DIARIES OF
COURT LADIES OF OLD JAPAN
TRANSLATED BY
ANNIE SHEPLEY OMORI
AND
KOCHI DOI
Professor in the Imperial University, Tokio
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
AMY LOWELL
And with Illustrations
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1920
TRANSLATORS' NOTE
The poems in the text, slight and occasional as they are, dependingoften for their charm on plays upon words of two meanings, or onthe suggestions conveyed to the Japanese mind by a single word,have presented problems of great difficulty to the translators, notperfectly overcome.
Izumi Shikibu's Diary is written with extreme delicacy of treatment.English words and thought seem too downright a medium into which torender these evanescent, half-expressed sentences and poems—vague asthe misty mountain scenery of her country, with no pronouns at all, andwithout verb inflections. The shy reserve of the lady's written recordhas induced the use of the third person as the best means of suggestingit.
Of the "Sarashina Diary" there exist a few manuscript copies, andthree or four publications of the text. Some of them are confused andunreadably incoherent. The present translation was done by comparingall the texts accessible, and is especially founded on the connectedtext by Mr. Sakine, professor of the Girls' Higher Normal School,Tokio, published by Meiji Shoin, Itchome Nishiki-cho, Kanda-ku, Tokio.As far as possible the exact meaning has been adhered to, and thewords chosen to express it have been kept absolutely simple, withoutcomplexity of thought, for such is the vocabulary in which it waswritten. Sometimes the diarist uses the present tense, sometimes thetext seems reminiscent. The words in square brackets have been insertedby the translators to complete the sense in English of sentenceswhich literally rendered do not carry with them the suggestion of theJapanese text.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION BY AMY LOWELL
ILLUSTRATIONS
COURT LADY'S FULL DRESS IN THE HEIAN PERIOD Colored Frontispiece
From Kokushi Dai
...BU KİTABI OKUMAK İÇİN ÜYE OLUN VEYA GİRİŞ YAPIN!
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