Excellent Entry in an Overlooked Genre, December 12, 2007
As its (quite clever) Japanese title suggests, this book may come as a shock to readers more familiar with the overly reverent tone and bland presentation in many volumes of Japanese poetry. In fact, from choice of subject onwards, this book flouts pretty much all of the established conventions, which is, in my opinion, a breath of fresh air.

"The Woman Without a Hole..." eschews the devotion to the Empty White Page found in so many similar poetry collections. No, a full page of text isn't as pretty as that single little verse floating all by itself in the middle of the page, but readers receive a lot more poetry with the former than they do with the latter, and if you're buying the book to read (as opposed to sticking it on a coffee table), I don't see how that can possibly be a bad thing.

The content is excellent, as well. Gill is certainly an expert on the form; the extensive essays and historical notes included with the verses provide valuable explication of and context for the verses--both of which readers will need to understand a form so predicated on allusion and brevity. But Gill also departs from convention in this as well--far from being just so much dry explication, punning, wordplay, and even unexpected font changes abound throughout the text. (The last, incidentally, is a technique used in some Japanese writing that I've always felt would make English writing much more interesting).

As for the poems themselves, Gill earns major points for including the Japanese originals, which would seem like the obvious thing to do in any serious book of translated poetry, but is something far too few authors actually make the effort to include. He also includes a transliteration beneath the Japanese text--another nice touch that allows readers to familiarize themselves with unusual characters or readings. Best yet, he keeps the untranslated verses in their original format instead of arbitrarily breaking them into three "stanzas," as so often happens in English language collections. This is, in my opinion, much preferable to imposing arbitrary breaks to facilitate "ease of reading." While most translators willingly admit that most verses contain ambiguous wording open to a variety of different readings, arbitrary formatting automatically prejudices readers toward one specific reading over the others, instead of allowing them to draw conclusions on their own.

Although Gill does break his translations of the verses into multiple lines, he more than compensates for the concerns I raised above by providing multiple translations of each verse--some intentionally more grammatically or nuance-faithful than others--thus conveying to readers without any knowledge of Japanese the multiplicity of interpretations possible for each poem. Yes, many of the translations are merely so-so, some downright groan-inducing, but a surprising number are transcendently clever and had me laughing as much, if not more, than did the Japanese originals.

The only complaint I can raise is that the book desperately wants for a good editor; it suffers from a lack of formatting consistency and the overuse of the hyphens, but these are small issues in an otherwise excellent volume dealing with a much overlooked genre. This book will appeal to students of Japanese culture and language just as much as to hardcore fans of the form, and is definitely worth the reader's time and money. ( )