The Ise Stories
The Ise Stories: Ise monogatari
Joshua S. Mostow
Royall Tyler
Copyright Date: 2010
Published by: University of Hawai'i Press
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wqtg2
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Book Info
The Ise Stories
Book Description:

Ise monogatariis one of classical Japan's most important texts. It influenced other literary court romances likeThe Tale of Genjiand inspired artists, playwrights, and poets throughout Japanese history and to the present day.

In a series of 125 loosely connected episodes, theIsetells the story of a famous lover, Captain Ariwara no Narihira (825-880), and his romantic encounters with women throughout Japan. Each episode centers on an exchange of love poems designed to demonstrate wit, sensitivity, and "courtliness."

Joshua Mostow and Royall Tyler present a fresh, contemporary translation of this classic work, together with a substantial commentary for each episode. The commentary explores how the text has been read in the past and identifies not only the point of each episode, but also the full range of historical interpretations, many of which shaped the use of theIsein later literary and visual arts. The book includes reproductions from a version of the 1608 Saga-bon printed edition of the Ise, the volume that establishedIseiconography for the entire Edo period (1600-1868).

52 illus.

eISBN: 978-0-8248-3766-2
Subjects: Language & Literature
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  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. i-iv)
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. v-vi)
  3. Acknowledgments
    Acknowledgments (pp. vii-viii)
  4. Textual Matters
    Textual Matters (pp. ix-ix)
  5. Abbreviations
    Abbreviations (pp. x-x)
  6. Introduction
    Introduction (pp. 1-12)

    Japan’s aristocratic age, the Heian period (794–1185), saw the emergence of the literary court romance, ormonogatari. The best known of these works is without a doubtGenji monogatari(The Tale of Genji). A fair amount is known about theGenjiand its composition: it was written by a woman known as Murasaki Shikibu (ca. 973–ca. 1014 or 1025), and we can deduce from surviving parts of her diary that at least a substantial part of the tale was completed by the year 1008. TheGenjiis a long work (1,120 pages in the standard English edition) that...

  7. The Ise Stories: Ise monogatari
    The Ise Stories: Ise monogatari (pp. 13-248)

    Back then this man, newly come of age, went hunting on a place of his in the village of Kasuga, near the Nara capital. In the village lived two very pretty sisters. He spied on them through a crack. Their looks were so surprisingly out of keeping with their rustic surroundings that he couldn’t contain himself. He cut a piece from the hem of his hunting cloak, wrote a poem on it, and had it taken to them. His hunting cloak was printed with a Shinobu leaf-tangle pattern.

    Off it went to them, just like that. He must have felt...

  8. Appendix 1: Principal Characters, Commentators, and Commentaries
    Appendix 1: Principal Characters, Commentators, and Commentaries (pp. 249-252)
  9. Appendix 2: Family Tree of Principal Characters
    Appendix 2: Family Tree of Principal Characters (pp. 253-254)
  10. Bibliography
    Bibliography (pp. 255-258)
  11. Index of First Lines of Poems
    Index of First Lines of Poems (pp. 259-261)
  12. Index of First Lines of Translated Poems
    Index of First Lines of Translated Poems (pp. 262-264)
  13. Subject Index
    Subject Index (pp. 265-269)
  14. Back Matter
    Back Matter (pp. 270-271)
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