Hiroshi Kitagawa & Bruce T. Tsuchida, trans.: The Tale of the Heike (1975)•
Hiroshi Kitagawa & Bruce T. Tsuchida (1978)The Tale of the Heike (1975)
[29/4-6/5/2026]:
The Tale of the Heike: Heike Monogatari. Trans. Hiroshi Kitagawa & Bruce T. Tsuchida. Foreword by Edward Seidensticker. 1975. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1981.
The Tale of the Heike: Heike Monogatari. Trans. Hiroshi Kitagawa & Bruce T. Tsuchida. Foreword by Edward Seidensticker. 2 vols. 1975. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1978.
At one time or another, I've written quite a bit about the miraculous Genji Monogatari [The Tale of Genji], and its elusive author Lady Murasaki. It remains, in many respects, my favourite book.
However, I know that in Japanese tradition it comes as one of a pair: Genji Monogatari (c. 1000-1020) and Heike Monogatari (c. 1190–1240). Until recently, though, I'd never managed to work my way through the more forbidding pages of the latter.
For the past few months, though, I've been reading a few chapters a night and, in the process, getting increasingly absorbed in the complex action of this medieval masterpiece - the final version is said to have been established in 1371 by the blind monk Kakuichi, but the other authors remain unknown.
It's often referred to as "Japan's Iliad" - and there's something in that comparison: the immense cast of characters, the alternating extreme violence and tender emotion, and the sense of an entire world caught in the inexorable grip of history. I guess I'd also see it as analogous to the world of the Icelandic Sagas: that strange amalgam of family feud and murderous warfare.
Heike Monogatari chronicles the events of the Genpei War (1180–1185), but was probably compiled half a century later, sometime around 1220-1240. It depicts the rise of the samurai class, and the demise of the strange, somewhat artificial calm of the Heian era (794-1185), immortalised at its apogee by Murasaki Shikibu in the Genji.
In a previous post on the subject, I described my own rather awkward meeting with Royall Tyler, the learned and accomplished translator of both the Genji and the Heike. Now, however, I hope I'm in a rather better position to present some of the basic information available on the subject for the English-speaking reader.
Helen & William McAlpine: Japanese Tales and Legends.Illustrated by Joan Kiddell-Monroe (Oxford Myths and Legends, 1958)
Just as there are (now) four complete English translations of the Genji, so there are four complete versions of the Heike: by A. L. Sadler (1918-21); by Hiroshi Kitagawa & Bruce T. Tsuchida (1975); by Helen Craig McCullough (1988); and by Royall Tyler (2012). As well as that, there are (at least) two collections of extracts from the complete work: by A. L. Sadler (1928); and by Burton Watson (2006). Parts of it are also retold in Helen & William McAlpine's Japanese Tales and Legends (1958).
There's a novelised version by Eiji Yoshikawa (author of Musashi), first published in Japanese in 1950 and translated into English in 1956. Yoshikawa's novel was filmed by Kenji Mizoguchi in 1955 as Shin Heike Monogatari (aka Taira Clan Saga). It was made into a Japanese TV series of the same title in 1972.
More recently, the successful anime The Heike Story (2021), directed by Naoko Yamada, was based on the 2016 translation into modern Japanese by Hideo Furukawa. The "animated rock opera" Inu-Oh (2021), dir. Masaaki Yuasa (2021), also set in the Heike era, was based on Furukawa's 2020 novel Inuo.
I've listed more comprehensive details about each of these works below:
- A. L. Sadler (1918-21)
- Hiroshi Kitagawa & Bruce T. Tsuchida (1975)
- Helen Craig McCullough (1988)
- Burton Watson (2006)
- Royall Tyler (2012)
- Eiji Yoshikawa (1950-56)
- Hideo Furukawa (2016-20)
- Bibliography
Books I own are marked in bold:
A. L. Sadler, trans.: The Ten Foot Square Hut and Tales of the Heike (1928 / 1972)
Arthur Lindsay Sadler
(1882-1970)
(1882-1970)
The Ten Foot Square Hut and Tales of the Heike: Being Two Thirteenth-Century Japanese Classics, The “Hōjōki”and Selections from the “Heike Monogatari.” Trans. A. L. Sadler. 1928. Tokyo & Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1972.
