As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams

by Lady Sarashina, Ivan Morris (Translator)

A autobiography in which the anonymous writer intersperses personal reflections, anecdotes and lyrical poems with accounts of her travels and descriptions of the Japanese countryside. She illuminates her pilgrimages to temples and mystical dreams in exquisite prose, describing a journey that can be read as a metaphor for life itself.

Genres: Japan, Classics, Nonfiction, Japanese Literature, History, Memoir, Poetry

153 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1050

About the author

Takasue's Daughter, or Sugawara no Takasue no musume, (菅原孝標女, c.1008 - after 1059) was a Japanese author. "Sugawara no Takasue no musume" means a daughter of Sugawara no Takasue. Her real name is unknown. However, British scholar Ivan Morris, who translated her diary, referred to her as Lady Sarashina.

She is known for her classic Heian period travel diary, the Sarashina nikki.

Reviews

[Henry Avila · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Night after night I lie awake, listening to the rustle of the bamboo leaves, and a strange sadness fills my heart"...She walked on Earth 1,000 years ago, looking at the beauty of the Moon shining brightly in the heavens illuminating the land, viewing the exquisite flowers as they blossomed in many shades, seeing the magnificent snow-capped white mountain top of Mount Fuji and the purplish color below its summit, the prettiness of a blue lake ( Biwa) still there as waves flowed by their boat, the green hills of the rolling countryside spreading out to infinity , the rainbow brightness of a sunset when the Sun sinks slowly under the horizon, the sweet sounds of birds passionately singing in trees to each other ...still her real name is unknown today....Called Lady Sarashina by some now, an alias the woman never heard in her short life 1008-1059, in the busy old capital of Kyoto, Japan, population 175,000 now 1.5 million . As a lady-in -waiting to a Princess a daughter of the Emperor and Empress of Japan, she didn't even live in the main palace, in a lesser one but the job was not glamorous, babysitting a girl of four a thankless occupation . Unimportant women were known by nicknames then, she was the " daughter of Takasue no Musume " a sometimes governor of not very prestigious provinces. A shy girl who loved reading...writing poems to friends and relatives and receiving back more, devouring the Tales of Genji as they came out chapter by chapter in 1021, all 54, dreams were her reality "I live in the dream world", she felt comfortable in a state of unconsciousness, when awakening making notes quickly about them good or bad so not to forget...they were prophecies of the future, she believed. Hypersensitive, crying as people succumbed, even strangers she never met a gloomy , timid, melancholic nature not suited for this society. Her devoted middle class father worries , his daughter ( they are quite close) having reached the ancient age of 31, unmarried just beginning her career as a lowly servant to a royal child, she must stop daydreaming and become serious. Pilgrimages to Buddhist shrines start to occupy her time, crushed by the death of her dear sister, visiting famous temples, praying for good fortune, days on end, talking to the priests and nuns, but something is missing she lacks the proper belief , however nature the beauty of it , the mysterious atmosphere that is different. Getting away from her husband and children, two boys, one girl ( Lady Sarashina at long last marries at 36)...be free of responsibilities, observe the surroundings, the majestic tapestry of a simple river roaring through, a bird flying high above and falling until the last second, soaring again, the thrill of looking at countless stars in the night sky, the rains bringing life and snow making a winter pretty...Autumn leaves changing their pigment to brilliant reds, yellows, oranges, purples, blues, browns...she must write about this for posterity...A wonderful, vivid description of the golden age of Japan. the Heian period at its height, a superb book with a short, thoughtful poem or two on each page.

[Annie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Continuing on with my Heian period survey.

I like the translator (Ivan Morris) a lot. His foreword got me excited for the Pillow Book which I’ll be reading soon— he makes Sei Shonagon sound like a brilliant, badass spitfire.

Lady Sarashina, in contrast, is a shrinking violet of average intelligence whose deepest desire is to be left alone with her few loved ones and a wealth of juicy romance books. Like, her fantasy is for a hot guy to fall in love with her, but for her to live on a remote mountain by herself, and her boy visits her exactly once per year, and leaves her alone the rest of the time to “live [her] lonely existence, gazing at the blossoms and the autumn leaves and the moon and the snow.”

That’s hilarious.

She also fangirls hard over The Tale of Genji and prays every night that she’ll be able to finish it. Girl, same.

Though I think Murasaki is more intelligent, Sarashina’s diary is infinitely more readable/interesting than Murasaki’s was.

