This account of the growth and uses of Western learning in Japan has been enlarged by two new chapters that extend the story from 1798 to 1830. The author has incorporated the results of recent research by scholars in Japan and the West and made corrections in the text.

From his impoverished upbringing to his tragic suicide in exile, Watanabe Kazan's life and work reflected a turbulent period in Japan's history. Donald Keene, a renowned authority on Japanese literature and culture, presents a revealing portrait the samurai painter and intellectual.

Rather than resist the vast social and cultural changes sweeping Japan in the nineteenth century, the poet Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) instead incorporated new Western influences into his country's native haiku and tanka verse. By reinvigorating these traditional forms, Shiki released them from outdated conventions and made them more responsive to newer trends in artistic expression. Altogether, his reforms made the haiku Japan's most influential modern cultural export.

Using extensive readings of Shiki's own writings and accounts of the poet by his contemporaries and family, Donald Keene...

Rather than resist the vast social and cultural changes sweeping Japan in the nineteenth century, the poet Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) instead incorporated new Western influences into his country's native haiku and tanka verse. By reinvigorating these traditional forms, Shiki released them from outdated conventions and made them more responsive to newer trends in artistic expression. Altogether, his reforms made the haiku Japan's most influential modern cultural export.

Using extensive readings of Shiki's own writings and accounts of the poet by his contemporaries and family, Donald Keene...