Word: genji
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Highlight Reel: Books, Journals, Documents: The database contains some old favorites, like the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights as well the constitutions of numerous countries. There are also gems like the first printed edition of the 16th-century Japanese novel The Tale of Genji, and a journal kept by a Venetian scholar who accompanied Ferdinand Magellan on his voyage around the world. If English is more your speed, try the translation of a French voyager's tour of the Indian Ocean - maybe a safer trip than it is today...
...Keene's enchantment with Japanese literature began when he stumbled on Murasaki Shikibu's 11th century classic The Tale of Genji in a Times Square bookshop in 1940. The hero Genji is a sensitive aristocrat who pursues beauty in a world he knows more readily offers sadness. With the news from Europe full of Nazi advances, Keene writes, "I turned to it as a refuge from all I hated in the world around me." The translation was by Arthur Waley, a British polyglot who was also a famed translator of classical Chinese literature. Keene eventually befriended him, and years later...
...scenes from the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-95 that Monet collected, as well as images of Westerners relaxing in Yokohama, the port city that became the focus of Japanese contact with the West. Monet had several of Hiroshige's scenes from the classic Japanese novel The Tale of Genji, plus the lively, almost offhand sketches of animals and ordinary folk by Ogata Korin...
...innovations of the Silver Pavilion was the central importance of its gardens, a design approach that became basic to Japanese architecture. Gardens had always held an important place in the nation's soul, as we know from The Tale of Genji and other early court fiction of the Heian period. At that time, however, gardens were seasonal, emphasizing spring and autumn to illustrate the perishability of beauty, the concept of the "pity of things." In Yoshimasa's era, however, gardens moved toward a Zen aesthetic, becoming more serene places of contemplation that favored the use of symbols of eternity such...
...good example of the method of the novel is the death of a young woman possessed by a spirit. Genji has taken her away to a dismal old house, hoping to be far from the public eye. They sleep, and he dreams of one of his jealous mistresses. Then he wakes and sees the spirit of this other woman at his new partner's pillow. He is terrified, and with good reason, because his new partner is dead. What kind of magic is this? The jealous mistress is still alive, and doesn't at this stage even know...