[7jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Okay, the review's lost cos GR chose to double put this book in my read-books list, and the other one was I guess the one that held that one. *shrug*)

[Justin Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lovely example of 'autobiography', and a lovely example of the two great paradoxes of art and religion:

i) religion suggests that we should concern ourselves more with the ultimate results of our behavior (i.e., heaven, rebirth etc...) than the proximate results (i.e., enjoyment, sensual gratification etc...) It can only do this effectively by using the language (broadly speaking) of this world, because we don't know the language of the next. But this use of language leads us to value the language and objects of this world, which distracts us from heaven/rebirth.

ii) art makes life bearable; at the same time it draws us away from the 'real world,' including our problems dealing with the first paradox.

For 'Sarashina', the religion is syncretic Shinto/Buddhism, the art is the tales of her time and place, Heian Japan (e.g., Genji, The Pillow Book). As translated by Ivan Morris, her prose is lovely and her poetry readable, though forcing them into English misses a lot, I'm sure. I'm also skeptical because I feel entirely at home in Sarashina's world; there seems to be no important difference between her and me. Since she was an 11th century Japanese woman, it's just possible that Morris has made the translation a little too smooth.

[Smiley · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few years ago while reading some stories on Japanese literature, I came across a Heian classic entitled “As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams” and longed to read it since it’s written as recollections of a woman called Lady Sarashima in eleventh-century Japan, that is, 1,000 years ago. It’s simply amazing how some Japanese women then were so literate that this authoress herself could write “an important piece of Japanese literature” (back cover). In retrospect, we can’t help wondering, I think, how advanced they were, linguistically, because they should have passed an interesting learning/teaching process till this lady scholar could eventually write her own lauded diary. Moreover, as for other countries, what were they literally doing then? It seems to me Japan’s literacy has since far advanced and been developed as one of the civilized nations in the world.

Some may wonder why we should read her narration, and, if there is anything worth reading or reflecting on due to its obviously ancient/remote context from our twenty-first century world. However, I think we can find some traces of ancient wisdom left to posterity that has since belonged to humankind, in other words, Japanese people would be happy to share their pride and scholarship if they know there’re global readers interested in reading Lady Sarashima from its translated version. Just imagine how they would feel and think when there’re more Japanologists/Japanese scholars, for instance, Prof. Donald Keene, Prof. Royall Tyler, Prof. John Nathan, etc. who have studied, read Japanese classics and translated such works into English. One of the reasons is that studying to master a foreign language like Japanese simply needs one’s lifetime, therefore, reading its English translation is fine and enjoyable for some keen readers including me.

Treating its reading as if we were in a time machine, we could not help visualizing and sensing something sentimentally and wistfully magic in relation to our great Mother Earth, especially her text on the famous, awe-inspiring and unique Mount Fuji 1,000 years ago on which, I think, we simply can’t read and reflect anywhere, in any language. However, we need to be content with its English version and would be a bit envious of those scholars capable of reading and appreciating it in Japanese as an L1, not L2 or L3. The extract I mean is as follows:

In Suruga stands Mount Fuji, which I used to see in the West from the province where I grew up. There is no mountain like it in the world. It has a most unusual shape and seems to have been painted deep blue; its thick cover of unmelting snow gives the impression that the mountain is wearing a white jacket over a dress of deep violet. At the summit is a level place from which smoke emerges, and in the evening we actually saw a fire burning there. (pp. 39-41)

From the last sentence in the extract above, that implies there was evidence of a classic observable by the naked eye on the trace of seemingly lately extinct Fujisan as primarily written for herself and famously recorded for us posterity to read and know what happened there around a millennium ago; this also proves the power of words that still exists through time, unbelievably, into the present 21st century and beyond.

[marissa sammy · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you ignore the condescending foreword from the Ivan Morris translations, you'll find this to be an excellent, cleverly-arranged book that Takasue's Daughter/Lady Sarashina designed as a multi-layered morality tale about the superficiality of fable as well as a way in which to subvert the Heian Buddhist belief that women could not attain enlightenment. A shallow reading of the book creates a picture of a naive girl growing into a lonely old woman, but if you look a little deeper, the real complexity of the narrative -- its cheeky sense of humour and its profound spirituality -- shine through clearly.

