Waves which is a simple love story, and basically a Novella. This is very different. The Temple of the Golden Pavillion is transgressive literature and very good. It is apparently based on real events. The story concerns a young Buddhi...
This is an 11th century sort of Memoir. Both the author's name and the title of the book are liberties by the translator. We do not know the name of the woman who wrote the book and the book is called the Sarashina Nikki. Nikki is translated diary or journal, but neither is quite right and autobi...
- Utagawa Toyokuni (1769 - 1825) As Ivan Morris (1925-1976) is best known for his translations and interpretations of the hyper-aestheticized culture of the Japanese imperial court of the Heian era (794-1185), one may well be startled to learn that the last book he published before his regrettab...
The translation is adequate. I wish there were other translations to compare it with available though. I also wish that, in the case of any poetry translations, the original Japanese poems were preserved alongside the translations for comparison and teaching students of the language. You can only ge...
bookshelves: mystery-thriller, autumn-2010, japan, medieval5c-16c, published-1002, epistolatory-diary-blog Recommended for: radio 4 listeners Read from November 14 to 19, 2010 BBC blurb - Lady Shonagon and Lieutenant Yukinari return to investigate a murder in the Palace of the Sun Goddess. A fav...
“To be sure, there are times when the reality of the outer world seems to be waiting for me, folding its arms as it were, while I was struggling to free myself. But the reality that is waiting for me is not a fresh reality. When finally I reach the outer world after all my efforts, all that I find i...
OK he had some character flaws. OK he could be a bore, in that special ultra-right way: all headbands and samurai poses. But Mishima was also a brilliant observer of post-war Japanese culture and this collection contains some of his finest stories. 'Three Million Yen' is my favourite, but they're al...
A very interesting book - some passage of deep beauty, others of some obscurity. It is hard to tell what the book would be like in Japanese. I have a deep mistrust of reading anything in translation (though I am reading a great deal of translation at this point in my life).
Not my style to be honest. I was incredibly discouraged after the first three stories. I ended up particularly liking Patriotism and Onnagata. Doujoji and The Seven Bridges were okay. I hated Thermos Bottles, and don't really care about the other stories.
Loved the character of Shonagon and the descriptions of the elaborate court rituals, suppressed emotions, hidden passions; quite apart from learning about such an extraordinarily regimented and closed society. Wonderful
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