EX 417: A Bibliography of Translations and Studies

Women Writers in Japanese Literature 900-1900

The bibliography below is divided into a list of translations and a list of secondary sources. Like the list of Genji translations and studies, it is intended to be comprehensive and thus contains some items that I would not recommend to my students. I should be glad to remedy errors or omissions. The bibliography is restricted to publications in English; I apologize for this limitation.

GGR, March 2010

Download bibliography as PDF file

A. Translations

At the House of Gathered Leaves: Short Biographical and Autobiographical Narratives from Japanese Court Literature, trans. Joshua S. Mostow. University of Hawai’i Press, 2004.

→Contains an introduction and annotated translations of the following texts by women: The Takamitsu Journal (ca. 962), Collected Poems of Hon’in no Jijū (ca. 972) and The Diary of Lady Ise (mid tenth-century).

Fujiwara Michitsuna no haha, Kagerō nikki (ca. 974).

1. Trans. Edward G. Seidensticker, The Gossamer Years: A Diary by a Noblewoman of Heian Japan. Tuttle, 1964.
2. Trans. Sonja Arntzen, The Kagerō Diary: A Woman’s Autobiographical Text from Tenth-Century Japan. Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 1997.

Sei Shōnagon, Makura no sōshi (ca. 993-1001).

1. Trans. Arthur Waley, The Pillow-book of Sei Shōnagon. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1928. Rpt. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1929.
2. Trans. Ivan Morris, The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon. 2 vols. Oxford University Press, 1967. Rpt. Penguin Classics, 1971.
3. Trans. Meredith McKinney, The Pillow Book. Penguin Classics, 2006.

Izumi Shikibu, Izumi Shikibu nikki (ca. 1003).

Trans. Edwin A. Cranston, The Izumi Shikibu Diary. Harvard University Press, 1969.

Murasaki Shikibu, Murasaki Shikibu nikki (ca. 1008-1010).

Trans. Richard Bowring, The Diary of Lady Murasaki. 1982. Rpt. Penguin Classics, 1996.

___________, Genji monogatari (first edition ca. 1008).

1. Trans. Arthur Waley. The Tale of Genji. 6 vols. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1925-1933.
2. Trans. Edward G. Seidensticker. The Tale of Genji. 2 vols. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976.
3. Trans. Royall Tyler, The Tale of Genji. 2 vols. New York: Viking, 2001.

Senshi Naishinnō (964-1035), Hosshin wakashū (1012).

Edward Kamens, The Buddhist Poetry of the Great Kamo Priestess: Daisaiin Senshi and “Hosshin Wakashū”. Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 1990.

Akazome Emon (ca. 960-1040s?), Eiga monogatari (ca. 1030-1045).

William H. and Helen Craig McCullough, A Tale of Flowering Fortunes: Annals of Japanese Aristocratic Life in the Heian Period, 2 vols. Stanford University Press, 1980.

Sugawara no Takasue no musume, Sarashina nikki (ca. 1059).

Trans. Ivan Morris, As I Crossed the Bridge of Dreams: Recollections of a Woman in Eleventh-Century Japan. New York: Dial Press, 1971. Rpt. Penguin Classics, 1975.

__________(?). Hamamatsu Chūnagon monogatari, (ca. 1050).

Thomas H. Rohlich, trans. A Tale of Eleventh-Century Japan: Hamamatsu Chūnagon Monogatari. Princeton University Press, 1983.

__________(?). Yoru no nezame or Yowa no nezame (late eleventh century).

1. Kenneth Richard. “Developments in Late Heian Prose Fiction: ‘The Tale of Nezame’.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, 1973.
2. Carol Hochstedler, trans. The Tale of Nezame: Part Three of “Yowa no Nezame Monogatari.“ Cornell University Asian Papers, no. 22. Cornell University, 1979.

Senji, Sagoromo monogatari (ca. 1060).

Charo D’Etcheverry, trans. “The Story of Asukai.” In Traditional Japanese Literature: An Anthology, Beginnings to 1600, ed. Haruo Shirane. Columbia University Press, 2007, pp. 503-518.

Jōjin Ajari no haha, Jōjin Ajari no haha shū (1067-1073).

Robert Mintzer, “Jōjin azari no haha shū: Maternal Love in the Eleventh Century, An Enduring Testament.” Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1978.

Fujiwara no Nagako, Sanuki no suke nikki (ca. 1107).

