Product Description
Travel is one of literature's great metaphors for life; to investigate the properties of travel writing in different cultures affords a particular opportunity for intercultural comparison. In Naming Properties, Earl Miner examines closely four travel accounts: in Japanese, Basho's great Narrow Road through the Provinces, and, as control, the nonliterary account of his friend Sora; in English, Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and Boswell's manuscript version, his unbowdlerized Journal. The works were carefully chosen to provide a maximum of literary evidence.
The focus of Miner's comparison is on the practical and philosophical implications of naming. Because comparison can reveal parochialism, currently familiar and unexamined Western conceptions are put in question on such issues as identification (what is a name, what is identity in different cultures?); reference (why name a child or river if they do not exist?); intention (how can we refer without intending to?); and fact and fiction (do names differ in fiction and in fact? What of a factual or historical character in a fiction like the novel? or a legal fiction in daily life?).
In addition to examining the travel accounts, Miner considers the philosophical issues of naming in a range of other texts, from the Bible, Plato, Thucydides, Confucius, and earliest Japanese writing to current Western philosophers such as Kripke, Donnellan, and Nelson.
This book will interest scholars in eighteenth-century English and pre-modern Japanese literature; comparative literature; intercultural study; and naming (onomastics).
Earl Miner is Townsend Martin Class of 1917, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Princeton University.
... Read more

Product Description
THIS 28 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East: Japan, by Charles F. Horne. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 0766100111. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Print on demand title of an old essay
Please note: this is simply a Print-On-Demand issue of Prof. Chamberlain's essay "Basho, The Chief Poet of Japan, and the Hokku, or Epigram Verses".This publishing house also uses the latter part of the title in a second publication of the same essay, so do not be confused or waste your money on the same text.It is nice to have this essay available separate from the original volume it had appeared, Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East: Vol. 13 Japan, edited by Charles F. Horne, first published in 1917.Chamberlain's translations are loose and only serve as an academic curiosity as all of the poems within have been translated umpteen times since, and by more skilled scholars of the genre.The poems' adjacent texts offer little or no insight to Basho's thoughts or offer criticism of the verse. ... Read more

Product Description
This collection places the writing and thought of the Japanese haiku poet and American essayist in counterpoint, echoing each other across the centuries and bridging East and West. ... Read more

Product Description
Translations of Japanese haiku and other poetry, featuringthe most famous haiku poet Basho but including 14 poets in all. ... Read more

Product Description
One spring morning in 1689, Basho, arguably the greatest of all Japanese poets, set forth on foot, accompanied by his friend and disciple Sora, from his hermitage in Edo (old Tokyo) on one final journey--a pilgrimage that eventually took him nearly 1,500 miles. Now, more than 300 years later--via beautifully spare prose sprinkled with haiku and graceful translation--this book provides the account of Basho's arduous trek. 16 illustrations. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Can you help me?
I want to know about Sabi in Oku no hoshomichi. But i cant'n reat about it anywhere. Can you help me?

Only version that delivers the goods.
There are perhaps half a dozen English versions of this, Basho's most famous "travel journal"--the Oku no hosomichi--currently available. If you have not read this version, you may justifiably wonderhow this could be considered one of the two pillars of Japanese literature(with The Tale of Genji).

Translating the haiku in this work isdevilishly difficult. I don't believe that Corman has delivered the goods100% of the time, but his are still the best versions available,overall.

In the meantime, Corman is the only one who has managed tocreate in English prose something that remotely resembles the prose of theJapanese text. Basho did NOT write ordinary Japanese prose, so anytranslation into English that sounds like something you might hear oncommercial radio or TV, or reads like a current novel by you-name-it, iswoefully inadequate.

Corman's version has been slighted by others,claiming that it "sounds like Corman's own poems" (it does not)or it's written "as if Jack Kerouac went on the journey". (Thislast is amazing, as I cannot think of a style more distant from Kerouac incontemporary American English.)

Rather, Corman has tried to let theunique toughness and terseness of Basho's language cross the translationbarrier.

This translation is closer to Basho than any other I've seen,and I've read probably just about every English translation of it everpublished in an edition of 500 or more--and the original.

