In this revisionist study of texts from the mid-Heian period in Japan, H. Richard Okada offers new readings of three well-known tales: "The Tale of the Bamboo-cutter, The Tale of Ise, "and "The Tale of Genji." Okada contends that the cultural and gendered significance of these works has been distorted by previous commentaries and translations belonging to the larger patriarchal and colonialist discourse of Western civilization. He goes on to suggest that this universalist discourse, which silences the feminine aspects of these texts and subsumes their writing in misapplied Western canonical...

This study of literature from Japan's mid-Heian period offers new readings of three traditional tales and contends that the cultural significance of these works has been distorted by translations belonging to the patriarchal and colonialist discourse of Western civilizations.