Acquiring texts for J7A

If you are in a hurry, here's the short solution for deciding on which texts to purchase:

purchase Helen McCullough's Anthology of Japanese Prose
purchase Helen McCullough's Genji & Heike

BUT if you are considering participating in the major extra credit by reading the full Tale of Genji ...

purchase the unabridged versions of the Tale of Genji as translated by Edward Seidensticker (first choice) or Royall Tyler (a good other option)

or, use the online full translation by Edward Seidensticker (although it is a messy text and imperfect in its OCR version)

<<About the online version: You will have to sign an agreement, receive the text through an email link, and download it. For me, the line breaks are bad but when I convert the whole document from 12pt font to 10pt font if behaves pretty well. To find chapters use their document markup code: <C 1> means "Chapter 1", etc. (There is a space between the C and the 1.)>>

If you are a major and somewhat into literature ...

Consider purchasing unabridged versions of The Tale of Genji (Seidensticker or Tyler) and/or The Tale of Heike (McCullough only). This might be only a few dollars more and might even sometimes be on sale below the price of the abridged versions (the market is flooded).

Not a native reader of English?

Some might be able to read both Genji and Heike in their in their native language. It will make following class more difficult, but it is marginally possible. Please be very careful to locate a quality translation. Try our library first, think of the web as a last resort option. (There are some really poor translations on the web.) Matching up what is assigned with such translations might be a challenge.

Explanations & notes:

Many of the texts for this class are PDF files that are available on bSpace. However, there is substantial reading assigned from Helen McCullough's Anthology of Japanese Prose. In my opinion it is impractical to complete the readings using the reserve copy, or to piece together all the various portions through other sources. It is in too many bits and pieces to do that easily or time/cost efficiently.

Regarding English translations of Tales of the Heike: In my opinion the McCullough translation is the only choice for this class. The other full translations are so poor in quality (comparatively speaking) that they are not worth your time and money.

Regarding English translations of Tale of Genji: We read from McCullough's Genji & Heike but I supplement this with about an equal amount of further reading of the narrative. That missing portion must be accessed. I have provided those 150 or so pages as a PDF on bSpace. That PDF is Seidensticker's translation.

You can see what will be required by downloading the PDF from bSpace ("Genji_Seidensticker ...") and check this page that outlines the assignments: Genji & Heike Assigned Readings (PDF). (***The PDF file is not perfect, and lacks the helpful footnotes of a print version. Its only pluses, really, are that it is free and searchable. In all other ways, the print versions are definitely superior.)

If you don't want to switch back and forth between two translations, you should buy Seidensticker UNABRIDGED.

If you want to go the most inexpensive route, just buy Genji & Heike and use the provided PDF file for the remainder of the reading.

If you don't like reading a lot of text (hundreds of pages) onscreen, buy Seidensticker and use only it.

If you find a better deal on Tyler, or just want to read the most recent translation, you can use it but matching up the required reading sections will need a little work on your part.

Seidensticker and Tyler compared: both have the pluses and minuses. Tyler is best when read cover-to-cover. Seidensticker works better when reading portions. (This is because Seidensticker uses stable character names across the full translation, to help track narrative figures. This is not the practice of the original, however, where characters often are named by their current government post and, as they are promoted, the name changes. Tyler follows the original more closely in this regard. When reading his translation cover-to-cover, these changes are not that difficult to follow. But when reading excerpts they can be very confusing.)