Professor A. L. Sadler's translation of the "Heike Monogatari" first appeared in full in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan. 46.2 (1918): 1–278 & 49.1 (1921): 1–354. Selections from this version were included in the collection above.
He continued his examination of the samurai era in a biography of Tokugawa Ieyasu, Maker of Modern Japan (1937) - reprinted as Shogun: The Life of Tokugawa Ieyasu. The dramatic story of the man who united feudal Japan and established the traditional Japanese way of life after the success of James Clavell's 1975 novel of the same name.
For more information on Tokugawa Ieyasu and his contemporaries, I'd greatly recommend the 6-part Netflix documentary series Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan (2021), which combines vivid reenactments with learned commentary to create a detailed picture of the final part of the Age of Warring States (roughly from 1551 to 1616). While long after the Heike era, it does help one to imagine what it might actually have been like.
The Tale of the Heike: Heike Monogatari. Trans. Hiroshi Kitagawa & Bruce T. Tsuchida. Foreword by Edward Seidensticker. 1975. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1981.
"When The Tale first appeared in hardback in 1975, critics generally applauded the effort while criticizing the translation. There are indeed deficiencies," states Karen Brazell in the Journal of Asiatic Studies 37 (4) (1978):
Obviously one can savor this tale fully only by reading the original, but few of us have the time or the will to do so. Hence, Kitagawa and Tsuchida's translation ... performs the useful function of enabling us to appreciate the work as a whole. This translation ... is more accurate and generally more readable than A. L. Sadler's pioneering work.There's a certain air of damning with faint praise both in the critical response to Kitagawa and Tsuchida's version and in veteran translator Edward Seidensticker's preface to their work. His own ground-breaking version of the Genji appeared the following year, in 1976, and perhaps he was afraid of being seen to condone any of the errors their version apparently contains.
All I can say is that it's a pleasure to read in serial form, and the elegant simplicity of the page design makes picking it up an aesthetically pleasing experience also. I have copies of both the single-volume hardback and dual-volume paperback editions. The former is a very beautiful book indeed, and has a certain air of the faraway which helps a reader unfamiliar with the history of the early samurai era to imbibe something of its character.
The Tale of the Heike. Trans. Helen Craig McCullough. 1988. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002.
One of the online reviewers of this translation on Amazon.com points out that:
Translations of Japanese and Chinese classics are often hampered by the archaic language used in the originals. This was not the case here and the translator has achieved a balanced fusion of great story-telling and accurate presentation of the text. This is no small achievement since the Heike tale is populated by many diverse characters some of whom are only mentioned once whereas others have great influence on the plot despite their brief appearances.I couldn't agree more. Taken in small nightly doses, the Heike comes into its own - another obvious parallel with the Iliad, originally experienced (or so we're told) in short episodes recited by itinerant bards: the so-called "sons of Homer".
I have found that the best way to read the book is to treat oneself to the episodic nature of the chapters. This reflects the original format of the story; that it was expressed in minstrel style story-telling by the "biwa-hoshi" in nightly recitals. As such each segment of the story can be treated like individual pearls in a string, each complete and entertaining by its own merit but strung together to form the whole epic saga of the Heike. Attempts to read the book in the style of a conventional Western novel with its continuous narrative will result in frustration since the story seem to take many didactic excursions and side plots.- Hong A. Ooi (2001)
Another reviewer points out some interesting parallels with the 14th century Chinese Sānguó Yǎnyì [Romance of the Three Kingdoms], another quasi-historical dramatisation of actual events:
McCullough’s translation lacking the color of China’s The Three Kingdoms, readers should be prepared for a read which is more dry in tone than romanticized ... History buffs will squeeze every ounce of interest from this facet of the book, while those looking for a relaxing read may get bogged down by the parade of names and titles.
