Ancient Japanese Literature (A Critical Survey)

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About the Book

Ancient Japanese Literature: A Critical Survey is a comprehensive work on the history of the Japanese literature since its inception. It covers the developments in ten chapters. The major trends, works and authors of each period are discussed with an overview of the developments and various other factors that contributed to it. It presents the woof and weft of ancient Japanese literature in a concise manner. The official compilations of Kojiki, Nihongi and the Imperial Waka Anthologies represent one aspect of it and the anthology of Manyoshu as well as the fictional works of Monogatari represent yet another aspect.

About the Author

Anita Khanna (b. 1953) had a stint as a Mombusho and Japan Foundation scholar at Osaka University in Japan where she worked on Japanese literature for two years. She pursued her Ph.D. From Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Japanese literature has been her forte, which took her back to Japan to the school of letters at Osaka University. Subsequently she worked on the juvenile literature of Meiji and Taisho period at the International Institute of Juvenile Literature in Japan and presented a research paper in their research journal.

She wrote her first book The Jataka Stories in Japan, that traced the development of the Indian motifs adapted in Japanese literature. She has also authored Some Japanese Stories and Stories of Buddha.

Currently she is based at the Jawarharlal Nehru University teaching Japanese as an Associate Professor at the School of Languages, Literature and Culture Studies.

Foreword

Dr. Anita Khanna is Associate Professor in Japanese in the Centre of Japanese and North-east Asian Studies in Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her earlier works "Stories from Japan" and "The Jataka Stories in Japan" have been well received by the lovers of Japanese classical literature. The present work "Ancient Japanese Literature: A Critical Survey" is a pioneer work in India and is the result of her long research and teaching experience.

Preface

With the growing popularity of Japanese language in the recent years, the awareness and interest in Japan and its culture is on the increase. Therefore an overview of the literary tradition will certainly complement it. The ancient Japanese Literature written in the classical Japanese is not simple to comprehend even for a student at an advanced stage of learning of Japanese language.

With such a paradox in mind this book is a humble attempt to present the various developments in the ancient Japanese literature. The works and authors are introduced against the backdrop of socio-political developments. The objective is to develop the interest of the reader in Japanese literature and to provide an insight.

Introduction

Every civilization is likely to have the elements of imaginative creation in some shape or the other. Initially these are present in the oral form and transmitted through word of mouth by way of hymns and prayers, myths, legends and folklore that are codified at some later point of time. Hence, in the absence of any written records, this information handed down orally from parents to the children, in other words from one generation to the other, loses its authenticity.