One of the texts I am working through for my dissertation is Uchimura Kanzō’s Consolations of a Christian. It has never  been translated into English before, outside of the two chapters I have translated recently (and a few bits here and there by John Howes and others.) One of the things I have discovered is just how […]

Fujiwara no Shunzei wrote “Korai Futeisho”in 1197. This early Kamakura treatise on poetics set the stage for many poetic developments to come. Chiefly, Shunzei discusses the connection between kotoba, or words, and kokoro, which means heart/mind. In the poetic sense, kokoro, according to Shunzei was transmitted from all the preceeding poetic anthologies, such as Man’yoshu, […]