The Tale of the Heike. Trans. Burton Watson. Ed. Haruo Shirane. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.
This one I haven't read and don't own a copy of. The late Burton Watson is certainly a name to conjure with, though: his translations of Ssu-ma Ch'ien's Records of the Grand Historian of China (1961) and The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (1968) are legendary - along with his version of Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by the T’ang Poet Han-Shan (1970).
His translations from the Japanese were almost as extensive, and culminated in this version of Heike Monogatari, with an introduction by Professor Haruo Shirane.
Certainly the critical response appears to have been good:
An excellent translation and a welcome contribution to the field -- Matthew Stavros, Japanese StudiesThe article on the Kirkus Reviews site is particularly welcoming of "this jewel of a collection, compiling warrior tales, told by blind lute minstrels, that form the basis of No and Kabuki drama."
One of the great literary classics. -- Keith Garebian, The Globe and Mail
Terrifically exciting and spiritually rich. -- Kirkus Reviews
Watson's is ... the best of the translations. -- Donald Richie, The Japan Times
Intended to laud and lament the courageous fallen, the adventure yarns are permeated often with an elegiac, wistful air, a resigned sense that “what flourishes must fade.” Fans of classic Asian literature, especially of the world’s first novel, Lady Murasaki’s The Tale of Genji, will recognize the fastidious attention to detail here — the cut of the clothes, the nuanced etiquette, the lyrical language — that contrasts these stories with their Western counterparts, either Homeric or Arthurian. What also distinguishes these tales is the poignant tension between the hero’s inspiring quest for glory and his ultimate realization — perhaps even more inspiring — that any transitory glory is only another form of attachment: the chief adversary of Buddhist enlightenment. An excellent introduction, tracing the genre’s historical context, and a complete glossary of characters make this edition invaluable not only for aficionados of Japanese writing but for all students of myth.
The Tale of the Heike. Trans. Royall Tyler. Viking Penguin. London: Penguin, 2012.
Before Heike and After: Hōgen, Heiji, Jōkyūki. Trans. Royall Tyler. 2012. Lexington, KY: An Arthur Nettleton Book, 2013.
Elizabeth Oyler, in her excellent and informative review on the Public Books site, calls Royall Tyler's translation "A Heike for the Ages", and expresses the hope that it "may finally bring it the broad readership and recognition as a work of world literature it deserves."
Even today, [Japanese] children in elementary school memorize its opening passage well before they have the facility to understand its classical grammar (let alone the life experience to discern its meaning), and their parents and grandparents can recite the same opening lines at the spur of the moment in casual conversation. During Japan’s imperial period, the Heike was a touchstone for militarists, who found in it the roots of the militarized masculinity vital to their ideal citizen; later it served as a source for postwar filmmakers and playwrights seeking to understand the meanings of World War II, militarism, and imperial responsibility.Its appeal, however, is more universal than that:
Like the works of Shakespeare in the English-speaking world, the Heike ... has provided the inspiration for many other works as well, starting with the Noh drama and medieval narrative, then Kabuki and puppet (Bunraku) theaters in the early modern period. A recent historical drama series on Japan’s public television station recast the life of Kiyomori, and tourist sites associated with the events and characters of the Heike, both real and fictional, can be found throughout most of Japan. The enduring historical significance of the war, combined with the artistry of the narrative, have led to translations over the past hundred years into foreign languages ranging from Chinese and Korean to French, Russian, and Czech.What sets Tyler's translation apart from the earlier English versions is the fact that "it uses page layout to ... [draw] attention to the performance context in which the Heike was created and received":
Speech [shirakoe] is right-justified, indented prose; “recitative” [kudoki] is left-justified and sometimes the lines “overflow the full width of the page”; “song” [kyokusetsu] consists of short, generally rhythmic indented lines, which reflects the fact that song and poetry in Japanese rely more on rhythm than rhyme. The formatting of the prose passages encourages us to move quickly through the plot-driven narrative, and linger on the lyric, emotionally laden ... passages.The Heike is a difficult work to characterise, as it was influenced by both the written and the oral traditions within Japanese culture. On the one hand it "acknowledges the importance of the written word through its liberal inclusion of embedded documents, like the exchange of letters between Kiso Yoshinaka and the monks of Mt. Hiei."
