Brill's Japanese Studies Library
Series · 59
books · 1610-2022
Books in series
#1
Chaos and Cosmos
Ritual in Early and Medieval Japanese Literature
1990
Chaos and Cosmos( Ritual in Early and Medieval Japanese Literature) <> Library Binding <> HerbertE.Plutschow <> BrillAcademicPublishers
#2
Die Entstehung Des Kabuki
Transkulturation Europa-Japan Im 16. Und 17. Jahrhundert (Brill's Japanese Studies Library)
1990
German
#4
A Reconstruction Of Proto Ainu
1993
This volume offers a reconstruction of the Proto-Ainu language based on the comparative method and internal reconstruction. The book is divided into three parts, the first is dedicated to the reconstruction of Proto-Ainu phonology (vocalism, consonantism, and prosody), the second represents a vocabulary of reconstructed Proto-Ainu lexical items, and the third deals with the problem of the genetic affiliation of the Ainu language. This problem has been approached in the present study from the point of view of the systematic comparisons of reconstructions, not the straight comparisons of the forms attested exclusively in modern languages, which was the major set-back of the previous scholarship on the genetic affiliation of the Ainu language. This volume also includes the nineteenth-century vocabulary of the Kuril Ainu by I. Voznesenskii, previously unknown to the scholars.
#5
The Foundations of Japan's Modernization
A Comparison with China's Path Towards Modernization
1995
Tracing and evaluating the development in the history of Japanese culture and society that permits Japan's rapid and continuing modernization, Professor Yoda provides a new and original approach to the modernization of Japan. He starts from the assumption that Japan was better equipped for modernization because pre-modern Japan had already started to abandon Confucian influences. In his account of modernization during the Meiji-period he focuses on general patterns inherent in Japanese culture and society enabling Japan to integrate foreign elements without having to follow foreign models slavishly. "Patterns in culture," such as the Japanese preference for juxtaposing the new and the ancient, are contrasted with China's preference for discarding past institutions in revolutionary processes. The transferability of paradigms such as "absolutism" is accepted with some modifications. In the major descriptive part of the work, the history of economic, political, institutional modernization is presented on the basis of quotations from original Japanese (and Chinese) sources, arranged within the methodological framework of universal historical concepts, indigenous cultural patterns and specific conditions in both countries. The book is composed of two articles previously published in Japanese and Chinese, two new chapters written especially for the volume, and background information provided by Professor Radtke.
#6
New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan
1997
This volume of proceedings from the Conference on Meiji Studies presents a rare multinational interchange among professors, researchers, and graduate students investigating Japan. The essays reflect both an appreciation of past scholarship and a determination to destabilize existing paradigms about Meiji Japan in favor of a multiplicity of perspectives that privilege subjectivity and non-elite groups. Attention to relations of power challenges the notions of modernization as the master narrative in Japan's recent history and of consensus as the primary characteristic of social interaction in Japan. The authors present an array of intellectual perspective on topics in the social sciences, humanities, and arts, employing a variety of theories and methodologies. The book will be welcomed by readers interested in the Meiji era, contemporary Japan, and postmodern theories of power.
#7
Itô Jinsai's Gomô Jigi and the Philosophical Definition of Early Modern Japan
1998
This volume presents the first unabridged translation of Ito' Jinsai's (1627-1705) masterwork, the Gomo jigi (Philosophical Lexicography of the Analects and Mencius, 1705), into any western language. The extensively annotated translation opens with a brief textual study of the Gomo jigi and an intellectual biography of Jinsai. While highlighting the Neo-Confucian text, the author suggests that the Gomo jigi espouses a systematic philosophical worldview for chonin, or townspeople, living in the ancient imperial capital, Kyoto, even during an age of ascendant samurai power. The translation makes accessible to Western readers one of the earliest texts of Tokugawa philosophy. Those interested in Chinese and East Asian philosophy will find it enlightening since the topics that Jinsai addresses are also seminal ones in those fields."
#8
The Postwar Development of Japanese Studies in the United States
1998
The present volume documents the postwar history of United States scholarship on Japan. A careful selection of North American scholars under the general editorship of Helen Hardacre (Reischauer Institute Professor of Japanese Religions and Society at Harvard University) shows that a range of factors have directed Japanese studies in the United States since 1945. Among these factors are social and political change in Japan and the United States, shifts in dominant scholarly concerns about Japan, and changing evaluations of area studies. The work consists of twelve essays in a wide variety of fields: history, art, religion, literature, anthropology, political science, and law. Each essay chronicles postwar scholarship in its particular discipline and provides a useful bibliography to serve further reference. The general aim of the volume is to put current debates in historical perspective and to help assess the field's achievements. It identifies areas requiring more work and charts directions for the future.
