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Rating: 
Summary: THE BRIDGE NEVER GETS CROSSED
Review: As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams is a truly nonwestern work. In its tone, its narrative devices, and in the world it presents, this is a work that is clearly "other" from traditional Western fare. While sharing the same structural shell as the Western novel, its story is largely outside the limits of Western expectation.
At its heart, As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams is a song sung in retrospect by Lady Sarashina. This is a song of denied dreams that always just barely seem to fail.
The one constant of the narrative is sadness. Whether Sarashina's life was really so melancholy or whether she wrote this looking back through the lens of bitterness is speculation. Yet the sadness is palpable. Sadness hovers over each scene. When happiness breaks in, it is an unexpected and short-lived guest.
The narrative covers most of Sarashina's life. It starts in her childhood and leads up to her later years. She lives a very sheltered life in her father's house. So much so that it, in some ways, could be described in non-religious terms as a cloister. All the young Sarashina has to occupy her time is her love of tales and the hope of a more fulfilling future.
The genesis of Sarashina's great unhappiness is the glimpse she gets of the greater life around her--a life that she is never capable of partaking in. In all her travels she is never able to break free from her own internal solitude. She will not allow herself to live in anything more than a "dream."
For me, the extremely episodic nature of the book made it hard to get deeply involved as a reader. There were long spaces in this book where the author dwelt on seemingly unimportant matters. There are also quite a few brief sections where the author skips ahead a number of years. This made things difficult for me to follow on a number of occasions.
The one part of the book that I enjoyed was the poetry. I greatly enjoyed the poem that the author's father had his daughter compose to send to his ex-wife. The moment was both touching and insightful into their relationship.
The native Japanese worldview was wholly foreign to me. All the pilgrimages, priests, nuns, and what I would term "superstitions" struck me as convoluted and semi-capricious. The mother's taking of vows while still living within the house, yet being separated from the household, was a truly odd moment.
Though sometimes hopeful, Sarashina has no true hope. In its place Sarashina resigns herself to the idea that all the bad things happening to her are the result of Karma.
I have a hard time swallowing this much hopelessness. There is an endless sense of wallowing about As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams. I wanted to talk to Sarashina--to tell her that no matter how deep the darkness, it only takes one point of light to dispel it. While this book may have value in being representative of the Japanese Literature of its day, it is not something I would choose to read again. The problem with As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams is that no one ever crosses the stinking bridge.
Rating:
Summary: THE BRIDGE NEVER GETS CROSSED
Review: As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams is a truly nonwestern work. In its tone, its narrative devices, and in the world it presents, this is a work that is clearly "other" from traditional Western fare. While sharing the same structural shell as the Western novel, its story is largely outside the limits of Western expectation.
At its heart, As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams is a song sung in retrospect by Lady Sarashina. This is a song of denied dreams that always just barely seem to fail.
The one constant of the narrative is sadness. Whether Sarashina's life was really so melancholy or whether she wrote this looking back through the lens of bitterness is speculation. Yet the sadness is palpable. Sadness hovers over each scene. When happiness breaks in, it is an unexpected and short-lived guest.
The narrative covers most of Sarashina's life. It starts in her childhood and leads up to her later years. She lives a very sheltered life in her father's house. So much so that it, in some ways, could be described in non-religious terms as a cloister. All the young Sarashina has to occupy her time is her love of tales and the hope of a more fulfilling future.
The genesis of Sarashina's great unhappiness is the glimpse she gets of the greater life around her--a life that she is never capable of partaking in. In all her travels she is never able to break free from her own internal solitude. She will not allow herself to live in anything more than a "dream."
For me, the extremely episodic nature of the book made it hard to get deeply involved as a reader. There were long spaces in this book where the author dwelt on seemingly unimportant matters. There are also quite a few brief sections where the author skips ahead a number of years. This made things difficult for me to follow on a number of occasions.
The one part of the book that I enjoyed was the poetry. I greatly enjoyed the poem that the author's father had his daughter compose to send to his ex-wife. The moment was both touching and insightful into their relationship.
The native Japanese worldview was wholly foreign to me. All the pilgrimages, priests, nuns, and what I would term "superstitions" struck me as convoluted and semi-capricious. The mother's taking of vows while still living within the house, yet being separated from the household, was a truly odd moment.
Though sometimes hopeful, Sarashina has no true hope. In its place Sarashina resigns herself to the idea that all the bad things happening to her are the result of Karma.
I have a hard time swallowing this much hopelessness. There is an endless sense of wallowing about As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams. I wanted to talk to Sarashina--to tell her that no matter how deep the darkness, it only takes one point of light to dispel it. While this book may have value in being representative of the Japanese Literature of its day, it is not something I would choose to read again. The problem with As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams is that no one ever crosses the stinking bridge.
Rating: 
Summary: The Sei Shonogon antipode
Review: Lady Sharashina lived a life of dreamy lament. It is a wonder if someone of her nature could ever be happy with what the real world could offer. Her brief moments of happiness are gained in dreams and fantasy, or tempting/dreaming the impossible, the forbidden fruit. The real world, despite living a life of relative privilege, was a never ending experience of pain to her. She took seeing the ephemeral (wabi sabi/mono no aware) aspects of life to heiights of seeing the eternal in the ephemeral the great in the small, which can be beautiful (as with Basho), but Lady Sharshina seems too idealistic and self obsessed which makes it something pitiful in the end. The real world is one of duty and lament: "veni, vedi, vici" would not be her epitaph; more like perpetual nostaligic anguish and shyness. Her regrets seem misguided. Lady Sharashina avoided popular attractions, as opposed to her near contemporary Sei Shonagon, in ÂgThe Pillow BookÂh, who endeavored to be the attraction. Some of the scenes are unforgetable and the book is a classic for what it is: the memoirs of a dreamer. The book has one of the most poignent poetic conundrum sort of endings I can recall. The translation failed to capture all of the poems, which is to be expected; but those that were captured are brilliant. The contrast between Sei Shonagon and Lady Sharshina is one of the beauties of these books and poses an interesting psychological comparison.
