Download or read book The Road to Komatsubara written by Steven D. Carter and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-05-11 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Carter attempts to reconstruct the "classical" reading of renga (linked verse) using extant rulebooks from the time, approximating in every way possible the manner in which it was read in its own time and place. The result is a rare glimpse into the literary conssciousness of the medieval Japanese that seems paradoxically modern in its insistence on the final indeterminancy of poetic meaning.Includes a full translation of the 1501 rulebook along with an annotated translation of a solo renga sequence composed in 1492 by Shōhaku's teacher and mentor, Sōgi.
Download or read book The Road to Komatsubara written by Steven D. Carter and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1987 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Conversations with Shotetsu written by Robert Brower and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2020-08-06 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shōtetsu monogatari was written by a disciple of Shōtetsu (1381–1459), whom many scholars regard as the last great poet of the courtly tradition. The work provides information about the practice of poetry during the 14th and 15th centuries, including anecdotes about famous poets, advice on how to treat certain standard topics, and lessons in etiquette when attending or participating in poetry contests and gatherings. But unlike the many other works of that time that stop at that level, Shōtetsu’s contributions to medieval aesthetics gained prominence, showing him as a worthy heir—both as poet and thinker—to the legacy of the great poet-critic Fujiwara no Teika (1162–1241). The last project of the late Robert H. Brower, Conversations with Shôtetsu provides a translation of the complete Nihon koten bungaku taikei text, as edited by Hisamatsu Sen'ichi. Steven D. Carter has annotated the translation and provided an introduction that details Shôtetsu’s life, his place in the poetic circles of his day, and the relationship of his work to the larger poetic tradition of medieval Japan. Conversations with Shōtetsu is important reading for anyone interested in medieval Japanese literature and culture, in poetry, and in aesthetics. It provides a unique look at the literary world of late medieval Japan.
Download or read book Tales of Heich written by Susan Downing Videen and published by Harvard Univ Asia Center. This book was released on 1989 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book War and National Reinvention written by Frederick R. Dickinson and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-23 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For Japan, as one of the victorious allies, World War I meant territorial gains in China and the Pacific. At the end of the war, however, Japan discovered that in modeling itself on imperial Germany since the nineteenth century, it had perhaps been imitating the wrong national example. Japanese policy debates during World War I, particularly the clash between proponents of greater democratization and those who argued for military expansion, thus became part of the ongoing discussion of national identity among Japanese elites. This study links two sets of concerns—the focus of recent studies of the nation on language, culture, education, and race; and the emphasis of diplomatic history on international developments—to show how political, diplomatic, and cultural concerns work together to shape national identity.
Download or read book Shogunal Politics written by Kate Wildman Nakai and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arai Hakuseki, advisor to the sixth and seventh Tokugawa shogun, played an important role in Japanese politics between 1709 and 1716, during an era of large changes in the bakufu. He participated in major policy decisions on currency, foreign trade, and local administration, while simultaneously trying to enhance the shogun's authority both within the bakufu and as a national ruler. The following shogun retained Hakuseki's fiscal and trade policies, but promptly reversed those measures designed to make the shogun a king-like figure. Nakai examines these successes and failures against the background of the time, especially the bifurcated and ambiguous distribution of authority between the Tokugawa shogun and the tenno in Kyoto. She also traces the influence of Confucian political theory on Hakuseki's program and on his defense of that program in the face of criticism. Nakai draws upon Hakuseki's autobiography and diary and the reportorial letters of a contemporary for Hakuseki's political activities, and on Hakuseki's historical works and memorials for the theoretical basis for his programs, rooted in Confucianism. llustrative and lively translations from Hakuseki enrich the book, helping to portray a multi-faceted personality who managed to blend practical politics and Confucian idealism within the complicated and dynamic environment of the early-eighteenth-century bakufu.