#10
A Dutch Spy In China
Reports On The First Phase Of The Sino-Japanese War
1999
The Sino-Japanese war is one of the most important links in the development of the modern Far East. A Dutch Spy in China offers a selection from the reports written by a Dutch colonel at the request of the General Staff of the Royal Netherlands Indies Army. After his retirement colonel De Fremery joined the group of Western military specialists who were helping Chiang Kai Shek in his efforts to modernize the Nationalist Chinese armed forces. Having acted in an advisory capacity for several years, De Fremery resigned but continued to live in China. Mounting anxiety in the East-Indies about Japan s military activity urged the authorities to collect as much information about the Japanese armed forces as possible. De Fremery s reports on the Sino-Japanese war were in this period a most welcome source of information. Contemporary reports on this conflict by militarily qualified Western observers are very rare. Colonel De Fremery s account of the struggle forms an important contribution to our knowledge of its military aspects."
#11
Meeting the Sensei
The Role of the Master in Shirakaba Writers
2000
The early twentieth century Shirakaba ('White Birch') movement s later involvement with prewar Japanese nationalism has hitherto caused especially Western scholars to neglect its major significance. Shirikaba was created by graduates of the aristocratic Gakushuin ('Peers School') in reaction against the dominant naturalism of contemporary Japanese literature. Though at first seeking ideological and cultural models in Europe, Shirakaba writers soon developed an increasing sense of their own Japaneseness. The first part of this volume chronicles the birth of this literary movement and of its important magazine under the charismatic leadership of Mushanokoji Saneatsu. In the second part the author illuminates the ethos of the movement by analysing the figure of the Sensei (Master) in key Shirakaba texts by Mushanokoji Saneatsu, Nagayo Yoshiro and Kurata Hyakuzo. This volume definitely breaks new ground by seeing the movement as one of the significant episodes in the cultural history of Japan."
#12
Japanese Theatre and the International Stage
2000
This well-illustrated work is the first attempt to bridge the gap between several specialized discourses concerning Japanese theatre. Central are problems of scholarly and practical reception of Japanese theatre forms in the West. The essays by a careful selection of internationally well-reputed scholars range widely through Japanese theatre, from the ancient to the postmodern, or, one might say, from "kagura" to "angura," It deals with reception of Japanese theatre in the West, the treatment of the body in stage art and drama, Western influence, the impact of Japanese theatre practice and theory upon the actor's training, and stage directing in the West. Readers will come across a wide variety of intriguing topics, such as lion dances, "kabuki," "noh," folk theatre, "taishu engeki," and several important modern playwrights, etc. This book truly promises to intensify future dialogue between the many disciplines concerned with Japanese theatre.
#14
Individuum, Society, Humankind
The Triadic Logic of the Species According to Hajime Tanabe
2001
In this collection on the Kyoto School of Philosophy, the author offers the reader Tanabe s religious philosophy, but also, and for the first time, his philosophy of nature and ontology. It is not only on individuum, society, and humankind, but also on the logical structure of Tanabe s thinking, and aspects such as nature, beauty, matter, contemplation, practice, politics, religion, science, history, eternity, etcetera. A highly original work, the more as the reader becomes acquainted with Ozaki s own creative synthetic view of the main problems of Christian-Buddhist theological, resp. philosophical encounter."
#15
A Descriptive Grammar of Early Old Japanese Prose
2001
The oldest written stage of the Japanese language forms the subject of John Bentley's important new volume. The underlying texts (also presented here) are those of the religious liturgies (norito) and imperial edicts (A.D. 685). Part one deals with the liturgies, the writing system, texts, and phonology and the dating problem. The main chapters of the book are a description of nominals, verbs, verbal suffixes, auxiliary verbs, particles, and conjunctions. A chapter on the lexicon, detailing many hapax legomena and interesting words, makes this into a major reference work on early Japanese.
#16
Christianity in Early Modern Japan
Kirishitan Belief and Practice
2001
When the Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier introduced Catholic Christianity to Japan in 1549, it developed quickly in the country. The Japanese called this new religious movement and its believers Kirishitan . This volume explores the popular religious life and culture of the native adherents, which have been so often ignored in conventional studies of Christianity in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Japan.
Subjects included are lay missionaries, followers' engagement in symbols and rituals, Japanese catechism, and apostasy, underground practice, and martyrdom under persecution.
This book provides fascinating new information about the faith and practice of the Japanese followers, and expands the horizon of historical studies of Japanese Christianity. It will be an important source for students of Japanese studies, religious history, and studies of cross-cultural interaction.
#17
Capital Punishment in Japan
2001
Capital punishment has been carried out in Japan since ancient times. Although ancient Japan uniquely suspended executions for several centuries towards the end of the first millennium, today the death penalty is firmly established in Japan. This volume explores the current state of capital punishment, the domestic discussion on the subject, and the influence of the political orientations of the governments of recent years. The treatise is of current interest especially because of the Aum cult, whose leader Shoko Asahara is at present tried in Tokyo. If found guilty, he may be sentenced to death. After a three years' interval (between 1989 and 1993), Japan is nowadays undergoing a capital punishment "renaissance" with 39 executions between 1993 and 2000.