Rating:
Summary: This is a very sensitive recollection of a delicate woman
Review: Sarashina Nikki is a very sensitive recollection of a delicate woman. Lady Sarashina provides us a window into the life of a woman who was not the life of the party as Sei Shonagon, a great scholar as Murasaki Shikibu or a passionate lover as Ono no Komachi. Instead, this book will give you a look into the life of a deeply sensitive creature who ,perhaps, never got the recognition she deserved.
Rating: 
Summary: Lyrical counterpoint to Sei Shonagon
Review: Short, poignant and redolent of a very individual experience of life in Heian Japan, the memoirs of 'Lady Sarashina' provide a fascinating glimpse of a woman's life slightly outside of the most exalted circles of eleventh-century life. This is a highly idiosyncratic portrait of its time, concentrating on episodes important to Sarashina herself (dreams, pilgrimages, poetic exchanges) rather than to the politically-active class as a whole. The sense of chronology is vague, the structure dictated more by mood pieces and observations than straightforward diary-keeping. As such, this probably isn't the place to start with medieval Japanese writing, but something to try after Sei Shonagon (an altogether more ebullient and resilient character, who _is_ at the centre of things) and Lady Murasaki. Sarashina is too withdrawn to involve herself in the customary court intrigues and liaisons, and too low-status to have much impact. Instead, she occupies herself with the fantastical world of Genji and other "Tales". Her memoirs are also notable for their account of a journey through the provinces to the capital, and for highly-praised poetry that unfortunately doesn't translate particularly well. Ivan Morris' concise introduction sets the work in its context and discusses its significance and textual history; line drawings and unobtrusive notes further build our picture of Sarashina's world. A worthwhile purchase.
Rating:
Summary: Written In A Time Of Sorrow
Review: The Sarashina Nikki was written by a Lady depressed over the death of her husband and anxious about the future of her children. As grieving people often do she tries to find a reason for her affliction and decides she is being punished for prefering frivolous literature to serious religious study. Lady Sarashina was apparently not only an enthusiastic reader of romances, such as the Tale of Genji, but authored tales of her own though none have survived. How she wasted her youth reading and writing fictions is the theme of her retrospective memoir. I like to think the Nikki reflects a passing mood, that Sarashina eventually recovered from her losses and took a more balanced view her past life and involvement with literature.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful dreamer
Review: This charming, brief book really does move at a dream-like pace. There are great leaps in time, with no apparent explanation. Things that should have seemed vitally important, like raising three children, are dismissed in a few scattered lines. Sarashina simply walks out on a once-in-a-lifetime imperial ceremony, but returns again and again to the sight of the moonlight.
Sarashina, the pseudonym we have for her, lived and wrote in the first half of the 11th century, in Heian Japan. It is a wonderful quirk of history that this era hosted so many educated, literate women, with cloistered lives that allowed time for introspection. The authors of The Gossamer Years and Shonagon's Pillow Book lived during that same era, and even had family connections to Sarashina.
She wrote this memoir near the end of her life, and seemed to use it as a package for presenting her life. Like an elegantly wrapped package, this tantalizes us by hiding the real substance inside. We read a little of her role in the imperial court, but never see into the closed society of the women's quarters. We see a courtier's career interrupted by family duties, but quite make out what those duties were. We learn that her husband was influential enough to be named regional governor, but we never see her part in his court or how that related to her imperial service. Instead, we read a few conversations, travelogues, and poems, the kind that hide more than they reveal.
As a child, she had a passion for romantic stories. She used those tales to enter worlds of elegant people and beautiful places. It was only in her thirties that she came back to earth, and realized that she had let too much time go by. She did marry, but was widowed early. She did have a comfortable life as lady in waiting, but never found her way into the court's inner circle. It was almost as if her life were one of those romances, but she had been given only a minor role in it.
She wrote this memoir when she was old and alone. It is beautifully literate. Still, I almost wonder whether her mind had started to wander, and wander only where the little girl's romance stories led.
//wiredweird
Rating:
Summary: A Memoir of the Dreams of Life
Review: This lovely poetic lament transcends time and space.
How often does a glimpse of the forbidden (that
which lies beyond our cloistered grasp) create a melancholia
that pervades our life?
As we cross this bridge of dreams - fleeting and ethereal, we
identify with Lady "Sarashina" and a life of desires destined to remain unfulfilled.
And yet, it is precisely this unfulfillment that allows the memoirs' moody
passion to blossom. As a result of her discontent, we readers have an opportunity
to savour the gentle nectar of her often luminous writing.
Rating:
Summary: Looking back, and looking forward.
Review: This work was likely written as a warning: don't get caught up in fiction! Almost like a Madam Bovarie from 800 years ago, the author looks back over her own life, remembering the ups and downs fondly while carrying overtones of Buddhist thought. Enchanted by the Tale of Genji and other popular fiction of the time, her youth was spent longing to be able to go to the capitol (Kyoto today) so she could lay her hands on the volumes upon volumes of novels. Her father's work takes him back there briefly, and the author wraps herself in constant reading... at the expense of Buddhist study. Her own "Prince Genji" even appears, but this love ends and she herself is swept along to another destiny. Written in retrospect, this makes a lovely book to read along side both fiction and non-fiction alike. Also, the brightness of the naration will no doubt keep one's attention focused while the eventual "message" seeps through. This translation has few problems, but it might be interesting to see what someone else can do with this well-loved classic.
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