Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture最新文献

{"title":"The Space and Liminality of Folding Screens: Iconography of the Sea and Pine Trees","authors":"Reeves","doi":"10.7221/sjlc01.063.0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7221/sjlc01.063.0","url":null,"abstract":"Folding screens, as their Sinitic name, byōbu 屛風, implies, serve to block out (byō) undesired drafts (bu). Furthermore, these screens serve as practical portable partitions for separating larger spaces into smaller compartments. Historical documents strongly suggest that, aside from these more obviously pragmatic functions, folding screens were also employed for ceremonial purposes in various annual events and other ritual spaces. Unlike more permanent partitions, such as sliding doors decorated with painted images (fusuma 襖), folding screens could be stored away, taken out, and moved about as necessity required. Consequently, it is often difficult to say with much precision exactly where a given folding screen might once have been used. Moreover, while documents from the Heian period include numerous references to folding screens, evidence that such furnishings were indeed abundant, only one folding screen from the period has survived to the present, namely, the byōbu depicting a landscape scene (Senzui byōbu 山水屛風) preserved at Tōji Temple 東寺. With such a dearth of extant examples, it is no easy task to reconstruct the world of artistic imagery once seen on folding screens throughout the Heian period. Comprehensive research into those spaces in which folding screens were employed has already been carried out. Investigations of so-called “paintingswithin-paintings” (gachūga 画中画), depictions of painted folding screens embedded within illustrations found in illustrated scrolls (emaki 絵巻), have revealed a great deal about such spaces.1 For example, in the Hōnen Shōnin eden 法然上人絵 The Space and Liminality of Folding Screens: Iconography of the Sea and Pine Trees","PeriodicalId":197397,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128677929","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Persons, Monks, Children, and Non-Persons","authors":"","doi":"10.7221/sjlc01.089.0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7221/sjlc01.089.0","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":197397,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132326102","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Japanese Commentary History of Jianghu fengyue ji","authors":"Takashi","doi":"10.7221/sjlc04.079.0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7221/sjlc04.079.0","url":null,"abstract":"The poetic anthology Jianghu fengyue ji 江湖風月集 (Jp. Gōko fūgetsu shū) is a collection of jisong 偈頌 (Jp. geju) verses—a genre of Sinophone Buddhist lyric—by Chan monks of the Southern Song period. Credited to the compilation of Songpo Zongqi 松坡宗憩, also of the Southern Song, in its current form the text contains a total of 270 verses, all of them conforming to the heptasyllabic jueju 絶句 (Jp. zekku) meter. The title is intended symbolically. Thus the word jianghu 江湖 (Jp. gōko), beyond its literal meaning of “river” and “lake,” betokens the physical world as a whole, particularly in its function as setting for the practices of Chan monasticism. Likewise fengyue 風月 (Jp. fūgetsu) signifies not merely “wind” and “moon,” but rather in its fullness the larger world sketched by poetic conception. As such, the anthology’s name might be rendered alternatively as “Collection of [ jisong] verses in which Chan monks express the heights of Chan thought by using the borrowed forms of poetry.” This anthology belongs to that category of works which, lost in China itself, survived only in Japan. First printed in Japan in Karyaku 嘉暦 3 (1328) by the emigrant Chinese monk Qingzhuo Zhengcheng 清拙正澄 (1274–1339; Jp. Seisetsu Shōchō), no copy of this earlier edition survives, the oldest extant text being a printing of the Nanbokuchō period (1336–1392).1 Later in the Muromachi period the text came to be widely read, not only in the Gozan temples as before, but also outside the Gozan system in Rinzai-school 臨済宗 temples attached to the Daitoku-ji 大徳寺 and Myōshin-ji 妙心寺 lines, indeed even in temples of the rival Sōtō School 曹洞宗. Such an environment led Japanese Zen monks to produce a number of commentaries on the work. A Japanese Commentary History of Jianghu fengyue ji : From Medieval to Early-Modern","PeriodicalId":197397,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128928915","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Variations on yatsushi in the ukiyo-zōshi genre","authors":"Takahashi","doi":"10.7221/sjlc04.045.0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7221/sjlc04.045.0","url":null,"abstract":"The word yatsushi is a nominalization of the ren’yōkei 連用形 of the transitive verb yatsusu (a separate nominalization yatsure exists for the intransitive counterpart in yatsuru). As the dictionaries indicate, the word’s original meaning is “being reduced to a ragged state.” And in early modern-period novels (ukiyo-zōshi 浮世草子) and theatrical works (jōruri 浄瑠璃, kabuki 歌舞伎), where we find many portrayals of the stylishly