Seeds in the Heart

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{{primary sources|reason=Virtually nothing in this article before 2017-10-02 was technically accurate, because it consisted entirely of Wikipedians' clumsy attempts to summarize the contents of the book itself, based on the 1999 paperback edition which appeared as part of a series of four books covering the entire history of Japanese literature, even though the "later" books were all written earlier. Secondary sources should be located that cover the material in a more encyclopedic fashion.|date=October 2017}}

{{Infobox book

| image = Seeds in the Heart.jpg

| author = Donald Keene

| isbn = 978-0-8050-4364-8

| pub_date = 1995

| caption = First edition

| publisher = Henry Holt & Co.

| name = Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Century

| language = English

}}

Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Century is the first book (though the last to be written and published) in Donald Keene's four-book series A History of Japanese Literature.{{Cite book|last=Keene|first=Donald|url=http://cup.columbia.edu/book/seeds-in-the-heart/9780231114417|title=Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Century|date=October 1999|publisher=Columbia University Press|isbn=978-0-231-11441-7}} It is followed by World Within Walls: Japanese Literature of the Pre-Modern Era, 1600–1867, Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era; Fiction, and the last book in the series, Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature in the Modern Era; Poetry, Drama, Criticism.{{Cite book|last=Keene|first=Donald|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tYpZPgAACAAJ|title=Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Century|date=August 1998|publisher=Diane Publishing Company|isbn=978-0-7881-5522-2|language=en}} It covers classical prose works such as the Kojiki and the Tale of Genji {{Cite book|last=Keene|first=Donald|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yUJNPgAACAAJ|title=Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Century|date=1995|publisher=Henry Holt & Company|isbn=978-0-8050-4364-8|language=en}} and major waka poets like Fujiwara no Teika or Ki no Tsurayuki, through the Kamakura period and up to the beginnings of Noh plays and renga, in 1175 pages of text and endnotes (excluding the bibliography, index, and glossary).