Yet the Heike was also a performing art practiced by blind raconteurs who depended on prodigious memories and musical cues to perform a repertoire of over 200 hours’ worth of tale-telling. What most notably sets Tyler’s translation apart is his concern with conveying this oral dimension. Although the Heike can move from lyric to prose to missive and back within any given episode, it relies, like its Western counterparts, on set forms that probably helped to shape the narrative when its transmission and performance were “oral.” One of the potentially very important consequences of this version is to make the Heike comparable, as a performance text, with more familiar genres and works, ranging from Homeric epics to chansons de geste and the South Slavic heroic poetry studied by Parry and Lord.Tyler has also supplied us with a useful translation of three further works that complete the story of "the decades, crucial in Japanese history, between 1156 and 1221."
They are The Tale of the Hogen Years, which treats a disastrous attempt by a deposed emperor to regain the throne; The Tale of the Heiji Years, which covers the murderous clash between two rival court factions; and A Record of the Jokyu Years, which deals with a failed imperial attempt to suppress the shogunal government established late in The Tale of the Heike by Minamoto no Yoritomo. In short, they supplement The Tale of the Heike by relating what led up to its events and what followed them.
Eiji Yoshikawa. The Heike Story: A Modern Translation of the Classic Tale of Love and War. 1950. Trans. Fuki Wooyenaka Uramatsu. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956.
Eiji Yoshikawa is probably best known for his "epic novel of the Samurai era", Musashi (1935 / trans. 1939), about the life and exploits of the great swordsman Miyamoto Musashi. However, he wrote a number of other swashbuckling accounts of Japan's historic conflicts, including Taiko (1937 / trans. 1992), about the rise to power of 16th-century warlord and unifier Toyotomi Hideyoshi, as well as a retelling of the Chinese Romance of the Three Kingdoms (1939).
His final major work was Shin Heike Monogatari [The Heike Story], serialised in the Asahi Weekly in 1950. This inspired Kenji Mizoguchi's influential 1955 film of the same name. It was translated into English in 1956, and remains popular to this day.
Heike Monogatari [Tale of the Heike]. Trans. Hideo Furukawa. Tokyo: Kawade Shobō Shinsha, 2016.
Hideo Furukawa. Heike Monogatari: Inu-Ō no Maki [The Tale of the Heike: Chapter of Inu-Ō]. Tokyo: Kawade Shobō Shinsha / Kawade Bunko, 2020.
Prolific novelist and playwright Hideo Furukawa translated The Tale of the Heike into modern Japanese in 2016. This work inspired the visually stunning anime series The Heike Story (2021), distributed on Netflix. His 2017 novel Tales of the Heike: Inu-Oh has also been filmed as Inu-Oh.
He was asked about his interest in "literature of the past" in a 2022 interview with journalist Stefania Viti at a conference in Bologna:
The Tale of the Heike (Heike Monogatari) deals with chronicles of war between the militias of the time. It contains elements of fiction mixed with historical elements of war.His Encyclopedia of Science Fiction entry remarks that:
The story is about a thousand people who lived eight hundred years ago. And what they have in common is ... that they are all dead ... any person who is born ー rich, poor, man or woman or whatever ー eventually dies.
Even we, who are here now, cannot expect to meet here again in fifty years, because we will all be dead.
Young people think that people in their fifties are old. I thought the same when I was young. And so young people do not want to listen to what older people have to say.
We have the same attitude towards culture, we think that the books of the past are old.
But the fact of the matter is that the young people of today will also die one day. What I realized from reading the stories of people born so long ago is that they were like us. They were happy, they were sad.
Then someone decided to transcribe their feelings and their stories. That has been transmitted to us, so we can read them.
We must do the same, transcribe all of this so that one day there will be someone else who can read and perceive what we experienced.
Through literature, we can leave traces in the future of what we have lived today.
