Gossamer Years

Written in the tenth century, The Kagero Nikki, translated as The Gossamer Years, belongs to the same period as The Tale of Genji and The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon. Like The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, The Gossamer Years is a journal kept by a noblewoman. This frank autobiographical diary reveals two tempestuous decades of the author's unhappy marriage and her growing indignation at rival wives and mistresses. Too impetuous to be satisfied as a subsidiary wife, she protests the marriage system of her time in one of Japanese literature's earliest attempts to portray difficult elements of the predominant social hierarchy. Very little is known of the author outside of what is related in her diary. Her name is unknown -- but she was related to the Lady Murasaki, author of The Tale of Genji, and to Sei Shonagon, author of The Pillow Book.

Edward G. Seidensticker, Professor Emeritus of Japanese at Columbia University, is a noted translator and the author of several books in English and Japanese. He had received from the Japanese government one of its highest honors, the third-class Order of the Rising Sun, for his part in introducing Japanese novels abroad. His works include The Makioka Sisters, Snow Country, The Tale of Genji and Thousand Cranes.