#18
Juvenile Delinquency in Japan
Reconsidering the 'Crisis'
2003
#19
Hiratsuka Raichō and Early Japanese Feminism
2003
This work on Hiratsuka Raich at last fully assesses her key role in the history of the Japanese women's movement. It provides a full and contextual analysis of the life (1886-1971) and work of this leading Japanese feminist, all in the light of the changes affecting women in Japan. At the same time the author compares her working with similar historical shifts and movements in western countries, notably Great Britain and the United States. International comparisons at the level of personal biography and associated ideas are made, to see the influence of Western feminists on Hiratsuka's feminism. Hiratsuka is compared with other Japanese feminists, whereby her pivotal role in the history of the Japanese women's movement becomes clear. With extensive footnotes for further reference - and research -, a number of appendices, a detailed bilingual glossary and bibliography; a true reference on an important subject."
#20
Dew on the Grass
The Life and Poetry of Kobayashi Issa
2004
This book sketches the life and poetry of Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828), a Japanese poet popularly known as one of the Three Pillars of Haiku. While Basho with his mystic asceticism and Buson with his romantic aestheticism immeasurably enriched the haiku tradition, it was Issa who, with his bold individualism and all-embracing humanism, helped to modernize the form to a degree matched by no other poet. Based on the most recent scholarship, the book attempts to identify the sources of his originality in terms of his long checkered life. It traces his growth and maturity by examining his motherless childhood, struggling youth in Edo, wanderings in western Japan, restless existence as a haiku master, return home to Kashiwabara, three brief marriages, and last years as an old poet.
#21
Koguryo
The Language of Japan's Continental Relatives
2004
This book describes the Koguryo language, which was once spoken in Manchuria and Korea, including Koguryo and Japanese ethnolinguistic history, Koguryo’s genetic relationship to Japanese, Koguryo phonology, and the Koguryo lexicon. It also analyzes the phonology of archaic Northeastern Chinese.
#22
Progressive Traditions
An Illustrated Study of Plot Repetition in Traditional Japanese Theatre
2005
This monograph with an accompanying CD-ROM explores through plot repetition the relationships between three genres of traditional Japanese theatre, n?, kabuki and ningy?-j?ruri, with a focus on plays depicting the final, fugitive years of Minamoto no Yoshitsune. First, the theoretical background to the concept of plot repetition is discussed and the theme of Yoshitsune's downfall is introduced. The next and main section analyses the treatment of the Funa Benkei and Ataka/Kanjinch? plots in the three genres, with reference to their historical development and contemporary performance. The CD-ROM contains video clips, photographs and nishiki-e prints from productions in each genre to illustrate how the plots are presented on stage.
#23
Theorizing the Angura Space
Avant-Garde Performance and Politics in Japan, 1960-2000
2006
This is the first history of Japan's avant-garde underground theatre (angura) in a time of its most intense, creative, and original productions, viz. 1960-2000. It closely investigates the interrelationship of aesthetics and politics and explores contrasting examples of contemporary performance in relation to social context and cultural history. Part one considers the 1960s era of protest and theatrical invention. The second part examines theatre in the 1980s, a time of unprecedented economic boom. The final section considers the work of four of the most important companies of the 1990s and explores how they are grappling with manifold new political and artistic challenges.
#24
Thinking Like a Man
Tadano Makuzu (1763-1825)
2006
Thinking Like a Man Deals with the life and ideas of the poet and philosopher Tadano Makuzu (1763-1825). This book presents insights into gender discourses of the late Tokugawa period (1600-1868), and thereby opens a way to break away from conventional intellectual history. Full description
#26
Japanese Fiction of the Allied Occupation
Vision, Embodiment, Identity
2006
Some 15 years in the making, Orbaugh's (Asian studies and women's studies, U. of British Columbia) study explores how Japanese writers of fiction working during the Allied Occupation (1945-1952) contributed to the postwar discourses of racial, national, and linguistic identity, as influenced by the historical circumstances of war, defeat, privation, and occupation by a foreign power. The texts examined include prewar and wartime materials—films, fiction, posters, kamishibai plays, advertisements—and Occupation- period fictional works, several of which do not yet exist in English. The author suggests that the presence of Occupation forces acted as a mirror in which previously obstructed elements of Japanese racial and cultural identity became visible, and were then incorporated into the efforts of writers—and their readers—to use narrative in reorienting themselves to the drastically changed social and political environment. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
#27
Haikai Poet Yosa Buson And The Bashō Revival
2006
This book uses the haikai verse and paintings of the brilliant, innovative artist Yosa Buson (1716-1783) as a focal point from which to explore how Japanese writers competed for artistic authority in a time when popular responses to economic, technological, and social changes were creating the beginnings of a modern literature. The first part of the book discusses Buson's role in the Basho Revival movement, situating his haikai in the context of the social networks that writers of his time both relied on and resisted. The second part explores Buson's "hokku," linked verse, and "haiga" (haikai painting). The book concludes with a discussion of Buson's reception in the modern period, and includes translations of his principal works.