His 900-page epic met with a varied reception, derided by some reviewers as a slipshod and unnecessary rendering of a beloved classic, but praised by others as a welcome vernacular re-imagining. He would subsequently revisit the story with an interpolation of his own making ... Heike Monogatari: Inu-Ō no Maki ["The Tale of the Heike: Chapter of Inu-Ō"] (2020) is framed as a new chapter in the medieval saga, focusing on the relationship between a musician and a Noh performer, each maimed in their own way, but also playing with the original's Buddhist-derived belief that the characters lived in an era that presaged the End of the World.
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Emperor Antoku Engi: Battle of Dan-no-ura (1524)
Heike Monogatari
[The Tale of the Heike]
(c.1190-1240)
[The Tale of the Heike]
(c.1190-1240)
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Translations:
- Heike Monogatari. Trans. A. L. Sadler (1918-21)
- "Heike Monogatari." Trans. A. L. Sadler. Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan. 46.2 (1918): 1–278 & 49.1 (1921): 1–354.
- The Ten Foot Square Hut and Tales of the Heike: Being Two Thirteenth-Century Japanese Classics, The “Hōjōki”and Selections from the “Heike Monogatari.” Trans. A. L. Sadler. 1928. Tokyo & Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1972.
- The Tale of the Heike. Trans. Hiroshi Kitagawa & Bruce T. Tsuchida (1975)
- The Tale of the Heike: Heike Monogatari. Trans. Hiroshi Kitagawa & Bruce T. Tsuchida. Foreword by Edward Seidensticker. 1975. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1981.
- The Tale of the Heike: Heike Monogatari. Trans. Hiroshi Kitagawa & Bruce T. Tsuchida. Foreword by Edward Seidensticker. 2 vols. 1975. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1978.
- The Tale of the Heike. Trans. Helen Craig McCullough (1988)
- The Tale of the Heike. Trans. Helen Craig McCullough. 1988. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002.
- The Tale of the Heike. Trans. Burton Watson (2006)
- The Tale of the Heike. Trans. Burton Watson. Ed. Haruo Shirane. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.
- The Tale of the Heike. Trans. Royall Tyler (2012)
- The Tale of the Heike. Trans. Royall Tyler. Viking Penguin. London: Penguin, 2012.
- Furukawa Hideo, trans. The Tale of the Heike: Heike Monogatari. Tokyo: Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 2016.
- Furukawa Hideo. Tales of the Heike: Inu-Oh. Tokyo: Kawade Shobo Shinsha / Kawade Bunko, 2017.
- Harries, Phillip Tudor, trans. The Poetic Memoirs of Lady Daibu. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1980.
- Keene, Donald. Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from the Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Century. A History of Japanese Literature. Volume 1 of 4. 1993. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.
- Keene, Donald. Travelers of a Hundred Ages: The Japanese as Revealed Through 1,000 Years of Diaries. 1989. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.
- McAlpine, Helen & William. Japanese Tales and Legends. Illustrated by Joan Kiddell-Monroe. 1958. London: Oxford University Press, 1960.
- Morris, Ivan. The Nobility of Failure: Tragic Heroes in the History of Japan. London: Martin Secker & Warburg, 1975.
- Sadler, A. L. Shogun: The Life of Tokugawa Ieyasu. The dramatic story of the man who united feudal Japan and established the traditional Japanese way of life. 1937. Foreword by Stephen Turnbull. Tokyo / Rutland, Vermont / Singapore: Tuttle Publishing, 1978.
- Tyler, Royall, trans. Before Heike and After: Hōgen, Heiji, Jōkyūki. 2012. Lexington, KY: An Arthur Nettleton Book, 2013.
- Varley, H. Paul, with Ivan & Nobuko Morris. The Samurai. 1970. A Pelican Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974.
- Yoshikawa Eiji. The Heike Story: A Modern Translation of the Classic Tale of Love and War. 1950. Trans. Fuki Wooyenaka Uramatsu. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956.
Secondary & Miscellaneous:
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- category - Japanese Literature: Prose: Classical
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