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Before the twentieth century, Japanese religious and cultural life was shaped by a variety of yearly ceremonies, festivals, and customs. These annual events (nenju gyoji) included Shinto festivals in which participants danced through the night to boisterous music and Buddhist temple practices that honored deities, great priests, or temple founders with solemn rituals and prayers--and sometimes, when the Buddha was invoked, raucous dancing. Temples also hosted popular fairs, where holy objects and artwork were displayed to the faithful and curious. Countless other celebrations were held annually at the residences of the nobility and military elite and at commoner domiciles. Kyoto, the imperial--and cultural--capital since the eighth century, was the center of many of these events. From Kyoto festivals, rituals, and celebrations diffused to other parts of the land, ultimately shaping religious, artistic, and everyday life as a whole. By the seventeenth century the Kyoto public wished to inform itself more accurately about nenju gyoji and their dates and meanings. As a result, a growing number of guidebooks and almanacs were written and published for the urban populace. This volume is the first to present translations of two such publications. Introductory chapters explain Japanese conceptions of time and space within which annual celebrations took place and outline how ceremonies and festivals in and about Kyoto were chronicled, described, and interpreted from the earliest times to the seventeenth century. The final two chapters offer annotated translations of writings from the seventeenth century that catalogue and describe the dates, sites, meanings, and histories of many Kyoto annual events. The two works, one largely historical, the other more ethnographic in nature, indicate not only when and where observances and commemorations took place, but also how their authors understood the significance of each. Both translations feature a large number of illustrations depicting events as they appeared in Kyoto at the time.
Before the twentieth century, Japanese religious and cultural life was shaped by a variety of yearly ceremonies, festivals, and customs. These annual events (nenju gyoji) included Shinto festivals in which participants danced through the night to boisterous music and Buddhist temple practices that honored deities, great priests, or temple founders with solemn rituals and prayers—and sometimes, when the Buddha was invoked, raucous dancing. Temples also hosted popular fairs, where holy objects and artwork were displayed to the faithful and curious. Countless other celebrations were held annually at the residences of the nobility and military elite and at commoner domiciles. Kyoto, the imperial—and cultural—capital since the eighth century, was the center of many of these events. From Kyoto festivals, rituals, and celebrations diffused to other parts of the land, ultimately shaping religious, artistic, and everyday life as a whole. By the seventeenth century the Kyoto public wished to inform itself more accurately about nenju gyoji and their dates and meanings. As a result, a growing number of guidebooks and almanacs were written and published for the urban populace. This volume is the first to present translations of two such publications. Introductory chapters explain Japanese conceptions of time and space within which annual celebrations took place and outline how ceremonies and festivals in and about Kyoto were chronicled, described, and interpreted from the earliest times to the seventeenth century. The final two chapters offer annotated translations of writings from the seventeenth century that catalogue and describe the dates, sites, meanings, and histories of many Kyoto annual events. The two works, one largely historical, the other more ethnographic in nature, indicate not only when and where observances and commemorations took place, but also how their authors understood the significance of each. Both translations feature a large number of illustrations depicting events as they appeared in Kyoto at the time.
The Cambridge History of Japanese Literature provides, for the first time, a history of Japanese literature with comprehensive coverage of the premodern and modern eras in a single volume. The book is arranged topically in a series of short, accessible chapters for easy access and reference, giving insight into both canonical texts and many lesser known, popular genres, from centuries-old folk literature to the detective fiction of modern times. The various period introductions provide an overview of recurrent issues that span many decades, if not centuries. The book also places Japanese literature in a wider East Asian tradition of Sinitic writing and provides comprehensive coverage of women's literature as well as new popular literary forms, including manga (comic books). An extensive bibliography of works in English enables readers to continue to explore this rich tradition through translations and secondary reading.
