In pre-modern Japan, Ise monogatari (also known as the Ise Stories or Tales of Ise) was considered to be one of the three most important works of literature in the Japanese language. Joshua S. Mostow’s new book focuses on the reception and appropriation of these stories from the twelfth through seventeenth centuries.  Paying special attention to the relationship of image and text in these works, Courtly Visions: The Ise Stories and the Politics of Cultural Appropriation (Brill, 2014) expertly interprets the Ise images to understand the very different ways that the stories were understood in different contexts. We talked about it for the New Books in East Asian Studies podcast and you can listen to our interview here.