Trans. Jennifer Brewster, The Emperor Horikawa Diary. University of Hawai’i Press, 1977.

Kenreimon’in Ukyō no Daibu, Kenreimon’in Ukyō no Daibu shū (1174-1232).

Trans. Phillip Harries, The Poetic Memoirs of Lady Daibu. Stanford University Press, 1980.

Ariake no wakare (c. 1200).

Robert Omar Khan, “Ariake no Wakare: Genre, Gender, and Genealogy in a Late 12th Century Monogatari.” Ph. D. dissertation, University of British Columbia, 1998.

Kengozen, Tamakiwaru (ca. 1219).

C. Miki Wheeler, “Fleeting is Life: Kengozen and her Early Kamakura Court Diary, Tamakiwaru.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 2008.

Ben no Naishi, Ben no Naishi nikki (1246-1252).

Trans. S. Yumiko Hulvey, Sacred Rites in Moonlight: Ben no Naishi Nikki. Cornell East Asia Series, 2005.

Abutsu, Utatane no ki (ca. 1240).

Trans. John R. Wallace, “Fitful Slumbers: Nun Abutsu’s Utatane.” Monumenta Nipponica 43.4 (1988): 391-416.

__________. Menoto no fumi (ca. 1264).

Trans. Christina Laffin, “Nun Abutsu and The Nursemaid‘s Letter.” In Reading The Tale of Genji, ed. Thomas Harper and Haruo Shirane. Columbia University Press, forthcoming.

__________. Izayoi nikki (1283).

1. Trans. Edwin O. Reischauer, “The Izayoi Nikki.” In Translations from Early Japanese Literature, ed. Edwin O. Reischauer and Joseph K. Yamagiwa. Harvard University Press, 1951, pp. 3-135.
2. Trans. Helen Mc Cullough, “Journal of the Sixteenth Night Moon.” In idem., Classical Japanese Prose. Stanford University Press, 1990.
3. Trans. Christina Laffin, “The Diary of the Sixteenth Night.” In Traditional Japanese Literature: An Anthology, Beginnings to 1600, ed. Haruo Shirane. Columbia University Press, 2007, pp. 779-787.

Nakatsukasa no Naishi (= Fujiwara Keishi), Nakatsukasa no Naishi nikki (1280-1292).

Niwa Tamako, “Nakatsukasa Naishi Nikki.” Ph.D. dissertation, Radcliffe, 1955.

Gofukakusa-in Nijō, Towazugatari (ca. 1306).

1. Trans. Karen Brazell, The Confessions of Lady Nijō. Anchor Books, 1973.
2. Trans. Wilfred Whitehouse and Eizo Yanagisawa, Lady Nijō’s Own Story: Towazu-gatari: The Candid Diary of a Thirteenth-Century Japanese Imperial Concubine. Tuttle, 1974.

O-An, Oan monogatari (after 1600).

1. Trans. Thomas J. Harper, “O-An’s Stories.” In Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology 1600-1900, ed. Haruo Shirane. Columbia University Press, 2002, pp. 39-41.
2. Trans. Chris Nelson and Kyoko Selden, “The Tale of Oan.” Review of Japanese Culture and Society 16 (2004): 1-5.

Arii Shokyū (1714-1781), Akikaze no ki (1771).

Trans. Hiroaki Sato, “Record of an Autumn Wind: The Travel Diary of Arii Shokyū.” Monumenta Nipponica 55.1 (2000): 1-43.

Arakida Rei (1732-1806), “Sawa no hotaru” (1778).

Trans. Kyoko Selden, “Fireflies Above the Stream.” Review of Japanese Culture and Society 20 (2008): 253-264.

Tadano Makuzu (1763-1825), Hitori Kangae (1817-1818).

Trans. Janet R. Goodwin, Bettina Gramlich-Oka, Elizabeth A. Leicester, Yuki Terazawa, and Anne Walthall, “Solitary Thoughts: A Translation of Tadano Makuzu’s Hitori Kangae.” Monumenta Nipponica 56:1 (2001): 21-38 and 56:2 (2001): 173-195.

Ema Saikō (1787-1861). Breeze through Bamboo: Kanshi of Ema Saikō. Trans. Hiroaki Sato. Columbia University Press, 1997.

Ōtagaki Rengetsu (1791-1875). Lotus Moon: The Poetry of the Buddhist Nun Rengetsu.