Faith and Power in Japanese Buddhist Art explores the transformation of Buddhism from the premodern to the contemporary era in Japan and the central role its visual culture has played in this transformation. Although Buddhism is generally regarded as peripheral to modern Japanese society, this book demonstrates otherwise. Its chapters elucidate the thread of change over time in the practice of Buddhism as revealed in temple worship halls and other sites of devotion and in imagery representing the religion’s most popular deities and religious practices. It also introduces the work of modern and contemporary artists who are not generally associated with institutional Buddhism and its canonical visual requirements but whose faith inspires their art. The author makes a persuasive argument that the neglect of these materials by scholars results from erroneous presumptions about the aesthetic superiority of early Japanese Buddhist artifacts and an asserted decline in the institutional power of the religion after the sixteenth century. She demonstrates that recent works constitute a significant contribution to the history of Japanese art and architecture, providing evidence of Buddhism’s compelling presence at all levels of Japanese society and its evolution in response to the needs of new generations of supporters.
The finest history of pottery available, this book offers an inspirational journey through one of the oldest and most widespread of human activities.
Today we think of ukiyo-e—“the pictures of the floating world”—as masterpieces of Japanese art, highly prized throughout the world. Yet it is often said that ukiyo-e were little appreciated in their own time and were even used as packing material for ceramics. In Picturing the Floating World, Julie Nelson Davis debunks this myth and demonstrates that ukiyo-e was thoroughly appreciated as a field of artistic production, worthy of connoisseurship and canonization by its contemporaries. Putting these images back into their dynamic context, she shows how consumers, critics, and makers produced and sold, appraised and collected, and described and recorded ukiyo-e. She recovers this multilayered world of pictures in which some were made for a commercial market, backed by savvy entrepreneurs looking for new ways to make a profit, while others were produced for private coteries and high-ranking connoisseurs seeking to enrich their cultural capital. The book opens with an analysis of period documents to establish the terms of appraisal brought to ukiyo-e in late eighteenth-century Japan, mapping the evolution of the genre from a century earlier and the development of its typologies and the creation of a canon of makers—both of which have defined the field ever since. Organized around divisions of major technological and aesthetic developments, the book reveals how artistic practice and commercial enterprise were intertwined throughout ukiyo-e’s history, from its earliest imagery through the twentieth century. The depiction of particular subjects in and for the floating world of urban Edo and the process of negotiating this within the larger field of publishing are examined to further ground ukiyo-e as material culture, as commodities in a mercantile economy. Picturing the Floating World offers a new approach: a critical yet accessible analysis of the genre as it was developed in its social, cultural, and political milieu. The book introduces students, collectors, and enthusiasts to ukiyo-e as a genre under construction in its own time while contributing to our understanding of early modern visual production.
This book focuses on the long history of what is arguably the most prestigious and influential festival in Japan – Kyoto's Gion festival. It explores this history from the festival's origins in the late 10th century to its post-war revival, drawing on Japanese historical studies and archival materials as well as the author's participant observation fieldwork. Exploring the social and political networks that have kept this festival alive for over a millennium, this book reveals how it has endured multiple reinventions. In particular, it identifies how at each historical juncture, different groups have found new purposes for the festival and adapted this costly enterprise to suit their own ends. The history of this festival not only sheds light on the development of Japanese festival culture as a whole, but also offers a window on Kyoto's history and provides a testing ground for recent festival theory.
This is an updated edition of Conrad Totman's authoritative history of Japan from c.8000 BC to the present day. The first edition was widely praised for combining sophistication and accessibility. Covers a wide range of subjects, including geology, climate, agriculture, government and politics, culture, literature, media, foreign relations, imperialism, and industrialism. Updated to include an epilogue on Japan today and tomorrow. Now includes more on women in history and more on international relations. Bibliographical listings have been updated and enlarged. Part of The Blackwell History of the World Series The goal of this ambitious series is to provide an accessible source of knowledge about the entire human past, for every curious person in every part of the world. It will comprise some two dozen volumes, of which some provide synoptic views of the history of particular regions while others consider the world as a whole during a particular period of time. The volumes are narrative in form, giving balanced attention to social and cultural history (in the broadest sense) as well as to institutional development and political change. Each provides a systematic account of a very large subject, but they are also both imaginative and interpretative. The Series is intended to be accessible to the widest possible readership, and the accessibility of its volumes is matched by the style of presentation and production.
Magnificent art and architecture created for the emperor with the financial support of powerful warlords at the beginning of Japan’s early modern era (1580s-1680s) testify to the continued cultural and ideological significance of the imperial family. Works created in this context are discussed in this groundbreaking study, with over 100 illustrations in color.