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, April 2023

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.
    →See also Valerie Henitiuk, Worlding Sei Shōnagon: The Pillow Book in Translation. University of Ottowa Press, 2012.

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

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

___________. Gojusshu waka (early 11th century).

Trans. Roselee Bundy, “The Shape of Love and Loss: Izumi Shikibu’s Gojusshu waka (五十首和歌, Fifty-Poem Sequence).” Japanese Language and Literature 54.2 (2020): 217-250. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5195/jll.2020.15

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.
  4. Trans. Dennis Washburn, The Tale of Genji. New York: Norton, 2015.

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 (956?-after 1041), Eiga monogatari (ca. 1030-1045).

  1. 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.
  2. Takeshi Watanabe has published his translation of the sequel (zokuhen, completed ca. 1092), i.e. the last ten chapters of Eiga monogatari, on his faculty website. See: http://twatanabe.faculty.wesleyan.edu/

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

  1. 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.
  2. Trans. Sonja Arntzen and Moriyuki Itō, The Sarashina Diary: A Woman’s Life in Eleventh-Century Japan. Columbia University Press, 2014.  Reader’s edition, 2018.

__________(?). 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).

Dutcher, David Pearsall. “Sagoromo monogatari.” Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 2006.

One section of this translation has been published in Japan Focus: The Asia Pacific Journal 14.3 (1 October 2016): 1-25. Access at: apjjf.org/2016/19/Dutcher.html

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.

Shokushi / Shikishi Naishinnō (d. 1201).

Hiroaki Sato, String of Beads: Complete Poems of Princess Shikishi. University of Hawai’i Press, 1993.

Ariake no wakare (ca. 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).

Carolyn Miyuki 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-ni (1225-1283). Utatane no ki (mid 13th century).

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

__________. Menoto no fumi (ca. 1264).

Excerpts trans. Christina Laffin, The Nursemaid‘s Letter. In Reading The Tale of Genji, ed. Thomas Harper and Haruo Shirane. Columbia University Press, 2015.

__________. Abutsu kana fuju (“Abutsu’s Kana Prayer,” 1275).

__________. Yoru no tsuru (“Evening Crane,” 1276).

__________. 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 McCullough, “Journal of the Sixteenth Night Moon.” In idem., Classical Japanese Prose. Stanford University Press, 1990.
  3. Excerpts 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 Tsuneko), Nakatsukasa no Naishi nikki (1280-1292).

Niwa Tamako (1922-2015), “Nakatsukasa Naishi Nikki.” Ph.D. dissertation, Radcliffe, 1955.

Pamela B. Ikegami, “Nakatsukasa Naishi Nikki: Literary Conventions in the Memoirs of a Thirteenth Century Court Lady.” MA dissertation, University of Hawai’i, 1994.

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.

Hino Nako (1310?-1358). Takemuki ga ki (1329-1333; 1337-1349).

Trans. Royall Tyler, From the Bamboo-View Pavilion. (Fourteenth-Century Voices I). Charley’s Forest, NSW: Blue-Tongue Books, 2016.

O-An, Oan monogatari (after 1600, first printed 1837).

  1. Trans. Basil Hall Chamberlain, “A Short Memoir From the Seventeenth Century (‘Mistress An’s Narrative’).” Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. 8 (1880): 277-282.
  2. 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.
  3. Trans. Chris Nelson and Kyoko Selden, “The Tale of Oan.” Review of Japanese Culture and Society 16 (2004): 1-5.

Mukai Chine (after 1651-?) and Mukai Kyorai (1651-1704), Ise Kikō (1686, first printed 1850).

Trans. Stefania Burk, “A Journey to Ise: Some Sibling Scribbles.” In A Kamigata Anthology: Literature from Japan’s Metropolitan Centers, 1600-1750, ed. Sumie Jones, Adam L. Kern, and Kenji Watanabe. University of Hawai’i Press, 2020, pp. 161-170.

Ōgimachi Machiko (1679-1724), Matsukage nikki (ca. 1712, first printed 1885).

Trans. G. G. Rowley, In the Shelter of the Pine: A Memoir of Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu and Tokugawa Japan. Columbia University Press, 2021.

Shokyū-ni (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),

Tadano Makuzu (1763-1825), Mukashi banashi (1812).

Trans. Steven D. Carter, “Hoary Stories.” In The Columbia Anthology of Japanese Essays: Zuihitsu from the Tenth to the Twenty-First Century. Columbia University Press, 2014.