Trans. John Stevens. 1994. Rpt. Buffalo: White Pine Press, 2005.
See also Black Robe White Mist: Art of the Japanese Buddhist Nun Rengetsu, ed. Melanie Eastburn, Lucie Folan, and Robyn Maxwell. Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 2007.

Dalby, Liza. Ko-uta: “Little Songs“ of the Geisha World. Tuttle, 1979; rpt. 2000.

Higuchi Ichiyō (1872-1896). Journal Entries, 1891-1896.

Trans. Kyōko Ōmori. In The Modern Murasaki: Writing by Women of Meiji Japan, ed. Rebecca L. Copeland and Melek Ortabasi. Columbia University Press, 2006, pp. 127-150.

__________. “Takekurabe” (1895-96).

1. Trans. Edward Seidensticker, “Growing Up.” In Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology. Edited by Donald Keene. New York: Grove Press, 1956.
2. Trans. Robert Lyons Danly, “Child’s Play.” In In the Shade of Spring Leaves: The Life and Writings of Higuchi Ichiyō, a Woman of Letters in Meiji Japan. Yale University Press, 1981, pp. 254-287.

→Danly’s biography contains translations of nine of Ichiyō’s stories.

B. Secondary sources

de Beauvoir, Simone. “Women and Creativity” (1966). In French Feminist Thought: A Reader, ed. Toril Moi. Oxford: Blackwell, 1987, pp. 17-32.

Borgen, Robert. “Jōjin Azari no Haha no Shū, A Poetic Reading.” In The Distant Isle: Studies and Translations of Japanese Literature in Honor of Robert H. Brower. Edited by Thomas Hare, Robert Borgen, and Sharalyn Orbaugh. Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 1996, pp. 1-34.

Cavanaugh, Carole. “Text and Textile: Unweaving the Female Subject in Heian Writing.” positions 4.3 (1992): 593-636.

Chang, Yu. “Cultivating the Universal Self: Two Women Kanshi Writers in the Late Edo Period.” In Across Time and Genre: Reading and Writing Japanese Women’s Texts, ed. Janice Brown and Sonja Arnzten. University of Alberta, 2002, pp. 167-171.

Childs, Margaret H. “The Value of Vulnerability: Sexual Coercion and the Nature of Love in Japanese Court Literature.” Journal of Asian Studies 58.4 (1999): 1059-1079.

Copeland, Rebecca L. Lost Leaves: Women Writers of Meiji Japan. University of Hawai’i Press, 2000.

→Chapters on: Jogaku zasshi (Women’s Education Magazine), Miyake Kaho (1868-1944), Wakamatsu Shizuko (1864-1896), and Shimizu Shikin (1868-1933).

Copeland, Rebecca L. and Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen, ed. The Father-Daughter Plot: Japanese Literary Women and the Law of the Father. University of Hawai’i Press, 2001.

Crowley, Cheryl. “Women in Haikai: The Tamamoshū (Jeweled water-grass anthology, 1774) of Yosa Buson.” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal no. 26 (2004): 55-74.

D’Etcheverry, Charo B. “Out of the Mouths of Nurses: The Tale of Sagoromo and Midranks Romance.” Monumenta Nipponica 59.2 (2004): 153-177.

___________. Love After The Tale of Genji: Rewriting the World of the Shining Prince. Harvard University Asia Center, 2007.

→Chapters on “the Rear Court,” Sagoromo monogatari, Hamamatsu Chūnagon monogatari, and Yoru no nezame.

Fister, Patricia. “Female Bunjin: The Life of Poet-Painter Ema Saikō.” In Recreating Japanese Women, 1600-1945, ed. Gail Lee Bernstein. University of California Press, 1991, pp. 108-130.

Fukumori, Naomi. “Sei Shōnagon’s Makura no sōshi: A Re-visionary History.” Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 31.1 (1997): 1-44.

___________. “Chinese Learning as Performative Power in Makura no sōshi and Murasaki Shikibu nikki.” Proceedings of the Association for Japanese Literary Studies vol. 2 (2001): 101-119.

Gatten, Aileen. “Fact, Fiction and Heian Literary Prose: Epistolary Narration in Tonomine Shōshō monogatari.” Monumenta Nipponica 53:2 (1998):153-196.

Gramlich-Oka, Bettina. “Tadano Makuzu and Her Hitori Kangae.” Monumenta Nipponica 56:1 (2001): 1-20.