[John Dishwasher John Dishwasher · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an interesting study in ‘the drama of privilege.’ Often stories that engage one are full of conflict: Some hero overcoming obstacles, hardships; trying to be themselves despite their society or some opponent trying to crush them. So what do you write a book about if you face none of these trials? This story was written by an aristocratic woman in Japan 1000 years ago. It is remarkably devoid of any struggle. She faces the very human tragedies of seeing people around her pass away (non-violently), and she is full of a kind of poetic melancholy, but she never once expresses any worry about her income or her shelter or her safety. If there is any conflict in this regard it is that her father once received a lesser governorship than hoped for.

Now, lest the foregoing paragraph be interpreted as contemptuous (as it is coming from a person who has taken the phoney surname ‘Dishwasher’), let me say I am by no means contemptuous. This is a charming book. As a study of the ‘drama of privilege’ it shows just how delicate and balanced and sweet life could be for everyone, if everyone had the advantages of not having to worry about their livelihood. Lady Sarashina’s social position allowed her to spend her life going on pilgrimages through beautiful landscapes, and cultivating friendships, and writing poetry (of which there are dozens of examples here) -- And all in a mood of dreamy romance, oftentimes shot through with the forlorn. At times it feels like you are reading the diary of a naive girl yet to experience life. This intimacy is quite a treat. For there is nothing more enchanting than connecting with a gentle soul from a millennium ago.

There is a simple appreciation of the sweetness of life in this book that makes me ask myself why I waste so much anxiety on the ugly brutality of our time. I have my health, and am enlightened enough to know I can look in another direction. So I will end with this Lady-Sarashina-style poem:

When a Sunday morning breeze
Cooly beckons,
Why do I not shut down my computer?

Ah, privilege.

[☾❀Apple✩ Blossom⋆｡˚ · Rating 3 out of 5]

“It is their scent alone
That tells me what those scattered orange blossoms are.
Else I should have thought they were
Untimely flakes of snow.”



The text was interesting enough, but about the curator... Man, if you don't like a book why would you even choose it for your work lol

[Mrs. Fujiwara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I spent such a long time working hard on my studies that I almost forgot how much I used to enjoy making reviews of my books, albuns and films, so, thinking about that I decide to continue with this pleasant job. Well, because of my latest activities at a History Congress here, I wrote this article about Japanese Rock Gardens and their connection with Zen Buddhist thoughts at medieval times. It was delightful to learn more about relations between Japanese people and Japan nature as a whole. And one of the books I used to specifically present this symbiosis to my public was "As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams", a kind of diary (though professor Ivan Morris doesn't seem to agree with that term) from Lady Sarashina, a woman who lived at the Heian Era (VIII-XII). I've already read this, but I end up re-reading it to pick up details and, mainly, because I've learned that you can't really emit a great/academic opinion about someone else's work just by reading it once (my Professor says we have to read it, at least, five times AND make notes!). That said, I have to admit that this little book became certainly one of my favorites from Japanese Literature. It is not easy for a person that doesn’t have any idea on how life at Classic Japan was and it certainly won’t gain their attention either. Lady Sarashina seemed to be a really calm, quiet and thoughtful woman. A really dreamy girl, who liked fairy tales (as the famous "Tale of Genji"), sensitive to the point of crying out her eyes when she knew someone far, far away, not related to her at all, have died. Like most women at her time, she also guided her emotions by changes in the weather and used to sit at her balcony, gazing at the full moon or at the beauty of momiji trees on autumn nights. And, as most girls at our time, she also dreamed with a shinning prince, like the ones we admire in tales, what makes me wonder that, no matter how far we live, what culture we absorbed, how many time have passed… We all have the same heart and long for the same things over and over. It’s a lovely and delicate book, full of simple poetry (like any other book of that time), metaphors and wishes.

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

Almost as soon as I began this work, I knew I was reading the wrong edition. Not that I had made a mistake, mind you. Circumstances render it necessary that I acquire my works in as finders-keepers a manner as possible, and it takes quite the shock for me to commit to acquiring a work that costs more than ten bucks. However, Morris riddles his choices in translation with such fatuous self-satisfaction and obtuse irrelevancies that I cannot leave this edition as my last memory of this work. I found my measure of beauty here and there, and the lady who penned this work, however ill-fitting the surname Sarashina may be in her case, had such a strong appreciation of my own beloved The Tale of Genji that I could almost ignore the editor's armchair diagnosing and general contempt for the culture, both old and new, he was supposed to be acting as diplomat for. When it comes to Heian works such as this, I am used to sinking into the narrated beauties of custom, landscape, language (even in the translated sense), and a number of the social mores, and enjoying what I can for enjoyment's sake. This is made extraordinarily difficult when the supplementary material does all it can to undermine what it should be objectively contextualizing for a reader who is near a millennia and half a world removed from the work's original composer. Fortunately for me, enough time has passed for a less entrenched translator to try their hand at this work, and as soon as I acquire their version, or something like it, I will be ready for round two.