#28
Christ in Japanese Culture
Theological Themes in Shusaku Endo's Literary Works
2008
This ground-breaking study on the Roman Catholic, Japanese novelist Endo Shusaku (1923-1996) uniquely combines western and Japanese religious, theological and philosophical thought. The author interprets Endo's central works such as Silence (1966), The Samurai (1980), and Deep River (1996), from a theological point of view as documents of inculturation of Christianity in Japan. Analysing the social and religious context of Japan in a global perspective, the author identifies a central role for koshinto - a traditional Japanese ethos - in Endo's thought on inculturation. Endo's change from a critical to a positive acceptance of the koshinto tradition partly accounts for his move from a pessimistic attitude of Christian inculturation in his early years to the growing theocentric and pneumatic concerns of his later years. Essential for Western readers.
#29
Nagaoka
Japan's Forgotten Capital
2008
This is the first work to deal comprehensively with the historical and physical aspects of the Nagaoka palace and capital, which were constructed in the eighth century at the order of Kanmu Tenn?, but abruptly abandoned after only ten years. New research and the information yielded by decades of excavation made possible this fresh reassessment of conventional theories of the construction and layout of Nagaoka, as well as the life and reign of its founder. It also examines the motivations behind Nagaoka's establishment and abandonment within the context of Kanmu's reign and personal convictions. In broader terms, this volume deals with the process of capital building in late eighth-century Japan, and the links between the Nara and Heian capitals.
#30
The Crisis of Identity in Contemporary Japanese Film
Personal, Cultural, National
2008
A concise, textually analytical study of the ways in which works of contemporary Japanese cinema have explored and reflected a 'crisis' in Japan's changing conceptions of individuality and identity approaching the central issue from a range of aspects.
#31
Hitomaro
Poet As God
2009
Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (fl. ca. 690) is generally regarded as one of the pre-eminent poets of premodern Japan. While most existing scholarship on Hitomaro is concerned with his poetry, this study foregrounds the process of his reception and canonization as a deity of Japanese poetry. Building on new interest in issues of canon formation in premodern Japanese literature, this book traces the reception history of Hitomaro from its earliest beginnings to the early modern period, documenting and analysing the phases of the process through which Hitomaro was transformed from an admired poet to a poetic deity. The result is a new perspective on a familiar literary figure through his placement within the broader context of Japanese poetic culture.
#32
Miki Kiyoshi 1897-1945
Japan's Itinerant Philosopher
2009
This book takes us on a fascinating journey through the world of thought of Miki Kiyoshi, one of Japan s pre-eminent philosophers before the Pacific War, and thus makes us discover the man behind the philosopher. His collaboration with government think-tanks in the late 1930s has made him highly controversial in historiographical debates. His death in prison, six weeks after Japan's defeat, hastened the lifting of pre-war restrictions on civil rights in Japan. He was a prolific, diverse and original thinker, revered by the Japanese as a plain-speaking, deeply humanistic philosopher who connected with the real lives of the people. As a translator, editor and journalist he intoduced many works of western European literature and philosophy into Japan."
#34
Imag(in)ing the War in Japan
Representing and Responding to Trauma in Postwar Literature and Film
2010
This study of a series of artistic representations of the Asia Pacific War experience in a variety of Japanese media is premised on Walter Davis' assertion that traumatic events and experiences must be 'constituted' before they can be assimilated, integrated and understood. Arguing that the contribution of the arts to the constitution, integration and comprehension of traumatic historical events has yet to be sufficiently acknowledged or articulated, the contributors to this volume examine how various Japanese authors and other artists have drawn upon their imaginative powers to create affect-charged forms and images of the extreme violence, psychological damage and ideological contradiction surrounding the War. In so doing, they seek to further the process whereby reading and viewing audiences are encouraged to virtually engage, internalize, 'know' and respond to trauma in concrete, ethical terms.
#35
Essays on Japan
Between Aesthetics and Literature
2010
Essays on Japan is a compilation of Professor Michael F. Marra's essays written in the past ten years on the topics of Japanese literature, Japanese aesthetics, and the space between the two subjects. Marra is one of the leading scholars in the field of Japanese aesthetics and hermeneutics and has published extensively on medieval and early modern Japanese literature, thought, and the arts. This work will present the reader critical insight into the fields of Japanese aesthetics, literary hermeneutics, and literature, with essays on such texts and figures as Kuki Shūzō, The Tale of Genji, Motoori Norinaga, and Heidegger.
#36
The Chronicle of Lord Nobunaga
1610
"Shinch -K ki," the work translated here into English under the title The Chronicle of Lord Nobunaga, is the most important source on the career of one of the best known figures in all of Japanese history Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582), the first of the Three Heroes who unified Japan after a century of fragmentation and internecine bloodshed. The other two of the triad, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598) and Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616), also make frequent appearances in this chronicle, playing prominent although clearly subordinate roles. So the chronicle also is an important source on their early careers, as it is on a constellation of other actors in Japan s sixteenth-century drama. The chronicle s author, ta Gy ichi, was Nobunaga s former retainer and an eyewitness of some of the events he describes. He completed his work about the year 1610.