__________. “Kirishitan kō by Tadano Makuzu: A Late Tokugawa Woman’s Warnings.” Bulletin of Portuguese/Japanese Studies 8 (2004): 65-92.

__________. Thinking Like a Man: Tadano Makuzu (1763-1825). Brill, 2006.

__________. “Tokugawa Women and Spacing the Self.” Early Modern Japan: An Interdisciplinary Journal vol. 14 (2006): 51-67. https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/handle/1811/24274

Hulvey, Shirley Yumiko. “The Nocturnal Muse: Ben no Naishi Nikki.” Monumenta Nipponica 44.4 (1989): 391-413.

Imazeki, Toshiko. “When Women Write: Examining the Gaps in Japanese Literary History,” trans. Christina Laffin. Annual Review of Gender Studies no. 1 (2003): 73-77.

Kimura Saeko. “Regenerating Narratives: The Confessions of Lady Nijō as a Story for Women’s Salvation.” Review of Japanese Culture and Society 19 (2007): 87-102.

Kristeva, Tzvetana. “The pillow hook: The Pillow book as an “open work.” (Nichibunken)Japan Review 5 (1994): 15-54. http://shinku.nichibun.ac.jp/jpub/pdf/jr/IJ0502.pdf

___________. “Murasaki Shikibu vs. Sei Shōnagon: A classical case of envy in medi-evil Japan.” Semiotica 117-2-4 (1997): 201-226.

Laffin, Christina. “Travel as Sacrifice: Abutsu’s Poetic Journey in Diary of the Sixteenth Night Moon,” Review of Japanese Culture and Society 19 (2007): 71-86.

Maeda Ai, trans. Edward Fowler. “Their Time as Children: A Study of Higuchi Ichiyō’s Growing Up (Takekurabe).” In Text and the City: Essays on Japanese Modernity. Ed. James Fujii. Duke University Press, 2004, pp. 109-143.

Millett, Christine Murasaki. “Inverted Classical Allusions and Higuchi Ichiyō’s Literary Technique in Takekurabe.” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal no. 14 (1998): 3-26.

Morris, Mark. “Sei Shōnagon’s Poetic Catalogues.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 40.1 (1980): 5-54.

Mostow, Joshua S. “The Amorous Statesman and the Poetess: The Politics of Autobiography and the Kagerō nikki.” Japan Forum 4.2 (1992): 305-315.

__________. “On Becoming Ukifune: Autobiographical Heroines in Heian and Kamakura Literature.” In Crossing the Bridge: Comparative Essays on Medieval European and Heian Japanese Women Writers, ed. Barbara Stevenson and Cynthia Ho. New York: Palgrave, 2000, pp. 45-60.

___________. “Mother Tongue and Father Script: The Relationship of Sei Shōnagon and Murasaki Shikibu to their Fathers and Chinese Letters.” In Copeland and Ramirez-Christensen 2001, pp. 115-142.

___________. “Female Readers and Early Heian Romances: The Hakubyō Tales of Ise Illustrated Scroll Fragments.” Monumenta Nipponica 62.2 (2007): 135-177.

Nagase, Mari. “Pursuing ‘Women’s Words’: The Poetry of Ema Saikō.” In Across Time and Genre: Reading and Writing Japanese Women’s Texts, ed. Janice Brown and Sonja Arnzten. University of Alberta, 2002, pp. 100-102.

Negri, Carolina. “Marriage in the Heian Period (794-1185): The Importance of Comparison with Literary Texts,” Annali Istituto Universitario Orientale Napoli (AION) 60-61 (2000): 467-493.

Ōba Minako. “Without Beginning, Without End.” In The Woman’s Hand: Gender and Theory in Japanese Women’s Writing, ed. Paul Gordon Schalow and Janet A. Walker. Stanford University Press, 1996, pp. 19-40.

Pandey, Rajyashree. “Poetry, Sex and Salvation: The ‘Courtesan’ and the Noblewoman in Medieval Japanese Narratives.” Japanese Studies 24.1 (2004): 61-79.

Ruch, Barbara. “The Other Side of Culture in Medieval Japan.” In The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 3: Medieval Japan, ed. Kozo Yamamura. Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 500-543.

Sakaki, Atsuko. “Sliding Doors: Women and Chinese Literature in the Heterosocial Literary Field.” In idem, Obsessions with the Sino-Japanese Polarity in Japanese Literature. University of Hawai’i Press, 2005, pp. 103-142.

Sarra, Edith. Fictions of Femininity: Literary Inventions of Gender in Japanese Court Women’s Memoirs. Stanford University Press, 1999.

__________. “Towazugatari: Unruly Tales from a Dutiful Daughter.” In Copeland and Ramirez-Christensen 2001, pp. 89-114.

Seigle, Cecilia Segawa. “Shogun’s Consort: Konoe Hiroko and Tokugawa Ienobu.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 59.2 (1999): 485-522.

__________. “Shinanomiya Tsuneko: Portrait of a Court Lady.” In The Human Tradition in Modern Japan, ed. Anne Walthall. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2002, pp. 3-24.

Suzuki, Tomi. “Gender and Genre: Modern Literary Histories and Women’s Diary Literature.” In Inventing the Classics: Modernity, National Identity, and Japanese Literature, ed. Haruo Shirane and Tomi Suzuki. Stanford University Press, 2000, pp. 71-95.

Tanaka, Rokuo. “Forgotten Women: Two Kyōka Poets of the Temmei Era.” In Understanding Humor in Japan, ed. Jessica Milner Davis. Wayne State University Press, 2006, pp. 111-125.

→The women poets discussed are “Fushimatsu Kaka” (Yamazaki Matsu, 1745-1810) and “Chie no Naishi” (Kaneko Michi, 1745-1807).

Tocco, Martha C. “Norms and Texts for Women’s Education in Tokugawa Japan.” In Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea, and Japan, ed. Dorothy Ko, JaHyun Kim Haboush, and Joan R. Piggott. University of California Press, 2003, pp. 193-218.

Tonomura, Hitomi. “Long Black Hair and Red Trousers: Gendering the Flesh in Medieval Japan.” American Historical Review 99.1 (1994): 129-154.

__________. “Re-envisioning Women in the Post-Kamakura Age.” In The Origins of Japan’s Medieval World: Courtiers, Clerics, Warriors, and Peasants in the Fourteenth Century, ed. Jeffrey P. Mass. Stanford University Press, 1997, pp. 138-169.

__________. “Coercive Sex in the Medieval Japanese Court: Lady Nijō’s Memoirs.” Monumenta Nipponica 61.3 (2006): 283-338.

Van Compernolle, Timothy J. The Uses of Memory: The Critique of Modernity in the Fiction of Higuchi Ichiyō. Harvard University Asia Center, 2006.

→Offers close readings of five of Ichiyō’s stories: “Ōtsugomori” (On the Last Day of the Year, 1894), “Nigorie” (Troubled Waters, 1895), “Jūsan’ya” (The Thirteenth Night, 1895), “Takekurabe” (Child’s Play, 1895-1896), and “Wakaremichi” (Separate Ways, 1896).

Vernon, Victoria V. Daughters of the Moon: Wish, Will, and Social Constraint in Fiction by Modern Japanese Women. Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1988.

→In chapter three, “Between Two Worlds: Higuchi Ichiyō’s ‘Takekurabe’,” Vernon defends Ichiyō against Hiratsuka Raichō’s complaint that she “failed to challenge the conventional view of the floating world first articulated in Genroku fiction” (p. 66).

Walker, Janet A. “Poetic Ideal and Fictional Reality in the Izumi Shikibu nikki.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 37.1 (1977): 135-182.

__________. “The Cinematic Art of Higuchi Ichiyō’s Takekurabe (Comparing Heights, 1895-1896).” In Word and Image in Japanese Cinema, ed. Dennis Washburn and Carole Cavanaugh. Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Wallace, John R. Objects of Discourse: Memoirs by Women of Heian Japan. Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2005.

→Discusses Kagerō nikki, Izumi Shikibu nikki, Murasaki Shikibu nikki, and Sarashina nikki.

Walthall, Anne. The Weak Body of a Useless Woman: Matsuo Taseko and the Meiji Revolution. Chicago University Press, 1998.

Watanabe Minoru. “Style and Point of View in the Kagerō nikki,” trans. Richard Bowring. Journal of Japanese Studies 10.2 (1984):

Yamakawa Kikue. Women of the Mito Domain: Recollections of Samurai Family Life. Orig. pub. 1943. Trans. Kate Wildman Nakai. University of Tokyo Press, 1992.

Also see the Women and Books in Japan website: http://jwomen.ames.cam.ac.uk/