I don't know how I made my way through Sei Shōnagon's The Pillow Book a couple of years back, seeing as how the edition that the translator lazily refers to instead of transferring the material over (as if this copy couldn't afford the increased page count) is his own. I suppose the combination of the increased amount of material and the writer being more Morris' "type" (as disgusting as it sounds, I assure you) made him stay on track and let Shōnagon do what she does best without snide remarks about overcrowded tourist spots and psychiatrists. Here, the strongest sections of this work are definitely the areas concerned with travel, and I wish I had more of a head for maps so I could take advantage of the supplemental pieces laid out for several of the author's journeys. Such is the general relationship between the original text and the amount of context I need to come close to understanding it, and the so-called Lady Sarashina is not nearly as engaging or masterful in her writing as others of the period whom I've read. Still, I personally found the author's obsession with books and reticence regarding people, especially salacious men, highly relatable, so I was engaged even when I had to read a page of (hopefully on topic) footnotes to figure out the context. Indeed, this work has the potential to be an utterly gorgeous piece if enough care is taken with the accompanying illustrations and analysis, so take my rating, more as a reminding bookmark for further return than anything else, with a grain of salt. I don't imagine I'll like this particular writer as much as I do Genji's, but I recognize how much this particular presentation worked against my ability to honestly estimate her, and so my time with her is far from over.

Modern times have me feeling stretched thin in terms of my reading aspirations, but the amount of relevant reading I've done since the days of Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin means I feel less of a need to 'catch up' as I imagine many on this site are doing. So, while I will be diving into White Rage as soon as I am able, I'm happy to have spent some time in the sophisticated hands of a woman of eleventh-century Japan, compromised as my experience may have been by an unworthy intermediary. It's a lesson of uneven relations between one culture and another that's had its fair share of atrocity in the modern day, and Morris isn't the only one I ran into in the last few days who were extraordinarily comfortable in saying some truly obnoxious things to say about some aspect of Japan, and these are site users that I'm talking about. Long story short, the tale of reading translations will always be a complicated one, especially when the original text is as old and garbled by the passage of time as this one, but it's not exactly difficult to distrust any piece that considers "Her father is probably the principal speaker, while her mother chimes in with an occasional whine" and "Daily life in Heian times, which was inconvenient enough at the best of times, was full of such gratuitous complications" as acceptably professional commentary. And so, I look forward to reading a rendition that is less full of its own opinions and more concerned with the task at hand: bringing an ancient and formative text into the present day for new appreciation and fresh insight.

[Susan Budd · Rating 5 out of 5]

..

[Juliana · Rating 5 out of 5]

My review: https://theblankgarden.com/2017/08/02...

[Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not a "diary" in the conventional Western sense of the word but rather a memoir. It starts out giving an immediate account of a young Japanese girl's travels from the capital (Kyoto) to her father's new posting far from the city. Later, the tone changes and we realise that the text was all written late in the author's life, after her husband's death. She reminded me somewhat of St Teresa of Avila, with her fascination for "tales" such as Genji Monangatari, etc. and her self-castigation for her own "frivolity" and refusal to obey the dreams that encouraged her to engage more deeply in religious life.

It is interesting that all the fiction we have from the Heian period was written by women; men engaged more in scholarly writing and poetry. The author was apparently a fan of The Pillow Book and perhaps wished to emulate that work; however, given her circumstances as only a part-time member of the Imperial court, Sarashina is more a string of personal memories and anecdotes interspersed with the author's own poetry. Again, her husband is only a shadow in the background, and her three children are only mentioned in the footnotes.

Be warned that in this particular edition of the book, the "Diary" itself constitutes less than a third of the printed text. The rest of the over 200 pages is front matter and afterword, as well as footnotes to the text itself. There are some good cultural notes in there, but most of it is self-congratulatory elucubrations on the part of the translators/editors on how good a job they did, how much better their translation is than the ones that have gone before, and basically how wonderful they are.

