 Travelers of a Hundred Ages

Travelers of a Hundred Ages is a nonfiction work on the literary form of Japanese diaries by Donald Keene, who writes in his Introduction that he was introduced to Japanese diaries during his work as a translator for the United States in World War II when he was assigned to translate captured diaries of soldiers; he found them moving enough that he continued to study that genre.Keene's book takes the form of self-contained long chapters (originally published as independent essays in Japanese in "Asahi Shimbun") that deal with a single diary, each of which is valuable in its own right as a literary work  This treatment is especially apparent when Keene writes of Matsuo Bashō's travel diaries, such as "The Narrow Road to the North", or provides a window into an author's life, such as in the case of Fujiwara no Teika's "Meigetsuki" ("Chronicle of the Clear Moon").