Reddit mentions: The best asian literary history & criticism books

Hi, throwing in my two cents that the best way to improve your reading/grammar and literary knowledge is to dive deep into anthologies and collections. Think of it as a sampling of the 'best of the best' and you are getting a taste of what is considered to be great. Also don't be afraid to pick up a piece of classic literature and think, "Good god, this was considered awesome?" That's ok. Some people don't like premodern literature. Some people LOVE it. Some people HATE it. Some people are all about cyberpunk angsty lit that's a product of our super modern society. Some love poetry...well, you get the picture. The beauty of an anthology is you can survey the goods -- and if you love something you read, odds are it's only a small selection taken from a much bigger book OR the writer is pretty prolific and if you like his style of writing, odds are you are going to LOVE the rest of his work.

Don't know where to begin? I recommend checking out some classics from overseas (which I use as a required book in my courses):

• Anthology of Japanese Literature compiled by Donald Keene
  This will take you from the world origin myth right up to Tokugawa period (from 794 to 1868) I'm partial to world origin myths and the Kamakura period. It's not easy to read but it's a good way to develop critical thinking skills and will broaden your world view!
  
  http://www.amazon.com/Anthology-Japanese-Literature-Mid-Nineteenth-Representative/dp/0802150586/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397829264&sr=8-1&keywords=Anthology+of+Japanese+Literature
  
  
• Anything by a Japanese poet named Matsuo Basho. Feeling down in the dumps? Read a haiku.
  
  http://www.amazon.com/Narrow-Travel-Sketches-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140441859/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1397829577&sr=8-2&keywords=Matsuo+Basho
  
  Ok, so I don't like premodern literature? ^Then ^check ^out ^the ^modern ^stuff!
  
  
• Check out this anthology of Modern Japanese Literature:
  
  http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Japanese-Literature-From-Present/dp/0802150950/ref=pd_sim_b_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=04S84RFJ5BQ76B3N06QT
  
  Also, to make yourself super cultured, start reading opera summaries and plays. That's right. Read them. Then go see them.
  
  
• 100 Greatest Operas and their stories is a great place to begin.
  
  Here's a link: http://www.amazon.com/Great-Operas-Their-Stories-Act-/dp/0385054483/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397830047&sr=1-1&keywords=Operas
  
  
  TL;DR: Start reading! Collections and Anthologies are a great place to start.

<Blind faith is un-Buddhist.

I don't disagree, but I'm an academic. The understanding of Buddhism I have is academic and my arguments are based in issues of history as I understand it.

<I quote scholars and you quote yourself, as if you are an authority. State your name and your credentials then.


This tells me that my arguments alone are insufficient to identify me as an authority to you- really I wouldn't claim to be on this topic. As I said, I study mostly American Buddhism today- no I will not provide my name because I like to preserve some anonymity on the internet. I have a M.A and am doing PhD coursework. The problem that you are having is that you are not taking an academic view of the discussion.

>Your faith is greater than your wisdom

This is an ad-hominem fallacy at its best. I'm not Buddhist at all. I have no faith because I study the topic. I respect the tradition but I certainly don't worship in it. This is a discussion about historical understanding- something that you have garnered from questionable scholars. Here is a brief reading list of real scholars you can take and read to see what actual authorities in the field are saying.

Don Lopez: Elaborations on Emptiness
Don Lopez: The Heart Sutra Explained this is a series of translated commentaries on the Heart Sutra. Though it uses the long version, which is problematic.

J.L Austin: How to Do Things With Words This will tell you a lot about the linguistic empiricists and how words function in religious settings.