__________. 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.

__________. Ōshūbanashi (1818).

Trans. Bettina Gramlich-Oka, “Tales From the North.” In An Edo Anthology: Literature from Japan’s Mega-City, 1750-1850, ed. Sumie Jones with Kenji Watanabe. University of Hawai’i Press, 2013, pp. 377-388.

Ema Saikō (1787-1861). Shōmu ikō (1871).

Trans. Hiroaki Sato. Breeze through Bamboo: Kanshi of Ema Saikō. 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.

Wakamatsu Shizuko (1864-1896). “Kimono no naru ki” (1885).

Trans. Wakako Suzuki. “Trees That Grow Kimono,” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal no. 62 (2022): 26-37.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1353/jwj.2022.0007

Nakajima Shōen, née Kishida Toshi (1864-1901). Sankan no meika (1889).

Trans. Dawn Lawson. “A Famous Flower in Mountain Seclusion.” https://apjjf.org/2019/01/Nakajima.html

Kimura Akebono (1872-1890). “Fujo no kagami” (1889).

Trans. Margaret Mitsutani, “A Mirror for Womanhood,” The Magazine 3.5 (1988): 50-55; 3.6 (1988): 51-54.

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.

__________. “Kono ko” (1895).

Trans. Michael K. Bourdaghs, “This Child.” In More Stories by Japanese Women Writers: An Anthology, ed. Kyoko Selden and Noriko Mizuta. Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 2011, pp. 3-8.

__________. “Takekurabe” (1895-96).

  1. Trans. Edward Seidensticker, “Growing Up.” In Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology. ed. 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 also contains translations of nine of Ichiyō’s stories.

__________. “Akiawase” (1896).

Trans. Steven D. Carter, “Autumn Ensemble.” In The Columbia Anthology of Japanese Essays: Zuihitsu from the Tenth to the Twenty-First Century. Columbia University Press, 2014.

B. Secondary sources

Abe Yasurō. “The Confessions of Lady Nijō as a ‘Woman’s Tale’ and its Layering of the Many Spheres of Medieval Literature,” trans. Maiko R. Behr. In Wakita, Bouchy, and Ueno, 2:47-98.

→Identifies and discusses a variety of texts used by Nijō in the creation of Towazugatari.

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

Beerens, Anna. “In the Shadow of Men: Looking for Literate Women in Biography and Prosopography.” In Kornicki, Patessio, and Rowley, pp. 109-122.

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, ed. by Thomas Hare, Robert Borgen, and Sharalyn Orbaugh. Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 1996, pp. 1-34.

Kaga no Chiyo (1703-1775).

Trans. and ed. Patricia Donegan and Yoshie Ishibashi. Chiyo-ni: Woman Haiku Master. Tokyo: Tuttle, 1996.

__________ et al. Tamamoshū (Jeweled Water Grass Anthology, 1774).

A collection of 449 haikai verses by 119 women, edited by Yosa Buson (1716-1783). Selections translated by Cheryl Crowley in A Kamigata Anthology: Literature from Japan’s Metropolitan Centers, 1600-1750, ed. Sumie Jones, Adam L. Kern, and Kenji Watanabe. University of Hawai’i Press, 2020, pp. 317-326.

Bundy, Roselee. “Court Women in Poetry Contests: The Tentoku Yonen Dairi Utaawase (Poetry Contest Held at Court in 960).” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal no. 33 (2007): 33-57.

___________. “Siting the Court Woman Poet: Waka no kai (Poetry Gatherings) in Rokujō Kiyosuke’s Fukurozōshi.” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal no. 37 (2009): 3-32.

___________. “Gendering the Court Woman Poet: Pedigree and Portrayal in Fukuro zōshi.” Monumenta Nipponica 67.2 (2012): 201-238.

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.

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.

Corbett, Rebecca. “Crafting Identity as a Tea Practitioner in Early Modern Japan: Ōtagaki Rengetsu and Tagami Kikusha.” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal no. 47 (2014): 3-27.

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.

___________. “Haikai Poet Shokyū-ni (1714-81) and the Economics of Literary ‘Families’.” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal no. 39 (2010): 63-79.

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.

Dix, Monika. “A Mother’s Voice: The Potency of a Woman in the Jōjin Azari no haha no shū.Japanese Language and Literature 48.1 (2014): 105-127.

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.

___________. “Tagami Kikusha: Bohemian Nun, Haikai Poet, and Poet-Painter.” Simply Haiku 2.6 (2004): http://www.simplyhaiku.com/SHv2n6/features/Fister_feature_pop.html

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). Leiden: Brill, 2006.

