I stood my friends Philip Rowland and Burton Watson to lunch last Saturday at our favorite restaurant in the Oazo building, just across the street from Tokyo Station and downstairs from the new Maruzen book store. The chief attraction is that you can eat all you like of a variety of breads along with your steak or pasta or fish–a point that Philip, the editor of Noon, seems to enjoy. I hadn’t seen either of my friends for months and it was great to spend an hour or so in their company. We all shared our good news: Philip is almost finished his Ph.D. thesis, I arrived back from an extended stay in the U.K. in one piece, and Burton just published his translation of The Tales of the Heike (Heike Monogatari) with Columbia University Press in a beautiful hard-back edition. I have my own signed copy before me as I write this. It seems to me that this selection from the Heike story would be perfect for classroom use, as it includes extensive bibliographies and　explanations of plot and character that allow one to move smoothly through the twists and turns of this little-read (outside of Japan) epic. Of course Burton’s elegant translation is the centerpiece of the volume. [Tales of the Heike translated by Burton Watson, Edited by Haruo Shirane. ISBN o-231-13802-4. hardback, 216 pages, with maps and illustrations.]

The weather was beautiful that day, with a hint of an autumn chill in the air, and my jet-leg caused me to fall asleep on the train ride back home and almost miss my stop, but it was a memorable day full of treasures–of friendship, and of literature.