Download or read book Reading North Korea written by Sonia Ryang and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-04-06 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Often depicted as one of the world’s most strictly isolationist and relentlessly authoritarian regimes, North Korea has remained terra incognita to foreign researchers as a site for anthropological fieldwork. Given the difficulty of gaining access to the country and its people, is it possible to examine the cultural logic and social dynamics of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea?In this innovative book, Sonia Ryang casts new light onto the study of North Korean culture and society by reading literary texts as sources of ethnographic data. Analyzing and interpreting the rituals and language embodied in a range of literary works published in the 1970s and 1980s, Ryang focuses critical attention on three central themes—love, war, and self—that reflect the nearly complete overlap of the personal, social, and political realms in North Korean society. The ideology embedded in these propagandistic works laid the cultural foundation for the nation as a “perpetual ritual state,” where social structures and personal relations are suspended in tribute to Kim Il Sung, the political and spiritual leader who died in 1994 but lives eternally in the hearts of his people and still weaves the social fabric of present-day North Korea."
Download or read book Useless to the State written by Zwia Lipkin and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In 1911, Joseph Bailie, a professor at Nanjing University, often took his Chinese students to tour Nanjing’s shantytowns. One student, the son of a district magistrate, followed Bailie from hut to hut one rainy day, and was grateful that Bailie opened his eyes to the poverty in his own city. However, twenty years later, when M. R. Schafer, another Nanjing University professor, showed his students a film that included his own photographs of the poor quarters of Nanjing, his students were so upset that they demanded his expulsion from China. Zwia Lipkin explores the reasons for these starkly different reactions. Nanjing in the 1910s was a quiet city compared to 1930s Nanjing, which was by that time the national capital. Nanjing had become a symbol of national authority, aiming not only to become a model of modernization for the rest of China, but also to surpass Paris, London, and Washington. Underlying all of Nanjing’s policies was a concern for the capital’s image and looks—offensive people were allowed to exist as long as they remained invisible. Lipkin exposes both the process of social engineering and the ways in which the suppressed reacted to their abuse. Like Professor Schafer’s movie, this book puts the poor at the center of the picture, defying efforts to make them invisible."
Download or read book Desire and Fictional Narrative in Late Imperial China written by Martin W. Huang and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-23 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this new study of desire in Late Imperial China, Martin Huang argues that the development of traditional Chinese fiction as a narrative genre was closely related to changes in conceptions of the fundamental nature of desire. He further suggests that the rise of vernacular fiction during the late Ming dynasty should be studied in the context of contemporary debates on desire, along with the new and complex views that emerged from those debates.Desire and Fictional Narrative in Late Imperial China shows that the obsession of authors with individual desire is an essential quality that defines traditional Chinese fiction as a narrative genre. Thus the maturation of the genre can best be appreciated in terms of its increasingly sophisticated exploration of the phenomenon of desire."
Download or read book The Making of Japanese Manchuria 1904 1932 written by Yoshihisa Tak Matsusaka and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-23 with total page 550 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this history of Japanese involvement in northeast China, the author argues that Japan’s military seizure of Manchuria in September 1931 was founded on three decades of infiltration of the area. This incremental empire-building and its effect on Japan are the focuses of this book. The principal agency in the piecemeal growth of Japanese colonization was the South Manchurian Railway Company, and by the mid-1920s Japan had a deeply entrenched presence in Manchuria and exercised a dominant economic and political influence over the area. Japanese colonial expansion in Manchuria also loomed large in Japanese politics, military policy, economic development, and foreign relations and deeply influenced many aspects of Japan’s interwar history."
Download or read book On Sacred Grounds written by Thomas A. Wilson and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-23 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The sacred landscape of imperial China was dotted with Buddhist monasteries, Daoist temples, shrines to local deities, and the altars of the mandarinate. Prominent among the official shrines were the temples in every capital throughout the empire devoted to the veneration of Confucius. Twice a year members of the educated elite and officials in each area gathered to offer sacrifices to Confucius, his disciples, and the major scholars of the Confucian tradition. The worship of Confucius is one of the least understood aspects of Confucianism, even though the temple and the cult were highly visible signs of Confucianism’s existence in imperial China. To many modern observers of traditional China, the temple cult is difficult to reconcile with the image of Confucianism as an ethical, humanistic, rational philosophy. The nine essays in this book are an attempt to recover the meaning and significance of the religious side of Confucianism. Among other subjects, the authors analyze the social, cultural, and political meaning attached to the cult; its history; the legends, images, and rituals associated with the worship of Confucius; the power of the descendants of Confucius, the main temple in the birthplace of Confucius; and the contemporary fate of temples to Confucius."
