World Within Walls: Japanese Literature of the Pre-Modern Era, 1600-1867

A History of Japanese Literature #2

by Donald Keene

The Tokugawa family held the shogunate from 1603 to 1867, ruling Japan and keeping the island nation isolated from the rest of the world for more than 250 years. Donald Keene looks within the "walls" of isolation and meticulously chronicles the period's vast literary output, providing both lay readers and scholars with the definitive history of premodern Japanese literature.

World Within Walls spans the age in which Japanese literature began to reach a popular audience--as opposed to the elite aristocratic readers to whom it had previously been confined. Keene comprehensively treats each of the new, popular genres that arose, including haiku, Kabuki, and the witty, urbane prose of the newly ascendant merchant class.

Genres: Japan, Japanese Literature, Literature, Japanese History, Nonfiction

606 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Donald Keene was a renowned American-born Japanese scholar, translator, and historian of Japanese literature. Born in Brooklyn in 1922, he developed a love for foreign cultures early in life. He graduated from Columbia University in 1942 and served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, where he studied Japanese at the Navy Language School. After the war, he returned to Columbia for his master’s and later earned a second master’s at Cambridge, followed by a PhD from Columbia in 1949. He studied further at Kyoto University and became a leading authority on Japanese literature.
Keene taught at Columbia University for over fifty years and published extensively in both English and Japanese, introducing countless readers to Japanese classics. His mentors included Ryusaku Tsunoda and Arthur Waley, whose translations deeply influenced him. After the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, Keene retired from Columbia, moved to Japan, and became a Japanese citizen under the name Kīn Donarudo. He was awarded the Order of Culture in 2008, the first non-Japanese recipient. Keene remained active in literary and cultural life in Japan until his death in 2019 at the age of 96.

Reviews

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good survey. Many summaries of important works requiring some background to appreciate. Interesting biographies. Origins of haiku and kabuki especially interesting to me.

[Paul Kerschen]

Literary history through a reflecting telescope: genres cohere and then hollow out, what moves are possible when.