Yes, I know that's quite a claim to make! But this book actually deserves it. It's accessible, it's a ripping yarn, and quite simply it's an absolute joy to read. All this it achieves while balancing profundity and pure playfulness with a lightness and deftness of touch that leaves modern fantasi...
Reading this five-period anthology of Japanese literature is definitely rewarding if its readers get interested in knowing more on some interesting selections translated from Japanese as compiled and edited by Donald Keene. Some might not agree due to its incomplete excerpts but, I think, we need...
Motivated by reading William T. Vollmann's Kissing the Mask , I re-read Arthur Waley's (1889-1966) translations of nineteen Noh plays (with summaries of sixteen others). Though reading a Noh play is much like reading the libretto of an opera, it is unavoidable, probably even for the Japanese, si...
Arthur Waley’s brilliant and definitive translation of one of the foremost of all mystical books, Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, has become a modern classic in its own right. Unlike previous translations, it is founded not on the medieval commentaries but on a close study of all the early Chinese litera...
No one treats painting or music as mere transcripts of life. But even pioneers of stage-reform in France and Germany appear to regard the theatre as belonging to life and not to art. The play is an organized piece of human experience which the audience must as far as possible be allowed to share ...