Threaded throughout the 1000-page length of the "Genji Monogatari" (The Tale of Genji) are some 800 poems. They not only illustrate the aristocratic folkways of the people who back then were always dropping poems off on each other, but also, say the translators of this new edition of just the poetry, they offer the perceptions and feelings of the writer and his or her recipient.
Jane Reichhold and Hatsue Kawamura find these "the true gems of the work," but they usually haven't been treated as such, at least not by foreign scholars. Arthur Waley in his translation of "The Tale of Genji" turns them into dialogue, Edward Seidensticker keeps their entity but makes them couplets, Helen Craig McCullough fashions five-line English sentences. Only Royall Tyler gives them complete. The present translators seek to redress this. They feel that not only is the best of the work to be found in these poems but it is possible to read the poems instead of the book.
The entire "Genji" is given in paraphrase. Only the poems are given complete. These are translated in proper Japanese format and an effort has been made, the translators tell us, to create Japanese poems in English rather than couplets and quatrains and the like.