#37
Fantasies of Cross-dressing
Japanese Women Write Male-Male Erotica
2012
Male homosexual narratives in various genres and media—from "high-brow" literature by distinguished female authors to "pornographic" comic books produced and distributed by amateurs—have attracted the attention of a number of cultural critics in Japan and abroad. This book represents the first extensive critical attempt to examine Japanese women's narratives of male homosexuality/homoeroticism, addressing not only popular culture genres, but also the considerable body of critically acclaimed literary works (with English translations of the original works). The result is an in-depth analysis of the ways in which female fantasies of male homosexuality/homoeroticism may be composed, acknowledged, and interrogated.
#38
Uncharted Waters
Intellectual Life in the Edo Period: Essays in Honour of W.J. Boot
2012
In the Edo period, Japan had its first experience of what one might call "intellectual life" in a pregnant sense of the a scene that combined serious intellectual pursuits, from poetry writing to the interpretation of the Confucian classics, with intense social interaction. Edo-period Japan was crisscrossed by networks of poets, scholars, artists and collectors who exchanged information, discussed each other's work, cooperated in collaborative projects, and gossiped about each other. Intellectual life in Edo Japan was a seething cauldron of social interaction and competition, sometimes harmoniously productive, sometimes destructively vicious, but never stagnant. This volume, compiled in honour of Prof. W.J. Boot, offers eleven essays that explore the intellectual scene of Edo-period Japan from a variety of perspectives.
#39
Public Opinion - Propaganda - Ideology
Theories on the Press and Its Social Function in Interwar Japan, 1918-1937
2012
Public Opinion - Propaganda - Ideology offers an account of the interwar discourse on the social function of the press in Japan.
#40
Optical Allusions
Screens, Paintings, and Poetry in Classical Japan
2012
In Optical Screens, Paintings, and Poetry in Classical Japan (ca. 800-1200), Joseph T. Sorensen illustrates how painted screens and other visual art objects contributed to the development of some of the essential characteristics of Japanese court poetry.
#41
Crossing Boundaries in Tokugawa Society
Suzuki Bokushi, a Rural Elite Commoner
2013
Crossing Boundaries in Tokugawa Society presents a vivid picure of the life of Suzuki Bokushi (1770-1842), an elite villager in a snowy province of Japan, focusing on his interaction with the changing social and cultural environment of the late Tokugawa period (1603-1868).
#42
Japanese Historiography and the Gold Seal of 57 C.E.
2013
In the year 57 C.E., the court of Later Han dynasty presented a gold seal to an emissary from somewhere in what is now Japan. The seal soon vanished from history, only to be unearthed in 1784 in Japan. In the subsequent two-plus centuries, nearly 400 books and articles (mostly by Japanese) have addressed every conceivable issue surrounding this small object of gold. Joshua Fogel places the conferment of the seal in inter-Asian diplomacy of the first century and then traces four waves of historical analysis that the seal has undergone since its discovery, as the standards of historical judgment have changed over these years and the investment in the seal's meaning have changed accordingly.
#43
Sacred Space in the Modern City
The Fractured Pasts of Meiji Shrine, 1912-1958
2013
Sacred Space in the Modern City offers new and original perspectives on a number of controversial issues and important questions concerning Japanese pre- and post-war ideology and identity. The author uses Meiji shrine as a lens with which to investigate the nature of the society that created, experienced and reproduced this site.
#46
Listen, Copy, Read
Popular Learning in Early Modern Japan
2014
Listen, Copy, Read: Popular Learning in Early Modern Japan endeavors to elucidate the mechanisms by which a growing number of men and women of all social strata became involved in acquiring knowledge and skills during the Tokugawa period. It offers an overview of the communication media and tools that teachers, booksellers, and authors elaborated to make such knowledge more accessible to a large audience.
Schools, public lectures, private academies or hand-copied or printed manuals devoted to a great variety of topics, from epistolary etiquette or personal ethics to calculation, divination or painting, are here invoked to illustrate the vitality of Tokugawa Japan’s ‘knowledge market’, and to show how popular learning relied on three types of activities: listening, copying and reading.
With contributions by: W.J. Boot, Matthias Hayek, Annick Horiuchi, Michael Kinski, Koizumi Yoshinaga, Peter Kornicki, Machi Senjūrō, Christophe Marquet, Markus Rüttermann, Tsujimoto Masashi, and Wakao Masaki.
#49
Japan’s Sexual Gods
Shrines, Roles and Rituals of Procreation and Protection
2015
Japan's Sexual Gods is an authoritative and original work that describes the unique deities represented by sexual objects in certain Japanese shrines and temples. Hundreds of sexual shrines still exist in spite of previous repression and range from the Tagata Shrine with its well-known giant festival phallus to small obscure places. Many also contain female sexual imagery and some phalluses act in a protective role. The study is based on observations of over 500 sexual sites including phallic festivals, many of which are modern inventions created purely for commercial reasons. The study makes an assessment of the place of sexual beliefs in modern Japan and includes almost 300 stunning original photographs, a glossary and a highly detailed map.
