Steven Carter
The heart of the book is in its descriptions--grounded in careful exegesis according to what we know from historical sources--of prominent seasonal images associated with Japanese poetry and culture. It should be a valuable tool for anyone interested in Japanese poetry and literature and for those interested in art and art history, the tea ceremony, flower-arranging, clothing, cuisine, and a variety of other Japanese customs. Haruo Shirane's work offers a wealth of valuable information and many interesting and original insights.
— Steven Carter, Stanford University
Kate Wildman Nakai
"Sensitivity to nature" is one of those commonplaces about Japanese tradition that because of its all-too-easy association with cultural nationalism tends to set many people's teeth on edge. This engaging and impressive study provides a welcome antidote. Drawing from literary, visual, historical, and religious sources, Haruo Shirane cuts through the clichés to uncover multiple, evolving, and sometimes surprising dimensions of the Japanese relationship with nature from early times to the present.
— Kate Wildman Nakai, professor emerita, Sophia University
Joshua Mostow
A tour de force. Shirane synthesizes the long and complicated encoding of flora, fauna,toponyms and annual events of the Japanese landscape and calendar, untangling not onlytheir synchronic connections, but also their historical development from the 8th to 19thcentury, from the nightingale (hototogisu) as a harbinger of summer in the Kokinshû tocats' love-making as a topic for comic haikai verse in the Edo period. This book will beessential for anyone interested at all in virtually any genre of the traditional Japanese arts:poetry, costume, painting, noh theater, architecture, tea ceremony, flower arranging -- orJapanese sweets (wagashi)!
— Joshua Mostow, University of British Columbia
Andrew M. Watsky
Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons provides a compelling account of how Japan has appropriated, interpreted, and valued nature over the centuries. Shirane's wide-ranging study tracks the culture of nature in Japan, and especially waka's central role in constructing a vision of nature that impacted all the arts. In its breadth, depth, and accessibility, the book is of great value not only to scholars and students of Japan, but anyone interested in the intersections of art and nature.
— Andrew M. Watsky, Princeton University
