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

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.

Author: Donald Keene
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 10/20/1999
Series: History of Japanese Literature #02
Pages: 606
Weight: 1.86lbs
Size: 9.18h x 6.13w x 1.13d
ISBN: 9780231114677
Revised Edition