After his 1986 publication From the Country of Eight Islands with Burton Watson, a comprehensive anthology of Japanese poetry that spans “Susano-o's Song” in the Kojiki to poems from Takahashi Mutsuo's 1977 Poems of a Penisist, Hiroaki Sato embarked on another monumental undertaking, his 2008 Japanese Women Poets: An Anthology. This long-anticipated work compares in its scope and breadth to Kang-I Sung Chang's Women Writers of Traditional China (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999) or Wilt Idema and Beata Grant's The Red Brush (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), for instance. Once again beginning with the Kojiki, Sato translates selections from more than 100 Japanese women poets, placing considerable emphasis on modern poets, beginning with the well-known Yosano Akiko and ending with Hachikai Mimi, born in 1974.
One of the beauties of this anthology, compared to others that attempt a comprehensive view of Japanese women's poetry, such...
