Download or read book Taiheiki Warriors written by Utagawa Yoshiiku and published by SCB Distributors. This book was released on 2013-07-17 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Taiheiki, a 14th-century war epic presenting scenes from the Nanboku-cho period (1334-1392), is one of the key works of early Japanese literature. The book was first popularized in Japanese art by musha-e (“warrior picture”) prints during the 19th century, in particular by Kuniyoshi’s series Taiheiki Eiyu-den ("Taiheiki Heroes") of 1847-49, and Yoshiiku’s imitative but expanded series Taiheiki Eiyu-den of 1867-69. Both series depicted a range of samurai in battle, with kinetic framing and numerous images of bloody carnage. Yoshiiku in particular took this aspect to an extreme, with severed heads and blood liberally strewn about his designs. This special ebook selection of Taiheiki Warriors includes 25 of the most vivid and dynamic designs from each series, making a total of 50 classic warrior prints by Kuniyoshi and Yoshiiku, two of the most renowned and accomplished of all ukiyo-e artists.
Download or read book Warriors of Japan as Portrayed in the War Tales written by Paul Varley and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 1994-07-01 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading cultural historian of premodern Japan draws a rich portrait of the emerging samurai culture as it is portrayed in gunki-mono, or war tales, examining eight major works spanning the mid-tenth to late fourteenth centuries. Although many of the major war tales have been translated into English, Warriors of Japan is the first book-length study of the tales and their place in Japanese history. The war tales are one of the most important sources of knowledge about Japan's premodern warriors, revealing much about the medieval psyche and the evolving perceptions of warriors, warfare, and warrior customs.
Download or read book Heroes of the Grand Pacification written by Elena Varshavskaya and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book introduces the print-series Taiheiki eiyū den or Heroic Biographies from the 'Tale of Grand Pacification', designed by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797–1861), who is considered the founder of the heroic genre in Japanese prints. The series is devoted to the final years of the sixteenth century civil wars and the key figure of the day, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536?–98). All fifty prints of the series are reproduced in full color. Each print is accompanied by a translation of the extensive texts incorporated into the composition and detailed historical and cultural commentaries. The introductory essay reviews the peculiarities of Kuniyoshi’s warrior images, explores the roots of Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s popularity and discusses the texts in the prints as a source of information on the late medieval warriors’ outlook and battlefield practices.
Download or read book The Origins of Japan s Medieval World written by Jeffrey P. Mass and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This pioneering collection of 15 essays argues that Japan's medieval age began in the 14th century rather than the 12th, and marks the beginning of a fundamentally new debate about how Japan's lengthy classical period finally ended.
Download or read book Women Warriors and National Heroes written by Boyd Cothran and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-02-20 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. This volume presents women warriors and hero cults from a number of cultures since the early modern period. The first truly global study of women warriors, individual chapters examine figures such as Joan of Arc in Cairo, revenging daughters in Samurai Japan, a transgender Mexican revolutionary and WWII Chinese spies. Exploring issues of violence, gender fluidity, memory and nation-building, the authors discuss how these real or imagined female figures were constructed and deployed in different national and transnational contexts. Divided into four parts, they explore how women warriors and their stories were created, consider the issue of the violent woman, discuss how these female figures were gendered, and highlight the fate of women warriors who live on. The chapters illustrate the ways in which female fighters have figured in nation-building stories and in the ordering or re-ordering of gender politics, and give the history of women fighters a critical edge. Exploring women as military actors, women after war, and the strategic use of women's stories in national narratives, this intellectually innovative volume provides the first global treatment of women warriors and their histories.
Download or read book Samurai and the Warrior Culture of Japan 471 1877 written by and published by Hackett Publishing. This book was released on 2022-03-01 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In addition to providing excerpts from classic tales of Japan’s warrior past, this volume draws on a wide range of lesser-known but revealing sources—including sword inscriptions, edicts, orders, petitions, and letters—to expand and deepen our understanding of the samurai, from the order’s origins in the fifth century to its abolition in the nineteenth. Taken together with Thomas Donald Conlan’s contextualizing introductions and notes, these sources provide a rare window into the experiences, ideals, and daily lives of these now-sentimentalized warriors. Numerous illustrations, a glossary of terms, and a substantial bibliography further enhance the value of this book to students, scholars, and anyone interested in learning more about the samurai.