__________. “Tokugawa Women and Spacing the Self.” Early Modern Japan: An Interdisciplinary Journal 14 (2006): 51-67.

https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/handle/1811/24274

→Discusses the autobiographical writings of Rai Shizuko, Tadano Makuzu, and Iseki Takako.

__________. “A Father’s Advice: Confucian Cultivation for Women in the Late Eighteenth Century.” In Kornicki, Patessio, and Rowley, pp. 123-139.

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.

Itasaka Noriko. “The Woman Reader as Symbol: Changes in Images of the Woman Reader in Ukiyo-e.” In Kornicki, Patessio, and Rowley, pp. 87-108.

Ivanova, Gergana. “Re-Gendering a Classic: The Pillow Book for Early Modern Female Readers.” Japanese Language and Literature 50.1 (2016): 105-153.

__________. Unbinding The Pillow Book: The Many Lives of a Japanese Classic. Columbia University Press, 2018.

Kawashima, Terry. “Transmigration and Metaphor in Hamamatsu Chūnagon monogatari.” Japanese Language and Literature 51.1 (2017): 91-114.

Kimbrough, R. Keller. “Apocryphal Texts and Literary Identity: Sei Shōnagon and the Matsushima Diary.” Monumenta Nipponica 57.2 (2002): 133-171.

__________. Preachers, Poets, Women, and the Way: Izumi Shikibu and the Buddhist Literature of Medieval Japan. Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2008.

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.

Kornicki, P. F., Mara Patessio, and G. G. Rowley, ed. The Female as Subject: Reading and Writing in Early Modern Japan. Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2010.

→Includes Kornicki’s essay “Women, Education, and Literacy,” pp. 7-37.

Kristeva, Tzvetana. “The pillow hook: The Pillow book as an “open work.” (Nichibunken)Japan Review 5 (1994): 15-54.
http://doi.org/10.15055/00006137

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

Laffin, Christina. “Inviting Empathy: Kagerō Nikki and the Implied Reader.” In Wakita, Bouchy, and Ueno, 2:3-45.

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

__________. Rewriting Medieval Japanese Women: Politics, Personality, and Literary Production in the Life of Nun Abutsu. University of Hawai‘i Press, 2013.

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.

Moate, Sarah. “Travelling in the Season of Flowers: The Calligraphy and Poetry of the Japanese Buddhist Nun Ōtagaki Rengetsu.” Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 5th series, vol. 4 (2012): 209-26.

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.

___________. “Domesticating Kagerō: A Loves That Dares Speak Its Name.” Monumenta Nipponica 65.1 (2010): 137-147.

→A review article discussing Jacqueline Pigeot’s translation of Kagerō nikki, Mémoires d’une éphémère (954-974) par la mère de Fujiwara no Michitsuna, 2006.

___________. “Illustrated Classical Texts for Women in the Edo Period.” In Kornicki, Patessio, and Rowley, pp. 59-85.

Müller, Simone. “A Young Lady’s Longing for a Lost Past: A Chronotopic Analysis of the Medieval Memoir Utatane (‘Fitful Slumbers’).” In Narratological Perspectives on Premodern Japanese Literature, Oldenburg 2020 (BmE Special Issue 7): 229–265. URL: https://ojs.uni-oldenburg.de/ojs/index.php/bme/article/view/114/128.

___________. “Hidden Temporalities: Time and Intertextuality in the Medieval Court Diary Utatane (Fitful Slumbers).” In Images from the Past. Intertextuality in Japanese Premodern Literature, ed. Carolina Negri and Pier Carlo Tommasi. Venice: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, 2022, pp. 59-80.

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.

___________. “Women Writers of Chinese Poetry in Late-Edo Period Japan.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of British Columbia, 2007.

___________. “In Pursuit of Success: Kanshi Poet Hara Saihin’s Masquerade of Masculinity.” Proceedings of the Association for Japanese Literary Studies vol. 11 (2010): 169-82.

___________. “‘Truly, they are a lady’s words’: Ema Saikō and the Construction of an Authentic Voice in Late Edo Period Kanshi.” Japanese Language and Literature 48.2 (2014): 279-305.

Nakamura, Miri. “The Cult of Happiness: Maid, Housewife, and Affective Labor in Higuchi Ichiyō’s ‘Warekara’.” Journal of Japanese Studies 41.1 (2015): 45-78.

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.

Patessio, Mara. “Readers and Writers: Japanese Women and Magazines in the Late Nineteenth Century.” In Kornicki, Patessio, and Rowley, pp. 191-213.

Ratcliff, Christian. “Telling Secrets: Mumyōzōshi, Abutsu, and the Transmission of Literary Expertise by Women.” Jinbun kenkyū: Kanagawa Daigaku jinbun gakkai 169 (2009): 25-50.