Kudos to RobertHass for seeing it back into print! ... Read more

Product Description
250 Very Questionable ‘Haiku’ truly is meant to be absolutely nothing but serious Fun and Games. Any aspirations toward conforming to all and sundry supposedly time-honored Haiku (or, for that matter, Senyru) traditions have been chucked out of every window. Each of the 250 included pieces received a special sort of Grammatical Attention, but only in terms of the ‘English’ side of possible or probable matters.

Product Description

While the rise of the charmingly simple, brilliantly evocative haiku is often associated with the seventeenth-century Japanese poet Matsuo Basho, the form had already flourished for three hundred years before Basho even began to write. These early poems, known ashokku, are identical to haiku in syllable count and structure but function differently as a genre. Whereas each haiku is its own constellation of image and meaning,hokku opens a a series of linked, collaborative stanzas in a sequence calledrenga.

Under the mastery of Basho,hokku first gained its modern independence. His talents evolved the style into the haiku beloved by so many poets today& mdash;Richard Wright, Jack Kerouac, and Billy Collins being notable devotees. This anthology reproduces 300 Japanesehokku poems composed between the thirteenth and early eighteenth centuries, from the work of the courtier Nijo Yoshimoto to the genre's first "professional" master, Sogi, and his subsequent disciples. It also features twenty masterpieces by Basho himself. Steven Carter, a renowned scholar of Japanese poetry and prominent translator, includes an introduction covering the history of haiku and the form's aesthetics and classifies these poems according to style and context& mdash;distinguishing earlyrenga fromHaikai renga andrenga from the Edo period, for example. His rich commentary and analysis illuminates each work, and he adds their romanized versions and notes on composition and setting, as well as brief descriptions of the poets and the times in which they wrote.

Customer Reviews (5)

A way in...
An Introduction to Haiku is a solid way into the practically untranslatable world of Haiku.It is terse while still being thorough.By including both a transliteration and a literal translation of the Japanese, the reader is able to appreciate not only the feel of the language but also the problems that arise in its translation into English.

Haiku considered. . . .
Haiku, well done, is an enchanting poetic form.This book, put together by Harold Henderson, provides a nice introduction for those who want a deeper understanding of this art form. Best of all is the array of poems presented here--from Basho, Buson, Issa, Shiki, and others.

Haiku itself is deceptively simple--3 lines: 5 syllables in the first, seven in the second, five in the third, for seventeen in total. But it is much more than that. And that is what makes the first part of this book so useful. The Preface and Introduction provide a literate consideration to the nature--and difficulty of drafting--haiku. Even more challenging is translating Japanese haiku into English, according to Anderson (who does the actual translation in this volume). He notes, for instance, an Italian adage, "traduttore, traditore," which--he claims--means that a translator is probably a traitor.To change 17 syllables of Japanese haiku to a meaningful and still poetic English format is devilish difficult. He says (Page vii): "My intention has been to write English verse which will be faithful to the spirit of the originals, and will at the same time approximate literal translation. . . ." Chapters I and II provide a brief but helpful sense of the nature of haiku itself, from its origins to its nature to its evolution.

And then the book moves into the poets themselves, selecting four masters of haiku, plus selected other practitioners of the art. In the process the poets are discussed, their individual attributes summarized, and--best of all from my view--selections of their work presented.Since Basho has been my favorite over time, I'll simply present some of the haiku that seem special to me.

"On the Road to Nara"
Oh, these spring days!
A nameless little mountain,
Wrapped in morning hazel.


"Leaving the House of a Friend"

Out comes the bee
From deep among the peony pistils--
Oh, so reluctantly!

"Twilight"

"Hawk-eyes too will fail,
Now that the darkness comes"--
So chirp the quail.

So, a delightful work providing background to haiku and some wonderful examples of the masters and their craft.

Beautifully done
As Henderson points out in his introduction, most translators are traitors.Though this is so in many cases, the pieces that he selected work well and push the envelope of what good translation of poetry of all kinds should be, regardless of the original language.

This is an excellent pocket anthology for any lover of Haiku and other short form poetry to carry with them always.

Masterful Introduction to Haiku
I have rarely encountered better translations of Haiku.Henderson brought the extended meanings of the words across.Double and triple entendres, startling juxtapositions, contextual clues, everything.These are not mere literal translations--they work on multiple levels to extend the meaning of the poetry, to reflect the possible readings by literate Japanese readers.

