As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams

recollections of a woman in eleventh-century Japan

by Sugawara no Takasue no Musume

Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England · Penguin Books · 1975

Born in A.D. 1008 at the height of the Heian Period, the Lady Sarashina (as she is known) left behind her a diary that is remarkable for its wistfulness and sensitivity. Its shy and vulnerable author found happiness neither in her work at court nor with her family, and projected into her writing dreams and veiled longings that are both timeless and poignant.