Well, maybe. I was a professional translator myself for decades, and one of the cardinal rules is that the translator, like a good ghost writer, should not be evident. Our task as professionals is to allow the original text to shine through, in rhythm and tone as well as meaning. It's not about us, or at least it shouldn't be. And yet the Goodreads entry doesn't even credit the lady's assigned name: it says "By Moriyuki Ito (Translator) and Sonja Artzen (Translator)." Niiice. I know court ladies did not go by their own names in print, but come on! And WHY do they state in the notes that the text doesn't mention when her husband died, and yet their translation gives a detailed timeline of when he grew ill and that he died a few weeks later? Did they just add that in? And if they did--!!!

Four stars for the "diary", two for the dirty finger-marks the translators left smudged all over it.

[Alex Sarll]

It varies whether I read the introduction first with a classic – they can be very lax about spoilers – but it was the right decision to do so with this memoir of a middle class (though by Western standards more minor aristocracy) woman who lived in Japan a thousand years ago. Translator Ivan Morris bemoans the writer's lack of gumption, not just by 1970s standards but compared to Sei Shonagon a generation earlier; he apologises for how banal his translations of the poems must seem, on account of uta's ambiguities leaving the form particularly untranslatable (while also noting that the social obligation on anyone who was anyone in Heian society to write multiple poems each day means they can't all be winners); he points out the gaps in the story, like the romantic obsession with the man who never quite saw her versus the lack of any mention of how she acquired the husband who's suddenly being mentioned. There are also details of how the whole text was believed to be a bit rubbish for a few centuries on account of having been rebound in the wrong order. After all of which he justifies his project chiefly on the grounds that the prior translation was too terrible to be allowed to stand. But through it all, you really get a sense of his devotion to this nameless soul, and some of it bleeds through, making the reader more forgiving of the pass-agg notes in verse*, the founding document of Japanese travel writing that's a bit hazy on geography and mostly hates travel**, the cast where the only person more querulous than the author is her infuriating dad, who would somehow fit right into Jane Austen despite living centuries earlier at the other end of the world. I looked it up, and Morris died five years after this came out; it's left me picturing him on an odyssey through the afterworlds, trying to get some facetime with the author of Sarashina Nikki, hampered not only by the vastness of the planes and her dreamy shyness, but by the fact that she wouldn't even have known it acquired that title, much less the English one he gave it.

*"On learning that a friend had been near the village and had returned to the Capital without telling me, I wrote,
Even the wind that soughs in pine trees on the mountain side,
And does not care what people think
Will always make some sign to tell us when it leaves."
**"We were in Musashi, a province without a single charming place to recommend it." To be fair, nobody can have been all that fond of it, since they subsequently plonked Tokyo there instead.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a precious gem - and it's quite overwhelming thinking about that this is a text almost a thousand years old, though the title is a modern choice and the author's name isn't known to us (that is not to say we don't know WHO she was - but at this time women were generally known in the context of men, fathers, husbands and such, or by the place they lived).

I found 'lady Sarashina' a charming acquaintance - bookish and coming across as rather shy. And still she represents a very different culture and time that is quite fascinating but at the same time also strange and not always easy to understand. That being said, considering the place and time this was written, it is surprisingly easy to love.
----
On re-reading it I didn't appreciate it any less, but the theme of a Buddhist view of life (and death) became even more evident to me. We might find it strange that she wrote so much of death and so little of life (it has been noted that she hardly mentions her oldest son, and her two younger children not at all), but this isn't a memoir or diary in the modern sense of the words. These are recollections to show her development as a person from a religious point of view.

[NipPop Bologna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recensione completa: x

Il libro di cui parliamo oggi è “Le memorie della dama di Sarashina”, e con esso entriamo nel vivo di quello che è il periodo d’oro della letteratura giapponese per eccellenza, l’epoca Heian. Siamo quindi attorno all’anno 1000 e nella capitale Heian-kyō (l'attuale Kyoto) si sviluppa una ricchissima produzione letteraria, ad opera soprattutto di dame di corte.

In particolar modo con questo testo, pubblicato da Marsilio nella collana della Letteratura Universale, grazie alla bella traduzione e curatela di Carolina Negri, entriamo in quello che è un sottogenere specifico di questa letteratura, il joryū nikki bungaku, cioè la letteratura diaristica di mano femminile.

