Product Description

Taketori Monogatari (The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter) was probably written late in the ninth or early in the tenth century. Mention at the end of the tale that smoke still rose from Mount Fuji, a sign it was an active volcano, is an important clue to the date of composition, for we know that by 905 A.D. the mountain had ceased to emit smoke. Regardless of exactly when the tale was first set down on paper, it is the oldest surviving Japanese work of fiction; The Tale of Genji (written about 1010) referred to it as the "ancestor of all romances." Many theories have been published about the authorship, but they are little more than guesses. The names of five suitors, resembling those of members of the Japanese court of the eighth century, have suggested to some scholars that The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter was conceived of as a satire directed against a certain court faction, but this is not how the work was read in later centuries. Today it is thought of mainly as a children's story, and Kaguya-hime, the heroine, looks in the illustrations as lovable as Snow-White or Cinderella; there is no suggestions of the heartlessness that is perhaps her most memorable feature.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #390381 in Books
• Published on: 1998-10-15
• Released on: 1998-10-15
• Original language: Japanese
• Dimensions: .59" h x 8.41" w x 6.54" l, .86 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 180 pages

Review

"Masayuki Miyata's bright, bold illustrations perfectly complement this elegant bilingual edition, and Keene has outdone himself in finding English equivalents for the outrageous puns that punctuate the story." -The New Yorker

Ingram
An Oriental classic retold by a Nobel Prize winner, with modern illustrations. An early Helan-period (794-1185) prose work about a supernatural being found by a bamboo cutter and brought up as his daughter. Text is presented in bilingual Japanese-English format alongside original, full-color kiri-e paper cut-out illustrations.

About the Author
Modern rewriting: YASUNARI KAWABATA(1899-1972) Born in the city of Osaka, he attended Ichiko in Tokyo, and graduated from the Department of Literature at Tokyo Imperial University. He made his debut into literary circles when Kikuchi Kan praised the fresh sensibility of his story "Shokonsai ikkei"(A view of the Yasukuni Festival), when it was published in the sixth issue of the literary journal Shinshicho. With Yokomitsu Riichi and Kon Toko in 1924 he set up the literary journal Bungei jidai.

Donald Keene, an American scholar of Japanese literature, was born in New York in 1922. He graduated from Columbia University where he first began the study of Japanese in 1941. During World War II he served in the U.S. Navy as a translator and interpreter of Japanese. After the war he returned to academic life. Form 1948 to 1953 he taught Japanese at Cambridge University.

Masayuki Miyata was born in Akasaka, Tokyo in 1926. He was discovered by the distinguished writer Tanizaki Jun'ichiro, and he went on to create his own distinct realm in kiri-e (cut-out illustrations). His cut-out pictures, made with mere sheets of paper and a cutting blade, and their exceptional accessibility to people from all countries, have won admiration.