If you want to read the theory that I do you might also read
Alfred North Whitehead: Process and Reality
Also:Whithead's Symbolism: It's meaning and Effect
And
Bruce Lincoln's Authority

For Buddhist histories that are not popularist:

Peter N. Gregory: Tsung-Mi and the Sinification of Buddhism

Gimello's Paths to Liberation
or his Studies in Ch'an and Hua-yen

For modern philosophical takes on Buddhism Nancy Frankenberry's Religion and Radical Empiricism though to understand her you need a wider knowledge base than you probably have. Here, let me suggest something for you to read first:

James: The Varieties of Religious Experience
James: The Will to Believe
James: Pragmatism
Rorty: Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
Rorty: Consequences of Pragmatism

This one is particularly important for you:
Rorty: Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth

You want to know about the origins of Buddhism? How about Vajrayana?
Snellgrove: Indo-Tibetan Buddhism
Pollock (a great book): The Language of the Gods in the World of Men
For a modern take: Wedemeyer: Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism

Davidson: Indian Esoteric Buddhism
Bhattacharyya: An Introduction to Buddhist Esoterism These last few present conflicting views on the nature of Tantrism, particularly the last one that might fit your "fundamentalist" category.

TO understand American Buddhism better:
Merton: Zen and the Birds of Appetite
Eck: A New Religious America
Tweed (this is one of my favorite books ever) The American Encounter with Buddhism 1844-1912
Neusner (ed) World Religions in America
on individuals: Sterling: Zen Pioneer
Hotz: Holding the Lotus to the Rock Sokei-an was a traditionalist and a near mirror of Thich Nhat Hanh, yet his teachings never took off.
Since you Love Thich Nhat Hanh: Fragrant Palm Leaves: Journals 1962-1966 and the companion to that, Merton's journals
Another of Hanh's Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire This is before he was popular and so is much more interesting than some of his later works.

Also Mcmahan: The Making of Buddhist Modernism

I looked up the entire passage you're citing in Goldman's translation (quoted below for your reference), and it supports your interpretation that Rama and Sita were 13 and 6 respectively at the time of marriage. Goldman's translation has an impeccable reputation and it's based on the critical edition.

However, I should warn you that there is no such thing as an "authoritative" or "definitive" Ramayana text. The Ramayana is a living tradition with a long history wherein many cultures and traditions have their own versions of the Ramayana which differ significantly from Valmiki's version. I recommend this book if you'd like to learn more about the Ramayana tradition. While I trust that Goldman is a faithful and accurate translator of the Valmiki critical edition, I would caution against the belief that Valmiki is the ultimate authority on the Ramayana.




> Sarga 45
>
> 1. When Ravana came in the guise of a mendicant to carry off
> Vaidehi, he had first put some questions to her. Of her own accord
> she now began to tell her story.
> 2. For Sita had thought a moment: "He is a brahman and my
> guest. If I do not reply he will curse me." She then spoke these
> words:
> 3. "I am the daughter of Janaka, the great king of Mithila. My
> name is Sita, may it please the best of twice-born, and I am the
> wife of Rama.
> 4. "For twelve years I lived in the house of Raghava, enjoying such
> pleasures as mortals enjoy. I had all I could desire.
> 5. "Then, in the thirteenth year, the king in concert with his kingly
> counselors approved the royal consecration of my husband.
> 6. "But just as the preparations for Raghava's consecration were
> under way, a mother-in-law of mine named Kaikeyi asked her husband
> for a boon.
> 7. "You see, Kaikeyi had already married my father-in-law for a consideration. So she had two things she now could ask of her husband,
> the best of kings and a man who always kept his word: One
> was the consecration of Bharata, the other, my husband's banishment.
> 8. " 'From this day forth I will not eat, or drink, or sleep, I will put
> an end to my life if Rama is consecrated.'
> 9. "Such were Kaikeyfs words, and though my father-in-law, who
> had always shown her respect, begged her with offers of commensurate
> riches, she would not do what he begged of her.
> 10. ab-874*. "Rama, my mighty husband, was then twenty-five
> years old, and I had just passed my eighteenth birthday.
> 10. cd-ef. "His name is renowned throughout the world, his eyes
> are large, his arms strong. He is virtuous, honest, truthful, and
> devoted to the welfare of all people.

Okay so

I'll divide this into a few sections, assuming you can only speak English and want books in a somewhat reasonable price range.