Download or read book Death and the Afterlife in Japanese Buddhism written by Jacqueline I. Stone and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2008-08-20 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than a thousand years, Buddhism has dominated Japanese death rituals and concepts of the afterlife. The nine essays in this volume, ranging chronologically from the tenth century to the present, bring to light both continuity and change in death practices over time. They also explore the interrelated issues of how Buddhist death rites have addressed individual concerns about the afterlife while also filling social and institutional needs and how Buddhist death-related practices have assimilated and refigured elements from other traditions, bringing together disparate, even conflicting, ideas about the dead, their postmortem fate, and what constitutes normative Buddhist practice. The idea that death, ritually managed, can mediate an escape from deluded rebirth is treated in the first two essays. Sarah Horton traces the development in Heian Japan (794–1185) of images depicting the Buddha Amida descending to welcome devotees at the moment of death, while Jacqueline Stone analyzes the crucial role of monks who attended the dying as religious guides. Even while stressing themes of impermanence and non-attachment, Buddhist death rites worked to encourage the maintenance of emotional bonds with the deceased and, in so doing, helped structure the social world of the living. This theme is explored in the next four essays. Brian Ruppert examines the roles of relic worship in strengthening family lineage and political power; Mark Blum investigates the controversial issue of religious suicide to rejoin one’s teacher in the Pure Land; and Hank Glassman analyzes how late medieval rites for women who died in pregnancy and childbirth both reflected and helped shape changing gender norms. The rise of standardized funerals in Japan’s early modern period forms the subject of the chapter by Duncan Williams, who shows how the Soto Zen sect took the lead in establishing itself in rural communities by incorporating local religious culture into its death rites. The final three chapters deal with contemporary funerary and mortuary practices and the controversies surrounding them. Mariko Walter uncovers a "deep structure" informing Japanese Buddhist funerals across sectarian lines—a structure whose meaning, she argues, persists despite competition from a thriving secular funeral industry. Stephen Covell examines debates over the practice of conferring posthumous Buddhist names on the deceased and the threat posed to traditional Buddhist temples by changing ideas about funerals and the afterlife. Finally, George Tanabe shows how contemporary Buddhist sectarian intellectuals attempt to resolve conflicts between normative doctrine and on-the-ground funerary practice, and concludes that human affection for the deceased will always win out over the demands of orthodoxy. Death and the Afterlife in Japanese Buddhism constitutes a major step toward understanding how Buddhism in Japan has forged and retained its hold on death-related thought and practice, providing one of the most detailed and comprehensive accounts of the topic to date. Contributors: Mark L. Blum, Stephen G. Covell, Hank Glassman, Sarah Johanna Horton, Brian O. Ruppert, Jacqueline I. Stone, George J. Tanabe, Jr., Mariko Namba Walter, Duncan Ryuken Williams.
Download or read book Warrior Rule in Japan written by Marius Jansen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995-09-29 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japan was ruled by warriors for the better part of a millenium. From the twelfth to the nineteenth century its political history was dominated by the struggle of competing leagues of fighting men. This paperback volume, comprised of chapters taken from volumes 3 and 4 of The Cambridge History of Japan, traces the institutional development of warrior rule and dominance. Fourteenth-century warfare weakened the aristocratic and clerical control over provincial estates, and the power of military governors grew steadily. By the eighteenth century, however, warrior rule had come full circle. Centuries of peace brought a transformation and bureaucratization of the samurai class. Although samurai malcontents resisted the Meiji Restoration, many of the Meiji government's leaders were former samurai, and warrior values remained central to the ethical code of modern Japan.
Download or read book From Sovereign to Symbol written by Thomas Conlan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-10 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rather than looking at the collapse of Japan's first warrior government as the manipulation of rival courts by warrior factions, this study argues that the crucial ideological conflict of the 14th century was between the conservative forces of ritual precedent and the ritual determinists steeped in Shingon Buddhism.
Download or read book In Search of the Ninja written by Antony Cummins and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2012-02-29 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lost in modern myth, false history and general misinterpretation, the Ninja have been misrepresented for many years. More recently, a desire for a more historical view of the ninja has become a popular theme in the history/martial arts community and Antony Cummins is the primary driving force behind that movement. In Search of the Ninja is based upon the Historical Ninjutsu Research Team’s translations of the major ninja manuals and consists of genuinely new material. Little historical research has been done on the Ninja of Japan. Here for the first time the connection of the famous Hattori family warriors with the Ninja is explained. The Samurai versus Ninja myth is dispelled.The realities of Ninja skills are analysed. How did a Ninja work underwater when mining castle walls? How can a bird be used to set fire to the enemy’s camp? The book explores newly discovered connections to ancient Chinese manuals, lost skills and the ‘hidden’ Zen philosophy that the Ninja followed. In Search of the Ninja is the first and only historical look at the shinobi of ancient Japan.
