Classical Japanese Prose: An Anthology

McCullough’s Classical Japanese Prose is an excellent anthology beginning with Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, a folk story from the early 900s, through to two travel accounts by Matsuo Basho from the late 1600s. It covers memoirs, folk tales, journals, a good deal of poetry (embedded in prose pieces), travel accounts, vernacular histories, short stories, and military stories. Many works are here in complete translations, some of the longer ones as excerpts. McCullough’s translations are concise yet flowing, her translations of poetry are great, and she writes introductions to all the pieces, as well as a general introduction; and Stephen D. Carter translates some of the work, including Basho and the Essays in Ideleness. There are well known pieces like the two just mentioned alongside quite obscure pieces such as Journal of the Sixteenth-Night Moon, a travel journal by the nun Abutsu (which is great), and a 50-page selection from A Tale of Flowering Fortunes, a vernacular history by Akazome Emon. If you’re interested in classical Japanese prose and poetry, or just early prose in general, this is a great place to get a wide range of work. Highly recommended. —Amazon.com reviewer