Though if you're at uni or have access to a uni library: make the most of it.

Oh yeah before I forget, as a general rule, if you're reading an explanation or exploration of a culture's beliefs or stories, find something written by someone who comes from the actual culture if you can. It's always best as a foreigner to have your first insight being from someone who's grown up with it. Avoid people like Alan Watts like the fucking plague. Though of course actual academics on the mythology and religion generally write quite well about them.

First up, Shintoism.

The perfect primer for Japanese mythology is the oldest book extant in Japan's history: the Kojiki. In English, you really cannot go past the Philippi translation. It is incredibly comprehensive with cross referencing and explaining basically any term you could want to know. Philippi explains the history of the book, the intracies of the language involved, and competing theories regarding contentious points alongside with the translation. The one downside here is that it's rather pricey. The book is out of print due to copyright issues, so you can only really get it for around $100 at the lowest. Still, it's a pretty great resource. A word of warning though, there are a lot of boring chapters in the Kojiki if you're interested in myths. Part of the reason why the Kojiki and the Nihongi were commissioned at the time was to legitimise imperial rule, so you have a lot of chapters that just talk about lineage, connecting the Imperial family back to Amaterasu. "Emperor Steve was born in this year, had six kids with three wives and died. He was succeeded by Emperor Greg." Stuff like that.

If you want something that isn't a primary text and is a little more accessible, The Kami Way is supposed to be quite good. It's very cheap, written by two academics (one from Japan one from the West), and quite short, making it easy to dive into. The one downside is that it's a little old, so its scholarship might not be quite as current as some other books.

Next up, Hinduism.

Hinduism is fucking terrifying to tackle because there is just so much stuff on it. Keep in mind that Hinduism is more a collection of belief systems than one unified belief system, keep in mind that it has an incredibly well preserved written and oral history, keep in mind that it's an offshoot of one of the oldest attested religions on Earth... there's a lot here.

and then you have the five hundred books written by western people about the TRUE way to Awaken Your Chakras

Now two of the most important texts here are the Rig Veda and the Upanishads. The Rig Veda is one of the oldest religious texts in the world, a collection of religious hymns. Until recently, there was no good full translation into English. Sure you can find one on the Sacred Texts website but... it's crap from 19th century England. Scholarship was not the same then as it is now. However, in 2014, an absolutely fantastic resource was completed. It is the full Rig Veda, unabridged, with commentary on every single one of over a thousand hymns. The poetry sings, the commentary is insightful... and it costs 400 american dollars all up. I only got to read these through my university library.

There's a few good Upanishad translations for cheap though. A lot shorter too, normally clocking it at only around 500 pages. I picked one up from Oxford World's Classics. This is pretty essential if you want to understand what the Brahman concept from Digital Devil Saga actually is.

In terms of a general introduction though, probably this book is the best. It's a pretty thorough overview that covers the history of Hinduism from ancient times to today, the mythology of it, etc.

Next, Buddhism.

Buddhism has a similar problem to Hinduism in terms of scope, though somewhat less pronounced, as Buddhism is genuinely just one belief system, separated into sects that are much more comparable to Christianity's variations. You do probably get even more "Namaste Bro" type people with Buddism than you do Hinduism though.

My knowledge here isn't as much up to scratch though, as up til now I've read more about the practice and history of Buddhism as opposed to going in depth about the mythology and cosmology of it all, which I only really know on a very superficial level. I'm trying to change that right now though; it's super interesting to learn what Hindu gods became in the Buddhist belief system, and how they evolved further upon reaching Japan.

If you're looking more into the mythology side of things, don't read something like the Dhammpada, which is a sayings text. Of course it's interconnected, but you'll probably want something a bit more direct.

I'd recommend again going to an academic text rather than straight into the three baskets. And in this case, I'd recommend this book, which I picked up purely because of a certain coincidence and have found very interesting. By framing it around the cosmology of Buddhism, this book naturally leads into talking about Buddhist deities, and other things you're more likely to be interested in, without skimping on explanation about how this connects to the Buddhist belief system.

