© Columbia University Press
Frog in the Well: Portraits of Japan by Watanabe Kazan, 1793-1841
July, 2006
Cloth, 304 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-13826-0
$26.50
/ £15.50
"Keene has produced a fascinating and readable study of a remarkable figure." — Hugh Cortazzi, The Japan Times
"[An] elegant, detailed, and unprecedented account of an important intellectual... Highly recommended." — Choice
"Lively and enjoyable... None who take up this smoothly written, instructive volume will fail to be edified by its portraits." — Tom Havens, American Historical Review
"Keene has written an insightful and revealing biography about one of the last great painters of the Tokugawa age, and about the economic conditions of that time period. This book is a significant contribution to the studies of Watanabe in the West." — Fred Notehelfer, professor of Japanese history, UCLA
"Donald Keene has here, in some of his best writing, explicated the life and accomplishments of Watanabe Kazan, not only an important and sympathetic figure in his own right, but one emblematic of the confusions suffered during those tremendous upheavals that were to come to Japan even before the time of his death. This biography, filled with historical and cultural background, becomes virtually an intellectual and social portrait of the entire period." — J. Thomas Rimer, professor emeritus of Japanese literature, theater, and art, University of Pittsburgh