From the Bamboo-View Pavilion: Takemuki-ga-ki (Fourteenth-Century Voices)

Hino Nako (1310-1358) experienced the turmoil of the Japanese mid-14th century. In this moving memoir she sums up her life: her early years of court service, her cruelly brief marriage to Saionji Kinmune, her devotion to her son, the pilgrimages and Zen practice of her later years, and her sense of having done all she could amid chaos and loss to uphold the honor of her house. She omits the death of Kinmune, killed before her eyes in 1335, but the translation includes the Taiheiki account of it. Nako's confession of religious faith and her praise of the beauty of Kitayama, the Saionji estate, are among the finest passages of medieval Japanese literature.