Finally, Taoism

all i can recommend you here is the tao te ching and the zhuangzi, get them with a good commentary, i don't know enough about other texts that explain taoism to recommend any

That's about what I'd recommend. If anyone wants to suggest any improvements to this list please do!

Whoops, I'm late! I listened to A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oë:

>Bird's son is born with a brain hernia. Doctors tell him the baby will not survive & Bird is caught in limbo, waiting for the child to die, terrified it will survive in a vegetative state & change his life forever. He turns to alcohol & an old girlfriend in an attempt to escape. The story is dark, deeply personal & semi autobiographical. Like watching a car crash in slow motion, this is one of those dark, unputdownable "gripping", "utterly compelling" stories. Skip it if you're looking for a cheery read but if you're interested in some exceptional Japanese lit it's superb. Great book, great narration.

Loved it. It was recommended in a post on /r/books by /u/thatbookishgirl & I'm so glad. I'll definitely be reading more books by this author.

I've just picked up Everything is Illuminated by Jonathon Safran Foer & just keep giggling. I had no idea it was going to be so funny!

I'll do classical works, since those are what I know best.

Classical works:

Kojiki. One of the recent translations is highly readable. It contains the major native myths and legends, which you will see referenced over and over again in your modern works.

Manyoshu: Earliest surviving collection of native poetry. A partial translation done in the 50s is the one I recommend, as the final English was worked over by an actual English language poet, making it by far the most accessible one around. Poets and topics range far and wide, especially when compared with later classical works.

Tales of Ise: Another one with a recent translation. Provides a good look at the noble aesthetic, romance in classical Japan, etc.

Kokin Wakashu: There are no easy to find translations of this, unfortunately. However, if you were to ask a Japanese scholar what the definitive Japanese classic is, this would be it. All later aesthetics, from literature to art, derive in large part from it in one way or another. It is a collection of poetry from 905 (approx) that epitomizes the new noble aesthetic of the age, and as I said, sets the tone for the next millennium and beyond.

Tale of Genji: The definitive prose classic. Courtly love and romance, political intrigues, all that. There are several full-length English translations (and a few that aren't full length). There are still many adherents to the Arthur Waley version, despite its age. The newer Royall Tyler translation is more thorough and scholarly accurate, however.

Tale of the Heike: Several translations exist, but the recent one by Royall Tyler does a good job of projecting the lyrical quality of the original while maintaining accuracy. Several others exist as well, but the Tyler is probably the easiest to both find and read. Tale of war and upheaval at the end of the 12th century, showing the decline of the nobility and rise of the new warrior class. Probably hard to go from cover to cover with, as there are many names/events/places that are hard to follow for most readers. Spot reading recommended.

Confessions of Lady Nijo: There are a few translations, but the one I have linked is probably the easiest to find. Discusses the life of a woman who served in the imperial courts of the late 13th/early 14th C. and all the trials and tribulations she faced by receiving the favors of the emperor.

Hope this is a good start for you all.

I agree with triliana that you should pay for a book, like RS MacGregor's Outline of Hindi Grammar. Link to Amazon, but you can probably find it for half the price on AbeBooks or ALibris.

Rupert Snell's Teach Yourself Hindi Dictionary is absolutely indispensable for anyone who wants conversational Hindi -- MacGregor's Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary is far more useful but won't get you anywhere in beginner's Hindi, esp if you can't read Devanagari. Snell's dictionary begins with a very brief introduction to Hindi grammar, which is not comprehensive but is better than no grammar at all.

Speaking of Snell...he is the director of the Hindi-Urdu Flagship at UT-Austin. NO ONE trying to learn Hindi should be without the resources they put online.

As I said, McGregor's Outline of Hindi Grammar is best, but HUF has PDF links for several excellent older textbooks, completely and legally for free.

I've used the same site for translations for all of my writeups (Mostow). Sometimes I've used Porter's in my Poem of the Day comments if I didn't like how Mostow interpreted them, but yeah never for these ones. The meanings are usually close enough and I don't usually go into great depth explaining the poems beyond face value in these writeups.