Poetic translation is an art that requires deep understanding of two languages, poetic heritages, and metaphorical/imagistic libraries.Henderson's translations are unique in their quality.

Essential introduction for those interested in haiku
Although Henderson's book is out-of-print (originally published in 1958), and his translations are stylistically out-of-date (i.e., rhymed English haiku), this is an essential, pocket-sized anthology.Hendersonintersperses his chronological presentation of haiku, in bothtransliterized Japanese (romaji) with English translation, by majorhistorical masters with analysis throughout.I am on my second paperback-- the first fell apart from constant use! ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (2)

Excellent English Basho
Basho's "Oku no Hosomichi" has been translated into English numerous times, but this version by Cid Corman distinguishes itself by its faithfulness to the original.Corman preserve's Basho's sentences--rambling, meandering affairs that most translators break up into several pieces--almost exactly, bringing the immortal poet's greatest prose work into English in all its run-on glory.

Corman's translations of the haiku in the text (prose and poetry, here, are integral to one another) are idiosyncratic.He has taken the "gist" of the Japanese haiku and turned them into original English poetry.Sometimes he produces something comprehensible; other times he maintains the Japanese word order so slavishly that the poem slides from elliptical to simply enigmatic.

The translation has a few stylistic quirks.Besides sentence length and organization, Corman follows the near-total omission of the pronoun "I" throughout, a practice perfectly acceptable in Japanese but which, in English, leads to a handful of especially odd passive constructions.Corman may also leave in one too many Japanese words when a translation--despite the introductory protests--would probably have worked just as well.(Informative notes do clarify unusual terms and allusions.)In addition, this edition is sprinkled with formatting inconsistencies and the notes, in particular, suffer from sloppy typographical errors.However, such does not overshadow the translation itself.

The book (a pleasant 5x7 size) is liberally illustrated with ink drawings by Hide Oshiro, spare depictions of scenes from the text.Cid Corman's version of the Narrow Road is not only among the most accurate in style and tone, it is simply wildly different from the run of more well-known English Bashos (such as Sam Hamill's or Donald Keene's).Anyone with an interest in Japanese literature, history, or this particular poet must read this masterful translation.

~

Gives The Feeling of the Original
(Please see William J. Higginson's excellent review of the earlier, Echo Press edition of this book.)I have Ueno Yozo's scholarly edition of Oku No Hosomichi which I've been going over, section by section, with a real scholar of Edo Japanese.My little knowledge of Japanese allows me to understand the differences between modern Japanese and the original, and yes, there's a density, a quickness, and a terseness, in the original that Cid Corman's translation faithfully captures in English.I give a great deal of credit for this to Cid's co-translator, Kamaike Susumu, and to Cid's love for just these qualities in poetry, which he learned from such earlier masters as Ezra Pound, and of course from his great teacher William Carlos Williams, and was on the road to perfecting for himself when he did this project and published it (in 1961) in Origin magazine.Cid's style was a good "fit" for this project--in other words, as the Japanese put it--Cid had "en" or destiny when he undertook this translation with Kamaike-san, for the plain truth is, Cid Corman did not know Japanese.Even after all of his many years of living in Japan, he was not able to speak, read or write it.Cid was absolutely honest about this, however, and you'll see that he shares top billing with Kamaike-san on the title page.Startled?Well, I'd argue that the top English translation of this Japanese classic being produced by a non-Japanese reader, writer, and speaker, is not quite as startling as Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage being hailed by Civil War veterans as being the most accurate rendition of their experience of war in print.Scholars argue that Crane's psychological dynamic allowed him to present the "truth" of conflict.I'd argue that the same sort of dynamic--albeit stylistic--was at work with Cid and Basho.On this point, I differ from Higginson. ... Read more

Product Description
     Here is the most complete single-volume collection of writings by one of the great luminaries of Asian literature. Includes a masterful translation of Basho's most celebrated work, Narrow Road to the Interior, along with three less well-known works and over 250 of Basho's finest haiku. The translator has included an overview of Basho's life and an essay on the art of haiku. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

On the Road Again
[Note: This review appeared July 22, 1999, in the Seattle Weekly and is available online at http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/9929/books-lightfoot.shtml]

The Essential Basho, translated by Sam Hamill. Shambhala, $25 No wonder dreams of journeys are so often associated with death. We travel to leave our lives behind - the familiar workaday parts, anyway - hoping to arrive in a Paradise where our eyes, ears, tongues, maybe even our hearts, will be startled awake. What we really want is a new self, but what we often get is more stuff -samples of a regional cuisine, eyefuls of great art, tidbits about Kafka's life in Prague, opinions, trinkets. Traveling becomes grazing on a global scale.