Reider, Noriko T. “Menoto no sōshi (A Tale of Two Nursemaids): Teaching for the Women of High Society in the Medieval Period.” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal no. 42 (2012): 62-83.

Rowley, G. G. “Where Did All the Women Go? Kaoku Gyokuei and Others.” In Ekkyō suru Nihon bungaku no kenkyū: Kanon keisei, jendaa, media / New Horizons in Japanese Literary Studies: Canon Formation, Gender, and Media, ed. Haruo Shirane. Bensei Shuppan, 2009, pp. 67-70. Japanese version, translated by Hitomi Yoshio, pp. 73-76.

__________. “The Tale of Genji: Required Reading for Aristocratic Women.” In Kornicki, Patessio, and Rowley, pp. 39-57.

→Introduces writing by Kaoku Gyokuei (1526-after 1602) and Ōgimachi Machiko (1679-1724).

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  Obsessions with the Sino-Japanese Polarity in Japanese Literature. University of Hawai’i Press, 2005, pp. 103-142.

__________. “The Taming of the Strange: Arakida Rei Reads and Writes Stories of the Supernatural.” In Kornicki, Patessio, and Rowley, pp. 151-170.

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, pp. 89-114.

Schalow, Paul Gordon. “Formulating a Theory of Women’s Writing in 17th-Century Japan: Kitamura Kigin’s Ominaeshi monogatari (Tales of the Maidenflower).” Early Modern Japan 5.2 (1995): 14-18.

Schmidt-Hori, Sachi. “Symbolic Death and Rebirth into Womanhood: An Analysis of Stepdaughter Narratives from Heian and Medieval Japan.” Japanese Language and Literature 54.2 (2020): 447-475. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5195/jll.2020.94

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.

Shiba Keiko. Literary Creations on the Road: Women’s Travel Diaries in Early Modern Japan. Translated by Motoko Ezaki. Lanham: University Press of America, 2012.

→A translation of Shiba’s Kinsei onna tabi nikki, originally published 1997.

Sugano Noriko. “Kishida Toshiko and the Career of a Public-Speaking Woman in Meiji Japan.” In Kornicki, Patessio, and Rowley, pp. 171-189.

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

Tanaka Takako. “Medieval Literature and Women: Focusing on Mumyōzōshi,” trans. Christina Laffin. In Wakita, Bouchy, and Ueno, 2:99-129.

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.

→A richly contextualized account of Hino Nako’s Takemuki ga ki.

__________. “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 3, “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).

Vos, F. “The Rôle of Women in Tokugawa Classicism.” In Acta Orientalia Neerlandica: Proceedings of the Congress of the Dutch Oriental Society Held in Leiden on the Occasion of its 50th Anniversary, ed. P. W. Pestman. Leiden: Brill, 1971, pp. 206-213.

Wakita Haruko, Anne Bouchy, and Ueno Chizuko, ed. Gender and Japanese History. 2 vols. Osaka University Press, 1999.

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.

__________. “Reading the Rhetoric of Seduction in Izumi Shikibu nikki.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 58.2 (1998): 481-512.

Walthall, Anne. “The Cult of Sensibility in Rural Tokugawa Japan: Love Poetry by Matsuo Taseko.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 117.1 (1997): 70-86.

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

__________. “Women and Literacy from Edo to Meiji.” In Kornicki, Patessio, and Rowley, pp. 215-235.

Watanabe Minoru. “Style and Point of View in the Kagerō nikki,” trans. Richard Bowring. Journal of Japanese Studies 10.2 (1984): 365-384.

Watanabe, Takeshi. “Akazome Emon: Her Poetic Voice and Persona.” Waka Workshop 2013. http://elischolar.library.yale.edu/waka2013/13.

__________. Flowering Tales: Women Exorcising History in Heian Japan. Harvard University Asia Center, 2020.

__________. “Versifying for Others: Akazome Emon’s Proxy Poems.” Monumenta Nipponica 77.1 (2022): 1-26.

Wren, James A. “Salty Seaweed, Absent Women, and Song: Authorizing the Female as Poet in the Izayoi nikki.” Criticism 39.2 (1997): 185-204.

Yabuta Yutaka. “Nishitani Saku and Her Mother: ‘Writing’ in the Lives of Edo Period Women.” In Kornicki, Patessio, and Rowley, pp. 141-150.

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

Yonemoto Marcia. “Outside the Inner Quarters: Sociability, Mobility and Narration in Early Edo-period Women’s Diaries.” Japan Forum 21.3 (2009): 389-401.