I'm actually not 100% sure what the translations are used in the show, but I'm fairly certain that the CR translations are styled to preserve the "same syllables". I believe /u/walking_the_way mentioned that.

Generally, when looking at these poems, I (and /u/combo33) have been going with dedicated professional translations (Mostow, Porter, MacMillan).

Mostow's book can be found here and all the translations are available for free here, if you're curious about some other poems.

Edit: Porter's is here. I think Combo33 has a physical copy of MacMillan's.

On the basis of Indian Creek Chronicles, I'd say there's a good chance you'd get a great deal out of The Outermost House, one of the classics of modern American naturalist non-fiction. The premise if very simple -- the author, Henry Beston, spent a year living in virtual solitude on the easternmost house on the American coast, keeping notes on what he observed. The result is a brief, zen-like meditation on nature's movement through a single place over a single cycle of the seasons. Highly influential.

Since it looks like you're interested in the cultural conflict between modernity and tradition, I'd suggest The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, which follows the treatment of a young Hmong girl whose immigrant parents struggle with the California health care system in dealing with her undiagnosed seizures.

Great to see John McPhee on your list -- hands down one of my favorite non-fiction writers. Just about anything he's written will be compulsively informative and shift the way you think about his chosen topic. Levels of the Game is a brilliant depiction of a single game between Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner, that delves into the way in which personal biography informs how an athlete plays and ultimately contributes to the meaning of the game.

Along similar lines, Yusanari Kawabata's The Master of Go deals with damn near close to all of the themes at heart in the books listed above, and will likely teach you a little about the ancient game of Go, if you have any interest in that. An idiosyncratic pick, perhaps, but it's one of my favorite novels.

Accurate might not be what you're after.

If you mean "accurate" in terms of "reflects the idiosyncracies of the original text", then a translation by a Victorian scholar like Herbert Giles or James Legge would be good. I actually find this type of translation to be very helpful, especially if it's annotated which Legge's is. When he does use the word "God", he always explains that it's an interpolation based on the context in which the quote is found.

If you mean "accurate" in terms of "reflects the style and character of the original text", then a more modern translation like that of D.C. Lau might be good.

Burton Watson's Complete Works of Chuang Tzu leans more toward the former, and although I haven't read it, I've been told that Victor Mair's Wandering on the Way: Early Taoist Tales and Parables of Chuang Tzu leans more toward the latter. Both are reputed to strike a good balance between literal accuracy and the spirit of the text.

Read all her tweets and watch some of her interviews on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOS43zILE8w), she is a great historian that has been targeted by the Indian Hindu right wing for supporting the truth. She must be given a high platform to speak the truth louder and wider.

Fluent in Sanskrit and knowledgable in Persian, she is the author of Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit in the Mughal Court, Aurangzeb: The Man and The Myth and Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India's Most Controversial King - Please purchase a copy to read, and share it with everyone who's interested. She MUST be invited to speak in Pakistan and the government must promote her.

You seem to have a good grasp on things. It looks like some of the linked threads follow a similar path, and I'll probably be following a very similar path myself. Nice books, too. I have quite a few myself. I'm not quite sure which of these are good (since they all had great Amazon reviews). I have the following:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014RTDPBA/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078G5P6Q4/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/4789014401/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/478901441X/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/4805312270/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1572229195/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GW5KTDK/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0976998122/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0658014900/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

(Although Genki I and the Genki workbook, plus the Kata/Hira quick guide looks good)

What's interesting is when they make books that aren't useful outside of a course, or price out the average consumer for stuff that might have mass market appeal but they'd rather gouge students with it.

A crazy example of this is the recent English translation of Clouds Above The Hill, a popular Japanese novel from decades ago.

It's a major work of literature in Japan, which you can find in any bookstore for under 1000 yen - now translated into English, at $70 per volume, times 4 volumes. Yes, this novel costs nearly $300 new.

