The Rainbow World

Library Journal

Watson, well known as a translator of Chinese and Japanese poetry and a former professor of Chinese at Columbia, here offers 13 personal essays covering various aspects of his life in Japan, from his first arrival in that country in 1945 as a young sailor in the U.S. Navy through his years of graduate study at Kyoto University in the early 1950s to his period of permanent residence there since 1973. The essays offer a variety of insights into Japanese life and culture, with a special emphasis on Zen meditation, which the author has both studied and practiced. Watson is a well-informed and sensitive observer, whose prose carries with it a strong sense of the poetry which he has devoted so much of his life to translating. The book, which concludes with a number of his recent translations, is a work to be read slowly and savored both for its cultural insights and the beauty of its writing. Generally recommended. See also William Bohnaker's The Hollow Doll , reviewed in this issue, p. 204.--Ed.-- Scott Wright, Coll. of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn.