"Japanese women's diary literature (nikki bungaku) was labeled confessional and apolitical by twentieth-century scholars who established the modern canon of Japanese literature. Bringing together five works of the genre (three previously unavailable in English), Joshua Mostow makes a new argument about the political and social function of women's autobiographical writing in the Heian period (795-1185)." "The collection begins with The Takamitsu Journal (also known as The Tale of the Tonomine Lesser Captain, c. 962), an important precursor and model for the famous Kagero Diary, and Tales of Toyokage (c. 971), a fictionalized reworking of his own poems by Regent Koremasa himself. It also includes the first complete English translations of the Hon'in no Jiju and of the narrative section of The Collected Poems of Lady Isle." "The selections have been translated and extensively annotated, with annotation appearing on the facing page on the text. At the House of Gathered Leaves not only explains the development of an important genre of Japanese writing but also provides a new and politically engaged way of reading other major texts such as The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon and The Diary of Murasaki Shikibu."--BOOK JACKET.