The justification, apparently, is that it would be of interest only to college Japanese/Literature departments, so why bother pricing it for a mass audience?

Its my understanding that modern mandarin differs from the ancient mandarin the text was written in to such an extent that you might as well read it in English since that is your native tongue; and I would recommend the D.C Lau or Jonathon Starr english translation. That being said, the copy you were given is likely just fine and there are a few Etymologists that hang around here that are qualified to say that with any certainty. There is a reading material link on the side-bar you should check out, but I guess the major texts you're going to need in addition to your TTC are the Zhuangzi, the Liezi (Liezi is somewhat controversial but definitely worth the read), and the Huiananzi (This is a much later Han Dynasty text that is optional but interesting). I would also recommend getting several different translations of the TTC and the Zhuangzi in order to see the different ways in which people have interpreted the text.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Zen-Works-Stonehouse-14th-Century/dp/1582434913

That's the version I have, not sure why it's ridiculously expensive. Here is a cheap version

http://www.amazon.com/Mountain-Stonehouse-English-Chinese-Edition/dp/1556594550/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=1N3QD35871VPXWHFVAJN

Stonehouse has been called “the greatest of all Zen monks who made poetry their medium of instruction.” His works have rarely been available in English, but now all of the hermit monk’s poetry, including the major poetic works, “Mountain Poems” and “Gathas,” as well as his most illuminating instructional dharma talks, can be read in Red Pine’s superb translations.

I ended up getting this one Amazon.com: Tao Te Ching a Bilingual Edition by D.C. Lau and it's really everything I could hope for.

It consists of two parts, the first has the "Wang Pi" version of the Tao Te Ching, which is the most well known, with for each verse the Chinese version and English Translation.

The second part is based on scrolls that were found more recently but that are some of the oldest versions of the Tao Te Ching that are known, also bilingual. There's also a great general introduction.

Jun'ichiro Tanizaki is one of my favorite authors. Start with Seven Japanese Tales, then try out his novels, like Quicksand and The Key.

I've read several Japanese short story collections, and they are a lovely way to get introduced to Japanese lit. I don't remember the names of the collections I've read. I think I read The Showa Anthology and Modern Japanese Literature, and you could try this one, this one, or this one.

These are really the only three academic books in English covering the Korean language and Korean linguistics that I know of. I've read all three and actually had Prof. Ramsey as an instructor/adviser/mentor. Some of the information in the last two is a little dated (language changes constantly after all), but all are definitely worth reading.

http://www.amazon.com/History-Korean-Language-Ki-Moon-Lee/dp/0521661897/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376282744&sr=8-1&keywords=A+History+of+the+Korean+Language

http://www.amazon.com/The-Korean-Language-Cambridge-Surveys/dp/0521369436/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376282775&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Korean+Language

http://www.amazon.com/Korean-Language-Suny-Series-Studies/dp/0791448320/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1376282775&sr=8-2&keywords=The+Korean+Language

EDIT: I should add that these books do cover the creation of Hangul and changes in Korean orthography.

Also Donald Keene put together a pretty good anthology of stuff in translation that covers a lot of the most important authors from the Meiji era until the late 20th century, you can get a copy for a few bucks on Amazon.

I've just recently bought a copy, only mine was part of an anthology with three other classic Chinese wisdom texts: https://www.amazon.com/Four-Chinese-Classics-Analects-Mencius/dp/1619028344

​

I figured it would be helpful to read all of those translated by the same translator (David Hinton) - he also has a translation of the I Ching, however it is stand-alone. I've thoroughly enjoyed his translation and can't recommend the book I linked enough.

​

To those asking, I think of the Tao Te Ching as the Art of War for everyday life (although the Art of War can also be applied in every day life). The nice feature of the anthology I linked is that he also comments on context and such, which is very helpful as someone who has no clue about Chinese wisdom texts or history and culture.

Out , Grotesque and Real world, all by female Japanese novelist Natsuo Kirino. They all have female main characters. They are very dark, and they show an interesting side of the Japanese lifestyle/sense of annihilation.

Rivlary, by Nagai Kafu. A beautifully written and mean geisha tale from the point of view of the geisha.

Murakami has already been mentioned, but unless you pick up his short stories (where he is at his best, IMHO), almost all of his novels are written by the point of view of a male character. The exception is 1q84, his latest, and by far weakest, novel.

Good point, sorry I didn't tag this well. The author's name is Han Yong-Un, but his pen name is Manhae. I only know of two books Everything Yearned For and Love's Silence but I'm not sure if you would find this poem in them. Sorry...

He is a very well known Buddhist poet and independence activist, I did choose a fairly..unknown (?) poem though because I liked it >.<

Basso is phenomenal. I also always recommend The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. Both superb ethnographies.

You can read about wuzhu in wendi adamek's book. https://www.amazon.com/Teachings-Master-Wuzhu-No-Religion-Translations/dp/0231150237

She's tite if you haven't read her. The book covers the text itself and encounters well questions of its 'legitimacy'

And yeah, part of the thing is his 'lineage' or student line or whatever didn't last. He was very clever, right along hueneng in changing around words to be more about mind and less about practice, and was certainly iconoclastic in speech (and practice, there is a funny passage about monks begging him to do normal stuff), but there was no predecessor clever enough to withhold the contradiction as well as he did.

A good popular anthropology book for summer reading is 1491: New Revelations About the Americas before Columbus.

A good medical anthropology-like book is The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down about epilepsy in recent Hmong immigrants to the U.S.

I'm a little tired and that is all I've got right now.

If you're interested in the Hmong, read The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. Fantastic book and discusses the plight of the Hmongs in detail.

Be sure to get the textbooks. You WILL be using them. Especially the workbooks.
These are what you'll need:
https://www.amazon.com/GENKI-Integrated-Course-Elementary-Japanese/dp/4789014401/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1501126453&sr=8-1&keywords=genki

https://www.amazon.com/Genki-Integrated-Elementary-Japanese-Workbook/dp/478901441X/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=478901441X&pd_rd_r=9T6QJ16NYXTG8SS140AV&pd_rd_w=Rs3eV&pd_rd_wg=AzzaO&psc=1&refRID=9T6QJ16NYXTG8SS140AV
https://www.amazon.com/Kanji-Look-Learn-Eri-Banno/dp/4789013499/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1501126506&sr=1-1&keywords=kanji+look+and+learn
https://www.amazon.com/Title-KANJI-LOOK-LEARN-WORKBOOK/dp/4789013502/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1501126506&sr=1-2&keywords=kanji+look+and+learn

I also suggest getting little things like this:
https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Vocabulary-Quickstudy-Inc-BarCharts/dp/1572229195/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_3?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1572229195&pd_rd_r=9T6QJ16NYXTG8SS140AV&pd_rd_w=Rs3eV&pd_rd_wg=AzzaO&psc=1&refRID=9T6QJ16NYXTG8SS140AV
https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Grammar-Quickstudy-Inc-BarCharts/dp/1572229128/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_3?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1572229128&pd_rd_r=1R88XNVSTEQ0BSSQ6J78&pd_rd_w=lbplP&pd_rd_wg=hbKyk&psc=1&refRID=1R88XNVSTEQ0BSSQ6J78

My ubiquitous recommendation for medical anthropology is The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, about a Hmong family in California whose newborn daughter has epilepsy. It's well-written and engaging.

Are you sourcing this from The Teachings of Master Wuzhu: Zen and Religion of No Religion ? I've put it on my wishlist.

"No merit whatsoever" is just as good as "void and nothing holy" in my book. What does either leave to cling to?

http://www.amazon.com/The-Spirit-Catches-Fall-Down/dp/0374525641

I read that book. It is a biography/history of one family of Hmong, and the Hmong in general. One of the stories is that since they are so used to farming, they tend to plant crops in their house in the US or whatever country they are moved too.

I think it's Japanese Vocabulary (Quick Study Academic) http://amzn.com/1572229195