Description
After, more than 15 years of preparation, this volume of nearly 1,600 songs and poems from the earliest times to 784 is now available. These translations aim to be both faithful to the original and alive as literature, with great attention paid to nuance, cadence, and tone. Edwin A. Cranston's extensive commentary introduces the poems and provides historical, biographical, and literary information that allows for a full appreciation of the poems. Not only does the collection include many of the nest works in the literature, it also provides evocative glimpses of the spirit and folkways of early Japanese civilization.
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The Gem-Glistening Cup is the second volume of Edwin Cranston's monumental Waka Anthology which carries the story of waka, the classical tradition of Japanese poetry, from its beginnings in ancient song to the sixteenth century. The present volume, which contains almost 1,600 songs and poems, covers the period from the earliest times to 784, and includes many of the finest works in the literatures as well as providing evocative glimpses of the spirit and folkways of early Japanese civilization.The texts drawn upon for the poems are the ancient chronicles Kojiki, Nihonshoki, and Shoku Nihongi; the fudoki, a set of eighth-century local gazetteers; Man'yoshu, the massive eighth-century compendium of early poetry (about one fourth of that work is included); and the Bussokuseki poems carved on a stone tablet at a temple in Nara. All poems are presented in facing romanization and translation.
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