#51
Harima Fudoki
A Record of Ancient Japan Reinterpreted, Translated, Annotated, and With Commentary
2015
Harima Fudoki, dated to 714CE, is one of Japan's earliest extant written records. It is a rich account of the people, places, natural resources and stories in the Harima region of western Japan. Produced by the government as a tool for Japan's early state formation, Harima Fudoki includes important myths of places and gods from a different perspective to the contemporaneous 'national' chronicles. This document is an essential primary source for all who are interested in ancient Japan.
In this new critical edition, Palmer draws upon recent research into the archaeology, history, orality and literature of ancient Japan to reinterpret this hitherto little-known document. Palmer's insightful commentary contextualizes the Harima tales for the first time in English.
#52
Values, Identity, and Equality in Eighteenth- And Nineteenth-Century Japan
2015
The chapters in this volume use diverse methodologies to challenge a number of long-standing assumptions regarding the principal contours of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Japanese society, especially regarding values, social hierarchy, state authority, and the construction and spread of identity.
#53
Japanese Pan-Asianism and the Philippines from the Late 19th Century to the End of World War II
Going to the Philippines Is Like Coming Home?
2015
In Japanese Pan-Asianism and the Philippines from the Late 19th Century to the End of World War II - Going to the Philippines Is Like Coming Home? Sven Matthiessen examines the development of Japanese Pan-Asianism and the perception of the Philippines within this ideology. Due to the archipelago's previous colonisation by Spain and the US the Philippines was a special case among the Japanese occupied territories during the war. Matthiessen convincingly proves that the widespread pro-Americanism among the Philippine population made it impossible for Japanese administrators to implement a pan-Asianist ideology that centred on a 'return to Asian values'. The expectation among some Japanese Pan-Asianists that 'going to the Philippines was like coming home' was never fulfilled.
#56
Reading Japanese "Haikai" Poetry
A Study in the Polyphony of Yosa Buson's Linked Poems
2016
In Reading Japanese Haikai Poetry Herbert Jonsson makes an inquiry into the multitude ways in which Japanese linked haikai poetry has been read and understood. A number of poems composed by the eighteenth-century master Yosa Buson are analyzed in great detail. Although closely related to the popular haiku, haikai is often regarded as difficult for non-specialists, but this study offers the reader a wealth of explanations, displaying the varied perspectives available.
The first part of the book consists of a thorough investigation of how these poems have been interpreted in the Japanese commentary tradition. The second concluding part offers an innovative study of the poetics of scent ( nioizuke ), essential for understanding the creative force of this poetry.
#57
Mediated by Gifts
2016
Mediated by Gifts is a collection of essays by top scholars on gifts, giving and the social and political forces that shaped these practices in medieval and early modern Japan. The international assemblage of authors provides new insights into these deeply ingrained practices. The essays focus on topics such as shogunal visits to shrines and temples, exchanges between the imperial house and the shogun, a physician and his patients, the shogun, his vassals his and his ladies, the merchant class and the shogunal government, and between scholars and their cosmopolitan circle of contacts. This virtually unexplored view of Japanese history provides new tools to better elucidate both historical and modern Japan. Contributors are Lee Butler, Andrew Goble, Kaneko Hiraku, Laura Nenzi, Ozawa Emiko, Cecilia Segawa Siegle, and Margarita Winkel.
#58
Parody, Irony and Ideology in the Fiction of Ihara Saikaku,
2017
The first monograph published in English on Ihara Saikakus fiction, Gundrys lucid, compelling study examines works by Edo-period Japans leading writer of floating world literature both in their local context and as part of transnational trends in early bourgeois narrative.
#59
Mutual Perceptions and Images in Japanese-German Relations, 1860-2010
2017
Mutual Perceptions and Images in Japanese-German Relations, 1860-2010 examines the mutual images formed between Japan and Germany from the mid-nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, and the influence of these images on the development of bilateral relations. Unlike earlier research on Japanese-German relations, which focused on the similarity of these countries' historical trajectories, this publication presents a more nuanced picture. It relativizes perceptions of a special "spiritual relationship" between Japan and Germany as well as their commonalities of "national character" through an exploration of previously untapped historical visual and textual sources. With essays by sixteen leading scholars in the field, this collection is an invaluable contribution to the historiography of modern Japan and Germany, and to the field of international relations.
Contributors Hans-Joachim Bieber, Fukuoka Mariko, Hakoishi Hiroshi, Iwasa Takurō, Katō Yōko, Kawakita Atsuko, Gerhard Krebs, Kudō Akira, Heinrich Menkhaus, Danny Orbach, Peter Pantzer, Sven Saaler, Satō Takumi, Volker Stanzel, Suzuki Naoko, Tajima Nobuo, Tano Daisuke, and Rolf-Harald Wippich.