Download or read book State of War written by Thomas Conlan and published by U of M Center for Japanese Studies. This book was released on 2003 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A path-breaking study of the transformative power of war and its profound influence on 14th-century Japan
Download or read book The Taming of the Samurai written by Eiko Ikegami and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1997-03-25 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern Japan offers us a view of a highly developed society with its own internal logic. Eiko Ikegami makes this logic accessible to us through a sweeping investigation into the roots of Japanese organizational structures. She accomplishes this by focusing on the diverse roles that the samurai have played in Japanese history. From their rise in ancient Japan, through their dominance as warrior lords in the medieval period, and their subsequent transformation to quasi-bureaucrats at the beginning of the Tokugawa era, the samurai held center stage in Japan until their abolishment after the opening up of Japan in the mid-nineteenth century. This book demonstrates how Japan’s so-called harmonious collective culture is paradoxically connected with a history of conflict. Ikegami contends that contemporary Japanese culture is based upon two remarkably complementary ingredients, honorable competition and honorable collaboration. The historical roots of this situation can be found in the process of state formation, along very different lines from that seen in Europe at around the same time. The solution that emerged out of the turbulent beginnings of the Tokugawa state was a transformation of the samurai into a hereditary class of vassal-bureaucrats, a solution that would have many unexpected ramifications for subsequent centuries. Ikegami’s approach, while sociological, draws on anthropological and historical methods to provide an answer to the question of how the Japanese managed to achieve modernity without traveling the route taken by Western countries. The result is a work of enormous depth and sensitivity that will facilitate a better understanding of, and appreciation for, Japanese society.
Download or read book A Book of Five Swords and a Scroll written by Stanford D. Carman and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2007-02 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Book of Five Swords and a Scroll, is about five Japanese swords that came to the United States after W.W.II and a Japanese hanging scroll of a 'Seated Samurai. The book is richly illustrated with over 110 photographs of these swords, map segments, and other associated materials. There are three original short stories centered around three of the swords. The book also contains sections regarding Medieval Japan, the Samurai, Japanese Sword Smiths, and Japanese Sword Care and Cleaning; Detail Technical Data of these swords is included, and there is a short biography of artist of the scroll. The chapter about the scroll, regards a person famous in 14th Century Japanese History. Two of these swords are over 450 years old. n addition there is a short biography of a unique US Marine that fought at Wake Island, Dec 8, 1941 - Dec 23, 1941 in WWII and taken as a Prisiner Of War by the Japanese. He spent a total of 1350 Days as a POW in Camps in China and Japan. This version of the book is in Color.
Download or read book Kissing the Mask written by William T. Vollmann and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the National Book Award-winning author of Europe Central, a charming, evocative and piercing examination of an ancient Japanese tradition and the keys it holds to our modern understanding of beauty What is a woman? To what extent is femininity a performance? Writing with the extra-ordinary awareness and endless curiosity that have defined his entire oeuvre, William T. Vollmann takes an in-depth look at the Japanese craft of Noh theater, using the medium as a prism to reveal the conception of beauty itself. Sweeping readers from the dressing room of one of Japan's most famous Noh actors to a trans-vestite bar in the red-light district of Kabukicho, Kissing the Mask explores the enigma surrounding Noh theater and the traditions that have made it intrinsic to Japanese culture for centuries. Vollmann then widens his scope to encompass such modern artists of desire and loss as Mishima, Kawabata and Andrew Wyeth. From old Norse poetry to Greek cult statues, from elite geisha dancers to American makeup artists, from Serbia to India, Vollmann uncovers secrets of staged femininity and mysteries of perceived and expressed beauty, including specific makeup procedures furnished by an L.A. transgender bar girl, a Kabuki female impersonator, and the owner of a semi-clandestine studio for Tokyo cross-dressers. Kissing the Mask is illustrated with many evocative sketches and photographs by the author.
Download or read book Samurai Warfare and the State in Early Medieval Japan written by Karl F. Friday and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Karl Friday, an internationally recognised authority on Japanese warriors, provides the first comprehensive study of the topic to be published in English. This work incorporates nearly twenty years of on-going research and draws on both new readings of primary sources and the most recent secondary scholarship. It overturns many of the stereotypes that have dominated views of the period. Friday analyzes Heian -, Kamakura- and Nambokucho-period warfare from five thematic angles. He examines the principles that justified armed conflict, the mechanisms used to raise and deploy armed forces, the weapons available to early medieval warriors, the means by which they obtained them, and the techniques and customs of battle. A thorough, accessible and informative review, this study highlights the complex casual relationships among the structures and sources of early medieval political power, technology, and the conduct of war.
Download or read book The Tales of the Heike written by Haruo Shirane and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally written in the mid-thirteenth century, The Tales of the Heike chronicles the epic Genpei war, a civil conflict that marked the end of the power of the Heike clan and changed the course of Japanese history. Featuring a vivid cast of characters, the book depicts the emerging world of the medieval samurai and recounts in absorbing detail the chaos of the battlefield, the intrigue of the imperial court, and the gradual loss of courtly tradition. This new, abridged translation presents the work's most gripping episodes and includes woodblock illustrations, a glossary of characters, and an extended bibliography.
Download or read book Warfare in Japan written by Harald Kleinschmidt and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-05-15 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Warfare in Japan from the fourth to the nineteenth century has caused much controversy among Western military and political historians. This volume assembles key articles written by specialists in the field on military organization, the social context of war, battle action, weapons and martial arts. The focus is on the transformation of patterns of warfare that arose from endogenous as well as exogenous factors.
