In this delightful anthology, McKinney traces the evolution of travel writing in Japan through diaries, stories, drama and poetry. She reveals how a distinctive poetics of travel emerged across more than a thousand years of literary history, very different from that of the west.
She begins with the Manyōshū, Japan’s first extant work of literature, which includes an austerely beautiful example of classical poetry by an eighth-century Buddhist monk, Sami Mansei: “To what shall I compare / this world? / It is like a boat at daybreak / rowing away and gone / leaving no trace.”
In The Pillow Book, written in the 10th century by Sei Shōnagon, a lady-in-waiting to the Empress Teishei, we find the simple pleasures of trips outside the court: “things that make you feel cheerful – an ox carriage crammed with ladies on their way back home from some viewing expedition”.
McKinney concludes in the 17th century with the great poet Matsuo Bashō, who admitted that “the gods of wayfaring possessed my mind”, and who was happiest wandering through rural Japan following in the wake of “straying wind-torn clouds”.
In this remarkable work of translation and scholarship, filled with wonderful vignettes of Japanese life and sensibility, McKinney introduces readers to the nation’s rich and unique literary tradition.
• Travels with a Writing Brush, translated by Meredith McKinney, is published by Penguin (£10.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 020-3176 3837. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.