Siamo nell’epoca d’oro, come dicevamo, della letteratura giapponese classica in cui si sviluppa una ricca produzione letteraria che è incentrata attorno alla vita della corte. Un'epoca di incredibile raffinatezza, non è solo la letteratura a conoscere un momento d’oro, ma anche l’arte, la pittura, e tutto appunto ruota attorno alla corte di epoca Heian, la corte dove l’imperatore si circonda di consorti che hanno a loro volta un circolo di dame che gareggiano per raffinatezza non solo nei modi, negli abiti e nei comportamenti, ma anche nella produzione letteraria.

È in questo periodo che vedono la luce alcuni capolavori della letteratura giapponese di tutte le epoche, primo fra tutti il Genji monogatari, La storia del principe Genji, ma anche una serie di diari di donne, di dame di corte, che sono incentrati sulla vita di corte e che ci danno uno spaccato di quello che era la loro vita, ovviamente di donne della classe agiata e privilegiata, in questa epoca lontana.

Le dame di corte di epoca Heian godevano di una relativa libertà anche in termini ovviamente sessuali o in termini sentimentali. Erano donne aristocratiche che appartenevano alla piccola e media aristocrazia, che avevano di solito un marito ma potevano anche avere una o più relazioni sentimentali o amanti.

In realtà in questo periodo non era uso che la donna andasse a vivere con il marito dopo il matrimonio, ma la donna rimaneva a vivere nella casa paterna oppure, nel caso in cui fosse una dama di compagnia, rimaneva a prestare servizio a corte. E ciò garantiva a queste donne un certo grado di libertà e permetteva loro di coltivare la loro raffinata cultura, una cultura che avevano acquisito nella casa paterna quando venivano istruite proprio per poi ricoprire il ruolo della dama di corte: un ruolo estremamente ambito, un ruolo prestigioso.

Uno dei passatempi preferiti negli ambienti femminili era ovviamente la lettura, e per questo è così stimolata comunque la produzione letteraria. Le memorie della dama di Sarashina è per noi particolarmente interessante perché in realtà ci descrive anche proprio questo piacere della lettura, perché è attorno alla fascinazione per i testi, i grandi monogatari dell’epoca, che in qualche modo si sviluppano i desideri e le aspirazioni dell’autrice.

Clicca qui per guardare la recensione completa!

[Nique 💫 chroniqled ✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

wow, that was quite an unexpectedly entertaining read. i did not expect to finish this book in one sitting. I liked how candid the author was about her daily life and her struggles— giving me a peek into how it was to live back then and be part of the heian middle class.
now i am curious about her age, because I want to know how old she was at the time that she wrote these specific journal entries. she also reminds me of myself— i’m pretty honest when i’m journaling, and i often enjoy rereading my past entries lol especially when i was younger, and in grade school.

[Elena Davila · Rating 3 out of 5]

I, too, am a frivolously-minded reader of tales. I also write poetry for my friends. I am also wracked with religious guilt. I, too, am the only one left in the old house.
Wow, Lady Sarashina…. she’s me fr!

[alice · Rating 5 out of 5]

she’s just like me fr

[Sparrow .]

“One thousand years ago a woman in Japan with no name wrote a book without a title,” begins the introduction by the translator. This aristocratic woman is traditionally identified, through an oblique method, as “Lady Sarashina.” (The last poem in the book is based on a poem that mentions the Sarashina District.)

Lady Sarashina was obsessed with mass media, which at that time meant “Tales.” Here’s the third sentence of the book:

“Yet even shut away in the provinces I somehow came to hear that the world contained things known as Tales, and from that moment my greatest desire was to read them for myself.”

The author loves Tales so much she turns her life into one: a short (110 pages, including illustrations), oblique, episodic, yearning story.

Too bad that Ivan ruins all the poems embedded in the book (which has been true of every Penguin translation I’ve read). At least he (rather) humbly apologizes in the introduction:

On the whole Lady Sarashina’s own poems are of high quality (though not in the same class as Ono no Komachi’s or Izumi Shikibu’s), and many of them were included in later anthologies. This quality will not, I fear, be apparent from my attempts at translation.

I made a little effort to re-translate the poems. Here are three:

Hazy spring moon –
that’s the moon I love,

when pale green sky & sweet peonies
are wrapped in mist.

*

To whom shall I show it,
to whom shall I speak of

this dawn in the mountains,
this song of the hototogisu?

