天の原ふりさけ見れば春日なる三笠の山に出でし月かも
Gazing far across the vault of heaven, the moon that rose over Mount Mikasa at Kasuga.
Abe no Nakamaro wrote this in Tang China, far from Nara, remembering the moon over Mount Mikasa. Kokinshū 406; Hyakunin Isshu 1. The English is a working gloss.
On the page
Every line of text is a step on a path. Every paragraph is a small valley. We set our books so you can read them slowly, and stop where the land opens.
One leaf from a Japanese painted album, cropped from the original scan.
Edition 01
Edition 02
Edition 03
Choose one quiet hour and one page, not a chapter.
The first time for the sentence, the second for the silence around it.
Keep a notebook close, and write down the word that stayed with you.
One letter a month: a reading, a note from the editor, first access to small runs.