#60
Japan on the Silk Road
Encounters and Perspectives of Politics and Culture in Eurasia
2017
Japan on the Silk Road provides for the first time the historical background indispensable for understanding Japan's current perspectives and policies in the vast area of Eurasia across the Middle East and Central Asia. Japanese diplomats, military officers, archaeologists, and linguists traversed the Silk Road, involving Japan in the Great Game and exploring ancient civilizations.The book exposes the entanglements of pre-war Japanese Pan-Asianism with Pan-Islamism, Turkic nationalism and Mongolian independence as a global history of imperialism. Japanese connections to Ottoman Turkey, India, Egypt, Iran, Afghanistan, and China at the same time reveal a discrete global narrative of cosmopolitanism
and transnationality. The global team of scholars brings to light Japan's intellectual and political encounters with the peoples and cultures of Asia, in particular Turks and Persians, Hindus and Muslims of India, Mongolians and the Uyghur of Inner Asia, and Muslims in China.
Contributors Ian Nish, Christopher Szpilman, Sven Saaler, Selcuk Esenbel, Li Narangoa, Komatsu Hisao, Brij Tankha, Erdal Küçükyalcın, A. Merthan Dündar, Katayama Akio, Miyuki Aoki Girardelli, Klaus Röhborn, Mehmet Ölmez, Banu Kaygusuz, Oğuz Baykara, and Satō Masako.
#61
Dancer, Nun, Ghost, Goddess
The Legend of Giō And Hotoke in Japanese Literature, Theater, Visual Arts, and Cultural Heritage
2017
Dancer, Nun, Ghost, Goddess explores the Tale of the Heike episode of the dancers Giō and Hotoke, which first appeared in the fourteenth century and went on to inspire, in often unpredictable ways, countless artistic productions in subsequent centuries.
#62
The Unnamable Archipelago
Wounds of the Postcolonial in Postwar Japanese Literature and Thought
2019
In The Unnamable Wounds of the Postcolonial in Postwar Japanese Literature and Thought, Dennitza Gabrakova discusses how the island imagery in the works by Imafuku Ryūta, Ukai Satoshi, Ōba Minako, Ariyoshi Sawako, Hino Keizō, Ikezawa Natsuki, Shimada Masahiko and Tawada Yōko shapes a critical understanding of Japan on multiple intersections of trauma and sovereignty.
The book attempts an engagement with the vocabulary of postcolonial critique, while attending to the complexity of its translation into Japanese.
#63
Women, Rites, and Ritual Objects in Premodern Japan
2018
Women, Rites, and Ritual Objects in Premodern Japan seeks to expand our understanding of the roles women played in rituals, how particular rituals were carried out, what types of implements or icons accompanied them, and how various ritual objects were used.
#64
Not Seeing Snow
Muso Soseki and Medieval Japanese Zen
2019
Not Seeing Snow: Musō Soseki and Medieval Japanese Zen offers a detailed look at a crucial yet sorely neglected figure in medieval Japan. It clarifies Musō’s far-reaching significance as a Buddhist leader, waka poet, landscape designer, and political figure. In doing so, it sheds light on how elite Zen culture was formed through a complex interplay of politics, religious pedagogy and praxis, poetry, landscape design, and the concerns of institution building. The appendix contains the first complete English translation of Musō’s personal waka anthology, Shōgaku Kokushishū.
#65
Engaging the Other
'Japan' and Its Alter-Egos, 1550-1850
2019
In Engaging the "Japan and Its Alter-Egos", 1550-1850 Ronald P. Toby examines new discourses of identity and difference in early modern Japan, a discourse catalyzed by the "Iberian irruption," the appearance of Portuguese and other new, radical others in the sixteenth century. The encounter with peoples and countries unimagined in earlier discourse provoked an identity crisis, a paradigm shift from a view of the world as comprising only "three countries" ( sangoku ), i.e., Japan, China and India, to a world of "myriad countries" ( bankoku ) and peoples. In order to understand the new radical alterities, the Japanese were forced to establish new parameters of difference from familiar, proximate others, i.e., China, Korea and Ryukyu. Toby examines their articulation in literature, visual and performing arts, law, and customs.
#66
A History of Russo-Japanese Relations
Over Two Centuries of Cooperation and Competition
2019
This publication is the result of a three-year research project between eminent Russian and Japanese historians. It offers an an in-depth analysis of the history of relations between Russia and Japan from the 18th century until the present day. The format of the publication as a parallel history presents views and interpretations from Russian and Japanese perspectives that showcase the differences and the similarities in their joint history. The fourteen core sections, organized along chronological lines, provide assessments on the complex and sensitive issues of bilateral Russo-Japanese relations, including the territory problem as well as economic exchange.
#67
The Poetry Contest in Six Hundred Rounds
A Translation and Commentary
2019
For the monumental Poetry Competition in Six Hundred Rounds ( Roppyakuban uta'awase ), twelve poets each provided one hundred waka poems, fifty on seasonal topics and fifty on love, which were matched, critiqued by the participants and judged by Fujiwara no Shunzei, the premiere poet of his age. Its critical importance is heightened by the addition of a lengthy Appeal ( chinjō ) against Shunzei's judgements by the conservative poet and monk, Kenshō. It is one of the key texts for understanding poetic and critical practice in late twelfth century Japan, and of the conflict between conservative and innovative poets.
