A Tale Unasked

A new translation of Lady Nijo’s diary—one of classical Japan’s greatest literary works

A Penguin Classic

Lady Nijo’s A Tale Unasked (Towazugatari) is the last, and arguably the finest, among classical Japanese literature’s famous "women’s diaries." Thought to have been completed around 1307, when the author was in her late forties, the first two-thirds of this autobiographical work document in rich and compelling detail the experiences of an imperial concubine whose time at court was ruled and finally ruined by her passionate and complicated love life. The final third of the work equally memorably describes her peripatetic life after the emperor expelled her from the court in her mid-twenties and she became a nun, wandering the roads of Japan as a form of Buddhist austerity. Meredith McKinney's superb translation breathes new life into Lady Nijo's fascinating diaries, which survived her era in a single copy and were rediscovered only in the 1940s.

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Lady Nijo (1258–after 1307) was a Japanese noblewoman, poet, and author. She was raised in the court of Emperor Go-Fukakusa and became his concubine, before being expelled for her affairs with other men. She became a traveling Buddhist nun and eventually wrote a memoir, Towazugatari (A Tale Unasked). It survived in a single copy and remained hidden for years in the library of the imperial family household before being rediscovered in 1940.

Meredith McKinney (translator) is a translator of Japanese literature. She lived in Japan for twenty years and is Honorary Associate Professor at the Australian National University in Canberra. Her translations for Penguin Classics include The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon, Essays in Idleness and Hojoki by Kenko and Chomei, two novels by Natsume Soseki, and an anthology of classical Japanese travel writing, Travels with a Writing Brush.