Konjaku Monogatari is the largest collection of stories in Japan dating back to the medieval times and is comparable to the Indian work of Katha Saritsagar, the Ocean of Stories in scale.
The Jataka Story in Japan is an interesting and in-depth study of the Jataka tales present in the Indian section of Konjaku Monogatari and focuses on the evolution of these motifs in Japan. These range from the animal fables to the classical themes like Rsysringa and folk tales such as Ubasute Yama. A comparative study of these motifs portrays the cultural similarities and contrasts between India and Japan.
Based on primary sources this is a pioneer work on the presence of the Indian motifs in medieval Japanese Literature and its impact on Japanese life and culture.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Anita Khanna
Anita Khanna (b. 1953) had a stint as a Mombusho and Japan Foundation schoalr at Osaka University in Japan where she worked on Japanese literature for two years. She pursued her Ph.D. From Jawaharlal Nehur University. Japanese literature has been her forte, which took her back to Japan to the school of letters at Osaka University. Subsequently she worked on the juvenile literature of Meiji and Taisho period at the International Institute of Juvenile Literature in Japan and presented a research paper in their research journal. She worte her first book The Jataka Stories in Japan, that traced the development of the Indian motifs adapted in Japanese literature. She has also authored Some Japanese Stories and Stories of Buddha. Currently she is based at the Jawaharlal Nehur University teaching Japanese as an Associate Professor at the School of Languages, Literature and Culture Studies.
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