“...he had always read The Tale of Genji in the small type of modern editions, but when he came across it in a handsome old block-printed edition it made an entirely different impression on him. What had it been like when they read it in those beautiful flowing manuscripts of the age of the Heian Court? A thousand years ago The Tale of Genji was a modern novel. It could never be read that way again, no matter how far Genji studies progressed. Still, the old edition gave a more intense pleasure than a modern one. Doubtless the same would be true of Heian poetry.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, Beauty and Sadness
Kawabata Yasunari 川端康成 (1899−1972)
美しさと哀しみと Utsukushisa to kanashimi to
Translated by Howard S. Hibbett (1920−2019)