*

Even here I can’t escape
the chaos of this world

as chimes of the vesper bell
unsettle my heart.

And here are the originals:

The hazy Springtime moon –
That is the one I love,
When light green sky and fragrant blooms
Are all alike enwrapped in mists.

*

To whom shall I show it,
To whose ears shall I bring it –
This dawn in the mountain village,
This music of the hototogisu as he greets another day?

*

Even here I cannot shun
The clamour of this sad world.
For the tolling of the vesper bell
Forlornly stirs my heart.

Though he wrecked the poems, the prose is sharp and full of pulsing, trapped emotions:

“My first period of service lasted exactly one night. When I went to the Palace, I wore a dark crimson robe of glossed silk over eight thin under-robes of dark red. Having been totally absorbed in Tales, I knew scarcely anyone except the people I used to visit in order to borrow books.”

And he whipped up the fabulous title, stealing it from an ancient Japanese poem.

Lady Sarashina’s flirtatious conversation with Minamoto no Sukemichi (1005-1060), the Controller of the Right, is as vivid as a Humphrey Bogart movie. (She never saw Minamoto; conversations at the court between men and women were held through a screen.)*

*All these details are in the comprehensive footnotes.

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fresh and engaging but not at all artless. Arntzen and Moriyuki's text includes transliterated Japanese versions of the poetry and their notes make subtleties of language and structure available to readers like me who have almost no Japanese. This is a book to read a little at a time so the episodes have a chance to sink in. It's all wonderful stuff: the story of how a kind aunt gratifies her quest to find a a copy The Tale of Genji, nights spent looking at the moon and talking with her sister, a cat that seems human.

[Alex Pler · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Me quedo con la luna vaga de primavera,
cuando el cielo de un verde tierno y los cerezos en flor
están envueltos por la caricia de la bruma."

"A mí me ocurre que cuando hay algo, sea triste o alegre, que me toca el corazón, entonces el aspecto del cielo, de la luna y de las flores se me quedan profundamente grabados. ¡Cómo me gustaría saber las circunstancias que os han llevado a preferir la primavera o el otoño!"

[Lucy Barnhouse · Rating 4 out of 5]

The premier translation is probably the one recently put out by Columbia, but this is elegant and thoughtful and evocative, with a good apparatus, and the technically anonymous author (Lady Sarashina) emerges as a sympathetic if still enigmatic character. I used it as a teaching text for Heian Japan, which I found to work well in part because of the diarist's passionate interest in monogatari, her anxiety about court culture, and her complex and evolving relationship to Buddhism.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Une excursion dans le Japon du XIème siècle, à travers le regard d’une jeune fille, puis d’une femme, qui lit, voyage, écrit et rêve, et nous emmène dans son monde.
Article : https://comaujapon.wordpress.com/2017...

[E. G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Illustrations and Maps
Sections and Chronology
Introduction

--As I Crossed A Bridge of Dreams

Notes
Index to Notes

[Juliana · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5 stars. My review: https://theblankgarden.com/2017/08/02...

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wowie what a book. According to google it is the worlds first travel book, written in 1008 AD. The main take aways are, the writing and way they speak back then was so nice, also everyone is delulu. She seemed to base her actions off stuff she sees in her or others dreams. Also, it was very cool to read about how they travel. A few hours train ride now took them 3 days to cross. They would travel by horses or walk, cross rivers and stayed in random villages when dark. While yesterday I was pissed about possible TTC strike. While I do think they were very delulu back then, this is such a nice book to read. I also like the notes. The poems were also nice, idk what classify as a poem, I feel like if you put a period there it just becomes a sentence. Either way good book. Go delulu girl. Also why she so dramatic. When her friend didn’t message her she sent this poem “ do you suppose that I have left this world? Alas, I linger on in tears.” So real for that, screw fake friends. Good night Vietnam

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is an essential for those of us interested in Japanese history, in particular, the women of Japan. The Japanese title is "Sarashina Nikki" or "Sarashina no Nikki." As a side note, "The Gossamer Years" is an account written by Sarashina's older sister which is next on my read list.

