In The Distant Isle, fifteen former students honor their mentor, the late Robert H. Brower, with this memorial collection of essays and translations focusing on Japanese literature. Roughly two-thirds of the papers collected here are concerned with the languages and literatures of
premodern
Japan. The other third concern
modern
Japanese language and literature. Although Professor Brower rarely published outside the field of his own expertise in waka poetry, he inspired his students to a diversity of interests and critical approaches, as these articles demonstrate.