The Competition and Appeal are presented here for the first time in complete English translation with accompanying commentary and explanatory notes by Thomas McAuley.
#68
Turbulent Streams
An Environmental History of Japan’s Rivers, 1600–1930
2021
In Turbulent Streams: An Environmental History of Japan’s Rivers, 1600–1930, Roderick I. Wilson describes how the rivers of Japan are both hydrologically and historically dynamic. Today, these waterways are slowed, channeled, diverted, and dammed by a myriad of levees, multiton concrete tetrapods, and massive multipurpose dams. In part, this intensive engineering arises from the waterways falling great elevations over short distances, flowing over unstable rock and soil, and receiving large quantities of precipitation during monsoons and typhoons. But this modern river regime is also the product of a history that narrowed both these waterways and people’s diverse interactions with them in the name of flood control. Neither a story of technological progress nor environmental decline, this history introduces the concept of environmental relations as a category of historical analysis both to explore these fluvial interactions and reveal underappreciated dimensions of Japanese history.
#69
An Ise monogatari Reader
Contexts and Receptions
2021
An “Ise monogatari” Reader is the first collection of essays in English on The Ise Stories, a canonical literary text ranked beside The Tale of Genji. Eleven scholars from Japan, North America, and Europe explore the historical and political context in which this literary court romance was created, or relate it to earlier works such as the Man’yōshū and later works such as the Genji and noh theater. Its medieval commentary tradition is also examined, as well as early modern illustrated editions and parodies. The collection brings cutting-edge scholarship of the very highest level to English readers, scholars, and students.
#70
Sexuality, Maternity, and (Re)productive Futures
Women’s Speculative Fiction in Contemporary Japan
2021
Contemporary Japanese female speculative fiction writers of novels and manga employ the perspectives of aliens, cyborgs, and bioengineered entities to critique the social realities of women, particularly with respect to reproduction, which they also re-imagine in radical ways. Harada examines the various meanings of (re)production in light of feminist and queer studies and offers close readings of works by novelists Murata Sayaka, Ōhara Mariko, Ueda Sayuri and manga artists Hagio Moto and Shirai Yumiko. Scholarship of SF in Japanese studies has primarily focused on male authors, but this book shows not only how women writers have created a space in SF and speculative fiction but how their work can be seen as a response to particular social norms and government policies.
#71
Datsueba the Clothes Snatcher
The Evolution of a Japanese Folk Deity from Hell Figure to Popular Savior
2022
The first full-length study in English to explore Datsueba, the old woman of hell, and her transformation from terrifying ogre to beneficent guardian over a millennium of evolution within the Japanese religious imagination.
Authors
Roberta Strippoli
Author · 1 books
Roberta Strippoli teaches Japanese literature at the University of Napoli "L'Orientale." She has published a collection of medieval Japanese tales in Italian translation titled La monaca tuttofare, la donna serpente, il demone beone. Racconti dal medioevo giapponese (Venezia: Marsilio, 2001) and Dancer, Nun, Ghost, Goddess (Leiden: Brill, 2018) a monograph that explores the reception of a character from the fourteenth-century military narrative Heike monogatari over six centuries across literary, visual, performance genres and cultural heritage.
Akira Iriye
Author · 11 books
Akira Iriye is an historian of American diplomatic history especially United States-East Asian relations, and international issues. A graduate of Haverford College and Harvard University, he taught at the University of California at Santa Cruz, the University of Rochester, and the University of Chicago before accepting an appointment as Professor of History at Harvard University in 1989, where he became Charles Warren Professor of American History in 1991. He was Director of the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies from 1991 through 1995. He served as President of the American Historical Association in 1988, and has also served as president for the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.
Makoto Ueda
Author · 4 books
Makoto Ueda (上田 真 Ueda Makoto, born 1931) is a professor emeritus of Japanese literature at Stanford University. He earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature in 1961. In 2004-2005 he served as the honorary curator of the American Haiku Archives at the California State Library in Sacramento, California. He was given that honor "in recognition of Ueda’s many decades of academic writing about haiku and related genres and his leading translations of Japanese haiku." The library added that "Ueda has been our most consistently useful source for information on Japanese haiku, as well as our finest source for the poems in translation, from Bashô to the present day." His work on female poets and 20th century poets "had an enormous impact". He is an author of numerous books about Japanese literature and in particular Haiku, Senryū, Tanka, and Japanese poetics. (from Wikipedia)
Andrew Gordon
Author · 7 books
A specialist in the history of modern Japan, Andrew Gordon is the Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Professor of History at Harvard University. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1981 in History and East Asian Languages after completing a B.A. from Harvard in 1975.
Stephen Turnbull
Author · 71 books
Stephen Richard Turnbull is British a historian specializing in eastern military history, especially the samurai of Japan. His books are mainly on Japanese and Mongolian subjects. He attended Cambridge University where he gained his first degree. He currently holds an MA in Theology, MA in Military History and a PhD from the University of Leeds where he is currently a lecturer in Far Eastern Religions. He has also written a number of books on other medieval topics.
