This anthology is intended to supplement courses in which Japanese aesthetics and culture are taught. The essays assume little background knowledge; they do represent seminal thought in literary, cultural, and aesthetic criticism, and are well known to scholars for their clarity and straightforward exposition, making them especially useful to the Westerner who does not speak Japanese.

Some of the essays provide a general introduction to the basic theories of Japanese aesthetics, others deal with poetry and theater, and a third group discusses cultural phenomena directly related to classic...