Just Living: Poems and Prose by the Japanese Monk Tonna

By Ton'a and Steven D. Carter

Book Overview

The medieval Buddhist poet-monk Tonna (1289-1372) was regarded as the leading poet of his day and a prominent scholar and critic. Despite his commoner status, he was assigned the task of acting as compiler for an imperial anthology of poetry and counted a number of prominent courtiers among his students and patrons. And yet his works, which remained required reading for virtually all serious poets in Japan for five hundred years after his death, have until recently received little scholarly attention in either Japan or the West. This anthology contains translations of 134 of Tonna's uta (the classical poetic form) and 16 linked verse couplets ( renga ) from his Grass Hut Collection and selections from a work of prose criticism, From a Frog at the Bottom of a Well , along with an introduction and explanatory notes, a glossary of important names and places, and a list of sources for the poems.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0231125534
• ISBN13: 9780231125536
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 9.2"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Froggy Goes a Courting

This is a fine selection of poetry by Tonna, a poet who was prestigious once but mostly ignored in modern times. The poems are in the "waka" form and are definitely in the tradition of courtly poetry starting with the "Kokinshu" and the other imperial anthologies. In that sense they evince the usual refined elegance and courtly restraint common to such poetry, though Tonna clearly comes in at a late point in the tradition's...