Download or read book Zhou Zuoren and an Alternative Chinese Response to Modernity written by Susan Daruvala and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-23 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book explores the issues of nation and modernity in China by focusing on the work of Zhou Zuoren (1885-1967), one of the most controversial of modern Chinese intellectuals and brother of the writer Lu Xun. Zhou was radically at odds with many of his contemporaries and opposed their nation-building and modernization projects. Through his literary and aesthetic practice as an essayist, Zhou espoused a way of constructing the individual and affirming the individual’s importance in opposition to the normative national subject of most May Fourth reformers. Zhou’s work presents an alternative vision of the nation and questions the monolithic claims of modernity by promoting traditional aesthetic categories, the locality rather than the nation, and a literary history that values openness and individualism."
Download or read book The Secret Window written by Anthony Hood Chambers and published by Harvard Univ Asia Center. This book was released on 1994 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this series of meditations on seven of Tanizaki Jun'ichiro's novels and novellas, Chambers focuses on the thread of fantasy that Tanizaki weaves throughout his work. He examines Tanizaki's subtle use of storytelling devices to evoke his characters' alternate sense of reality and to encourage the reader's participation in their fantasies.
Download or read book The Making of Shinkokinsh written by Robert N. Huey and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-23 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This study of the Japanese imperial court in the early thirteenth century focuses on the compilation of one of Japan’s most important poetry collections, Shinkokinshū. Using personal diaries, court records, poetry texts, and literary treatises, Robert N. Huey reconstructs the process by which Retired Emperor Go-Toba brought together contending factions to produce this collection and laid the groundwork for his later attempt at imperial restoration. The work analyzes how poetic discourse of the imperial court animated both other kinds of writing and other activities. Finally, it underscores the inextricable ties between the writing of poetry and court politics. Shinkokinshū—the “New Kokinshu”—has been viewed as a neo-classical effort. Reading history backward, scholars have often taken the work to be the outgrowth of a nostalgia for greatness presumed to have been lost in the wars of the origins of the collection. The author argues that the compilers of Shinkokinshū instead saw it as a “new” beginning, a revitalization and affirmation of courtly traditions, and not a reaction to loss. It is a dynamic collection, full of innovative, challenging poetry—not an elegy for a lost age."
Download or read book Constructing Korean Origins written by Hyung Il Pai and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-23 with total page 589 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this wide-ranging study, Hyung Il Pai examines how archaeological finds from throughout Northeast Asia have been used in Korea to construct a myth of state formation. This myth emphasizes the ancient development of a pure Korean race that created a civilization rivaling those of China and Japan and a unified state controlling a wide area in Asia. Through a new analysis of the archaeological data, Pai shows that the Korean state was in fact formed much later and that it reflected diverse influences from throughout Northern Asia, particularly the material culture of Han China.
Download or read book Re examining the Cold War written by Robert S. Ross and published by Harvard Univ Asia Center. This book was released on 2001 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twelve essays in this volume underscore the similarities between Chinese and American approaches to bilateral diplomacy and between their perceptions of each other's policy-making motivations. Much of the literature on U.S.-China relations posits that each side was motivated either by ideologically informed interests or by ideological assumptions about its counterpart. But as these contributors emphasize, newly accessible archives suggest rather that both Beijing and Washington developed a responsive and tactically adaptable foreign policy. Each then adjusted this policy in response to changing international circumstances and changing assessments of its counterpart's policies. Motivated less by ideology than by pragmatic national security concerns, each assumed that the other faced similar considerations.
Download or read book Gender Struggles written by Christopher Gerteis and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- Women and Unions in Occupied Japan -- The Erotic and the Vulgar -- Wage Struggles and Struggle Politics -- Teachers and Coal Wives -- Family Unions -- Federation Wives -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index -- Harvard East Asian Monographs.