That being said, Lady Sarashina's words for the most part are very boring and her character seems to be that of a flighty girl. Sarashina-sama spends most of her youth daydreaming about being romanced away by some handsome prince (like Ukifune) only to wind up married to someone who later makes her world difficult (a footnote says that the phrase "when the world seemed difficult" was a standard euphemism for marital discord) and with a few kids. Like most "I-novels" there are many poetry samples though I didn't find Lady Sarashina's poetry as stunning as Lady Nijo's poetry. Again, though most of the text was pretty boring, Sarashina provides a few interesting aspects of Heian court life (even if she was a very minor figure) and helped add to my perception of the Heian period. I did really like how the little book was ended via a profound poem from Lady Sarashina to a nun she once met and another poem from that nun.

One really good thing about this particular version (hopefully I have the right one here on goodreads) is Ivan Morris. His introduction is very insightful and even humorous. Morris makes many interesting points like how hard Japanese poetry is to translate while still preserving the thought of the poem. His footnotes which are all over the text are also incredibly useful. A few neat things I learned from the footnotes:

-People in the Heian period thought that dew and autumn rains turned leaves red (during autumn)
-The characters for "bath house" mean "house of purification"
-Gentlemen often carried around colored paper aka "pocket paper" for poems and other purposes

So, in conclusion...Boring plot wise, but not bad for historical and cultural purposes. Very typical piece of romantic Heian literature considering that Sarashina doesn't write about the major events in her life. I imagine this would be a very common text to use in the classroom.

[S'hi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Far more fascinating than Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams was written by an un-named writer and had no title of its own. Born at the height of the Heian period in Japan, she has become known as Lady Sarashina. She is part of a strong tradition of female writers in pure Japanese who were not influenced by the Sino-Japanese of the more well-known male writers. Many of them remained anonymous despite their accomplishments.

Being of the middle-class, these women were somewhat separated from the pressures of daily tasks and concerns, yet despite the constant reference to Buddhist prayers and rituals, were still very much caught up in their own concerns within their particular part of this world. In some ways this could be considered the Desperate Housewives of ancient Japan.

Interspersed with poems, this slim volume covers both the expanse of this woman’s life and her travels accompanying her father’s appointments or her own pilgrimages. These could be considered postcards or panoramas, yet they cover the inner landscape as much as the outer.

Poignant, intense, and strangely detached all at once, this is worth a few readings. I personally chose to read directly before returning to the Introduction by Ivan Morris, who also translated this version. This is partly why I felt the contrast to Freud’s Interpretation. There is a distinct tendency of males, and/or academics, to use such references subconsciously as part of their own filter on experience of the world. My preference is to taste first, then feel a greater strength of the original when any such interpretation is later applied. It seems far less distorted for my own perceptions. Of course, you will read it in your own way from your own perspective. Any Buddhist readings you may have encountered are also likely to help disengage this Euro-centric tendency which might otherwise link this to Chaucer in time, purpose and intent. It is far more a personal reflection than a social commentary, while being part of such a conversation rather than a lecture. Once again, a gendered differentiation worth holding as you approach these pages.

[Ian Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Last year I read an article in the Guardian Review about the Penguin Classics series. The author of the article selected ten titles – apparently at random – to illustrate the richness and variety of the works available from Penguin. I realised that of the ten works, I had only read one, so I resolved to read the other nine in 2019. This is the last of those nine that I’ve read.
This short work (you can easily read it in a day if, like the author, you have plenty of free time) was written in the early eleventh century by the daughter of a provincial governor. It is quite amazing that these works by medieval women are still considered among the greatest works of Japanese literature, whereas the works produced by men at that time gather dust. I can’t think of a similar situation in western literature. Of course Lady Sarashina and her peers were upper middle class or aristocratic/imperial ladies who had access to education, or enough education to enable them to write in an exquisitely lofty Japanese without the pernicious Chinese influences that their male counterparts were susceptible to. They also had masses of leisure and masses of servants to run around after them. Ivan Morris, the translator, notes that although Lady Sarashina’s descriptions of nature and landscapes are evocative, it was considered good form for a writer to be fairly vague about humdrum stuff like rice and paddy fields, despite – or perhaps because – their wealth came from the thousands of peasants toiling away in those same paddy fields. He also notes that these ladies lived through a time of turbulence, insurrection and rebellion, but the politics are ignored, certainly by Lady Sarashina. She is a very isolated and retiring individual, and even when she eventually marries and has children, she seems very remote from her family, especially after her father’s death. Having failed to make it as a lady-in-waiting to an imperial princess, she seems to spend most of her time going on pilgrimages to various remote temples.