A different pathway opens up in Sam Hamill's newest collection of translations, The Essential Basho. Here for the first time in a single volume is the essence of Basho's work:four travel narratives, including the best-known "Narrow Road to the Interior," and 250 haiku returning us home to a dailiness transformed by awareness and attention. Whether the poet is on the road or behind his own brushwood gate he seeks, instead of new acquisitions or excitements, an honest encounter between world and mind. These two entities were never separate to begin with. So although Basho's travelogues seem to record his treks on foot through 17th-century Japan, they're actually journeys into his own true nature, the heartland within, where self and circumstances are one.

"Very early on the twenty-seventh morning of the third moon, under a predawn haze, transparent moon barely visible, mount Fuji just a shadow, I set out under the cherry blossoms of Ueno and Yanaka. When would I see them again? A few old friends had gathered in the night and followed along far enough to see me off from the boat� I felt three thousand miles rushing through my heart, the whole world only a dream. I saw it through farewell tears.

"Spring passes / and the birds cry out - tears / in the eyes of fishes.

"With these first words from my brush, I started. Those who remain behind watch the shadow of a traveler's back disappear."

Carrying just a few necessities along with friends' farewell presents, which he can't bear to part with, Basho lets each event on the way speak the language of its particular life. At a farm he asks directions, but they're so complicated the farmer just lends Basho his horse ("'He knows the road. When he stops, get off, and he'll come back alone.'") The horse takes Basho to a village and then turns around, a gift from the poet tied to his saddle. Farther on, Basho observes peasants wearing black formal hats for ancient rites, speaks with prostitutes on a pilgrimage, sadly leaves to his fate a child abandoned by his parents, retreats from a three-day storm into a shack: Eaten alive by / lice and fleas - now the horse / beside my pillow pees.

At a mountain temple "I crawled among boulders to make my bows at shrines. The silence was profound. I sat, feeling my heart begin to open." Elsewhere, hearing distant villagers clap wooden noisemakers to scare deer from their fields, he feels "the utter aloneness of autumn." A stranger asks for a poem ("'Something beautiful, please'") and Basho writes a verse about the cuckoo's cry that arrives, just then, from across a field.

Basho's words flow spontaneously out of each moment lived. Instead of giving us tours or mementos of the world, he helps us open to its presences and discover who we are. Through his haiku we sense the wholeness and sufficiency of an early frost, an eggplant seed, a hangover, "Mr. Seagull," a nest of mice, a bean-floured rice ball, tears in the eyes of fishes, and ourselves, awake and alive again.Hamill frames "The Essential Basho" with essays on Basho's life and work that are scholarly enough to educate a student of haiku or Japanese culture and lively enough to engage any reader. Their depth and ease testify to the virtuosity Hamill has achieved as Editor of Copper Canyon Press, Director of the Port Townsend Writers' Conference, author of over thirty books, and translator of poetry in several languages. Travelers like me have carried around the world his pocket-size Basho ("Narrow Road to the Interior," now out of print) until it's tattered. We'll treasure the fine new volume silkily sleeved in Hokusai's portrait of the poet on the road again.

classic translation
As a casual and thorough student of Basho and the Japanese poetic forms ofhaiku, haibun and renga I've come to believe that Sam Hamill's translationsare the best ever. Hamill, as a respected poet in the English languagehimself, translates the Japanese of Basho into an American English thatliterally sings.His translation of the opening lines of "Narrow Roadto the Interior," included in this volume, is a classic Basho, andclassic Hamill: "The moon and the sun are eternal travelers. Even theyears wander on. A lifetime adrift in a boat, or in old age leading a tiredhorse into the years, every day is a journey, and the journey itself ishome." I have carried Hamill's translation of "Narrow Road"with me for years. To have "The Essential Basho" now on my shelfis an event to celebrate. ... Read more