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Courtly Visions
Courtly Visions: The Ise Stories and the Politics of Cultural Appropriation traces—through the visual and literary record—the reception and use of the tenth-century literary romance through the seventeenth century. Ise monogatari (The Ise Stories) takes shape in a salon of politically disenfranchised courtiers, then transforms later in the Heian period (794-1185) into a key subtext for autobiographical writings by female aristocrats. In the twelfth century it is turned into an esoteric religious text, while in the fourteenth it is used as cultural capital in the struggles within the imperial household. Mostow further examines the development of the standardized iconographies of the Rinpa school and the printed Saga-bon edition, exploring what these tell us about how the Ise was being read and why. The study ends with an Epilogue that briefly surveys the uses Ise was put to throughout the Edo period and into the modern day.
Manuscripts and Archives
Archives are considered to be collections of administrative, legal, commercial and other records or the actual place where they are located. They have become ubiquitous in the modern world, but emerged not much later than the invention of writing. Following Foucault, who first used the word archive in a metaphorical sense as "the general system of the formation and transformation of statements" in his "Archaeology of Knowledge" (1969), postmodern theorists have tried to exploit the potential of this concept and initiated the "archival turn". In recent years, however, archives have attracted the attention of anthropologists and historians of different denominations regarding them as historical objects and "grounding" them again in real institutions. The papers in this volume explore the complex topic of the archive in a historical, systematic and comparative context and view it in the broader context of manuscript cultures by addressing questions like how, by whom and for which purpose were archival records produced, and if they differ from literary manuscripts regarding materials, formats, and producers (scribes).
A Cultural History of Late Meiji Japan
Scholarship on Japan’s development from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century has, perhaps quite understandably, been dominated by attention given to Japan’s emergence as a world power through a succession of military conflicts, and the burgeoning of a modern literary canon. This book argues that the emergence of empire and high culture needs to be more thoroughly integrated with an awareness of popular culture in urban life, a culture that at times exhibited a less than whole-hearted enthusiasm for the trappings of 'civilization', - a culture that was, in a sense, ‘decadent’. It integrates coverage of popular culture across diverse media and platforms, accentuat...
Japanese Singers of Tales: Ten Centuries of Performed Narrative
Alison McQueen Tokita presents a series of case studies that demonstrate the persistence of Japanese sung narratives in a multiplicity of genres over ten centuries, including the way they flourished and declined, together with factors contributing to development and change in narrative performance. Performed narratives are examples of a shared cultural heritage, which in the past have given people a sense of belonging to a community. Narratives that were continually re-told and recycled in different versions and formats over a long period of time served to build people's sense of a common identity over space (the geographical extent of 'Japan') and time (the enduring power of many specific n...
Italians in Africa and the Japanese in South East Asia
The comparison of early Italy’s and Japan’s colonialism is without precedence. The majority of studies on Italian and Japanese expansion refer to the 1930–1940s period (fascist/totalitarian era) when Japan annexed Manchuria (1931) and Italy Ethiopia (1936). The first formative and crucial steps that paved the way for this expansion have been neglected. This analysis covers a range of social, political and economic parameters illuminating the diversity but also the common ground of the nature and aspirations of Japan's and Italy's early colonial systems. The two states alongside the Great Powers of the era expanded in the name of humanism and civilization but in reality in a way typical...
The Sword Or the Needle
Focusing on narratives about female knights-errant (xia) along thematic lines in Chinese literacy history, this text provides an overview of the narrative subgenre, the literary representation of gender and the particularities of the Chinese knight-errantry narrative.
Contemporary Asian Modernities
This book is a collection of selected essays presented at the International Symposium on «Contemporary Asian Modernities: Transnationality, Interculturality and Hybridity» hosted by the Humanities Programme of Hong Kong Baptist University in September 2006. As «modernity» has been used to describe the cultural, economic and socio-political conditions in the Western worlds, the time in which we now live and the Asian countries where capitalistic transformation is extensively carried out are already articulating their own descriptions. The essays collected here discuss the notions of «contemporary», «Asia» and «modernities» as they relate to the global trend of adopting capitalism. They probe into questions related to modernity as well as global modernity, ranging from China in particular to Asia in general. As reflected in the pluriversal meanings in the title, the book endeavours to make critical inquiries into the concept of modernity/modernities from different perspectives.
Reopening the Opening of Japan
The 'Opening of Japan' has been central to the retelling of Japan's modern history. Reopening the Opening of Japan fundamentally reconsiders what that historical moment entailed. What did intensified connections between Japan and the world mean both inside and outside of the country, and what does this tell us about Japan's historical significance on a global scale? The chapters excavate a rich array of surprising cross-border connections, from the global trade in mummified mermaids to the Japanese-Russian intellectual links underpinning the work of Akira Kurosawa. Re-thinking connectivity through non-state transnational perspectives, the book guides readers to new ways of doing and writing history. Contributors are: Lewis Bremner, Natalia Doan, Manimporok Dotulong, Maki Fukuoka, Eiko Honda, Sho Konishi, Mateja Kovacic, Joel Littler, Chinami Oka, Yu Sakai, Olga Solovieva, and Warren Stanislaus.
Translating Chinese Classics in a Colonial Context
This work subjects James Legge's Confucian translations to a postcolonial perspective, with a view of uncovering the subtle workings of colonialist ideology in the seemingly innocent act of translation. The author uses the example of Legge's two versions of the 'Zhonguong' to illustrate two distinctive stages of his sinological scholarship.
Coins, Trade, and the State
Framed by the decline of the Heian aristocracy in the late 1100s and the rise of the Tokugawa shogunate in the early 1600s, Japan’s medieval era was a chaotic period of diffuse political power and frequent military strife. This instability prevented central authorities from regulating trade, issuing currency, enforcing contracts, or guaranteeing property rights. But the lack of a strong central government did not inhibit economic growth. Rather, it created opportunities for a wider spectrum of society to participate in trade, markets, and monetization. Peripheral elites—including merchants, warriors, rural estate managers, and religious leaders—devised new ways to circumvent older form...
