Momchil

“Akiko, we might conclude, was decidedly a modern, but one with a private vision; a writer of her age, but by no means typical of her age. Fortunately it was an age in which her emulation of the life and work of a paragon of a millennium past struck her contemporaries (and many of our own) as the very height of both literary and academic modernity.”
― Gaye Rowley, Yosano Akiko and The Tale of Genji

“Were I asked whether it would be desirable that The Tale of Genji be translated into the modern colloquial language, I would without hesitation answer yes. I am very keen to have a translation of this tale… . For translations of simple kanbun written by people of the Edo period, I see no need whatever. What I desire are translations of the truly ancient texts of this nation, such as the Kojiki. From a slightly later period, of the several fictions, a translation of The Tale of Genji is what is most needful… . Whenever I read The Tale of Genji, I always sense a certain resistance; and if that cannot be overcome, I cannot grasp the meaning of the words. The Tale of Genji, it seems to me, is written in a style that in itself, quite apart from the antiquity of the words, is by no means easy to understand.”
― Gaye Rowley, Yosano Akiko and The Tale of Genji

“In the house covered in dew-drenched vines   the cry of insects is unchanged from autumns past.”
― Gaye Rowley, Yosano Akiko and The Tale of Genji

“Now, when life had at last become easy for her, she learned for the first time what boredom meant.”
― Ōgai Mori, The Wild Goose