You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Investigating more than 70 key concepts relating to the performing arts in more than six non-European languages, this volume provides a groundbreaking research tool and one-of-a-kind reference source for theatre, performance and dance studies worldwide. The Companion features in-depth explorations of and expert introductions to a select number of performance-related key concepts in Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Yorùbá as well as the Indian languages Sanskrit, Hindi and Tamil. Key concepts—such as Furǧa فرجة in Arabic, for example, or Jiadingxing 假定性 in Chinese, Gei 芸 in Japanese, Ìparadà in Yorùbá and Imyeon 이면 in Korean—that defy easy translation from one lan...
Bringing together scholars from across the world, Haruo Shirane presents a fascinating portrait of The Tale of Genji's reception and reproduction over the past thousand years. The essays examine the canonization of the work from the late Heian through the medieval, Edo, Meiji, Taisho, Showa, and Heisei periods, revealing its profound influence on a variety of genres and fields, including modern nation building. They also consider parody, pastiche, and re-creation of the text in various popular and mass media. Since the Genji was written by a woman for female readers, contributors also take up the issue of gender and cultural authority, looking at the novel's function as a symbol of Heian court culture and as an important tool in women's education. Throughout the volume, scholars discuss achievements in visualization, from screen painting and woodblock prints to manga and anime. Taking up such recurrent themes as cultural nostalgia, eroticism, and gender, this book is the most comprehensive history of the reception of The Tale of Genji to date, both in the country of its origin and throughout the world.
None
Written by one of the leading scholars of Japanese religion, Protectors and Predators is the second installment of a multivolume project that promises to be a milestone in our understanding of the mythico-ritual system of esoteric Buddhism—specifically the nature and roles of deities in the religious world of medieval Japan and beyond. Bernard Faure introduces readers to medieval Japanese religiosity and shows the centrality of the gods in religious discourse and ritual. Throughout he engages theoretical insights drawn from structuralism, post-structuralism, and Actor-Network Theory to retrieve the “implicit pantheon” (as opposed to the “explicit orthodox pantheon”) of esoteric Jap...
Flowers are beautiful. People often communicate their love, sorrow, and other feelings to each other by offering flowers, like roses. Flowers can also be symbols of collective identity, as cherry blossoms are for the Japanese. But, are they also deceptive? Do people become aware when their meaning changes, perhaps as flowers are deployed by the state and dictators? Did people recognize that the roses they offered to Stalin and Hitler became a propaganda tool? Or were they like the Japanese, who, including the soldiers, did not realize when the state told them to fall like cherry blossoms, it meant their deaths? Flowers That Kill proposes an entirely new theoretical understanding of the role ...
“Farther on, I find other figures of Jizo, single reliefs, sculptured upon tombs. But one of these is a work of art so charming that I feel a pain at being obliged to pass it by. More sweet, assuredly, than any imaged Christ, this dream in white stone of the playfellow of dead children, like a beautiful young boy, with gracious eyelids half closed, and face made heavenly by such a smile as only Buddhist art could have imagined, the smile of infinite lovingness and supremest gentleness. Indeed, so charming the ideal of Jizo is that in the speech of the people a beautiful face is always likened to his—‘Jizo-kao,’ as the face of Jizo.” —Lafcadio Hearn, Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japa...
In medieval Japan (14th–16th centuries), it was customary for elite families to entrust their young sons to the care of renowned Buddhist priests from whom they received a premier education in Buddhist scriptures, poetry, music, and dance. When the boys reached adolescence, some underwent coming-of-age rites, others entered the priesthood, and several extended their education, becoming chigo, or Buddhist acolytes. Chigo served their masters as personal attendants and as sexual partners. During religious ceremonies—adorned in colorful robes, their faces made up and hair styled in long ponytails—they entertained local donors and pilgrims with music and dance. Stories of acolytes (chigo m...
Traditional Japanese Literature features a rich array of works dating from the very beginnings of the Japanese written language through the noted age of aristocratic court life into the period of warrior culture. The anthology contains new translations of such canonical texts as The Tales of the Heike and generous selections from Man'yoshu, The Tale of Genji, The Pillow Book, and Kokinshu. It includes a stunning range of folk literature, war epics, poetry, and n? drama, and an impressive collection of dramatic, poetic, and fictional works from both elite and popular cultures. Also represented are religious and secular anecdotes, literary criticism, essays, and works written in Chinese by Japanese writers. Arranged by chronology and genre, the readings are carefully introduced and placed into a larger political, cultural, and literary context, and the extensive bibliographies offer further study. Intended as a companion to Columbia University Press's Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600-1900, Traditional Japanese Literature significantly deepens our understanding of Japanese literature as well as of ancient, classical, and medieval Japanese culture.
This book combines sociological insights in organizations with cultural history.
After The Tale of Genji (c. 1000), the greatest work of classical Japanese literature is the historical narrative The Tale of the Heike (13th-14th centuries). In addition to opening up fresh perspectives on the Heike narratives, this study also draws attention to a range of problems centered on the interrelationship between narrative, ritual space, and Japan's changing views of China as they bear on depictions of the emperor's authority, warriors, and marginal population going all the way back to the Nara period. By situating the Heike in this long temporal framework, the author sheds light on a hidden history of royal authority that was entangled in Daoist and yin-yang ideas in the Nara period, practices centered on defilement in the Heian period, and Buddhist doctrines pertaining to original enlightenment in the medieval period, all of which resurface and combine in Heike's narrative world. In introducing for the first time the full range of Heike narrative to students and scholars of Japanese literature, the author argues that we must also reexamine our understanding of the literature, ritual, and culture of the Heian and Nara periods.