paper-suited hero, penniless from his overspending, perhaps on some courtesan (tayū 太夫), the performance of such a role was indeed termed yatsushi-gei やつし芸 (“the art of the yatsushi figure”). Beyond this, yatsushi has been seen as connected to the exiled prince narrative passed down through the course of Japanese cultural history (Takahashi Noriko 高橋則子),2 or even as the expression of a world-wide, and perhaps universal, human longing for metamorphosis (Shinohara Susumu 篠原進).3 Protagonists might lose their wealth through excess frequentation of the pleasure quarters, come down in the world, present a wretched appearance, and wallow in the most abject behavior, yet precisely this pathetic end was the state that literature desired. The stylish hero was always destined to turn out that way. Credit for the first notable yatsushi work among ukiyo-zōshi must go to Nishizawa Variations on yatsushi in the ukiyo-zōshi genre: Expansion of the Classical World and Transworld Identification1","PeriodicalId":197397,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127110738","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Tsukumogami emaki and Urban Spaces","authors":"","doi":"10.7221/sjlc04.147.0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7221/sjlc04.147.0","url":null,"abstract":"T sukumogami emaki 付喪神絵巻 (Illustrated Scroll of Animated Utensils, 16th century) is a short tale featuring as its protagonists a band of used utensils who have turned into monsters ( yōkai 妖怪). This work belongs to a genre of such tales composed between the 14th and 16th centuries, known as otogi-zōshi 御伽草子, or Muromachi tales. More than four hundred of these Muromachi tales exist, a great number of which are accompanied by vivid illustrations. Some have been preserved in the form of books, others in the form of scrolls. In most cases, the author and illustrator, along with the exact date of composition remain uncertain. The author of Tsukumogami emaki, likewise, is yet unknown. In previous research, however, it has been argued that the work shows connections with the illustrated scroll Hyakki yagyō emaki 百鬼夜行絵巻 (Illustrated Scroll of the Parade of Ghouls and Ghosts by Night), as well as with religious ceremonies, such as the Gion Festival 祇園祭, conducted in Kyoto. One of the illustrations in this work contains a quote from another illustrated scroll, namely, Kōbō daishi gyōjō emaki 弘法大師行状絵巻 (Illustrated Scroll of the Deeds of Master Kōbō, late 14th century), which points perhaps to the author’s interest in Master Kōbō, that is, Kūkai 空海 (774–835), a prominent monk and founder of Shingon 真言, a school of Esoteric Buddhism. Aside from its possible affinity with Buddhism, this illustrated scroll provides important insights into details relating to the convergence and transmission of knowledge, as well as ways in which urban spaces, especially city borders, were once conceived. The oldest extant manuscript of this scroll, dating back to the Muromachi period, was previously stored in Tō-ji 東寺 temple, Kyoto, and is currently stored in Sōfuku-ji 崇福寺 temple, Gifu. There exist also a number of Edo-period imitations which, despite minor differences in the illustrations, contain more-or-less the same content as the Muromachi manuscript. Regarding content, a summary of this tale is naturally in order: Sometime in the Kōhō 康保 era (964–968), during the year-end spring cleaning, a number of old utensils are ungratefully discarded. In virtue of their intense sense of indignation, these disgruntled utensils become animated, bent on getting revenge on their human owners. An animated rosary by the name of Ichiren 一連 (literally, “one string,” in reference to the string of beads that makes up a rosary) pleads Tsukumogami emaki and Urban Spaces","PeriodicalId":197397,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133154342","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Naturalizing Li Shizhen’s Bencao gangmu in Early-modern Japan","authors":"Annick Horiuchi","doi":"10.7221/SJLC04.0123.0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7221/SJLC04.0123.0","url":null,"abstract":"It is widely recognized by historians of natural history that Li Shizhen’s 李時珍 (1518–1593) Bencao gangmu 本草綱目(Classified Materia Medica) played a major role in the development of honzō studies (or honzōgaku) in early modern Japan. This landmark opus in the history of the Chinese bencao tradition was printed for the first time in 1596 in China and was frequently reissued up until the early 20th century.1 In Japan, Li Shizhen’s work was imported shortly after its publication in China, and as early as the 1630s, Japanese reprints of the book appeared with diacritic signs assisting its reading.2 The book aroused the curiosity of a wide range of intellectuals, especially physicians and Confucian scholars. It was first and foremost regarded as a reference book for identifying natural substances and assigning correct names because of the vast erudition on which it was based. Its systematic and orderly character appeared also as a model to be followed. The book was also highly valued for the information it provided on the various uses—especially therapeutic—of the Naturalizing Li Shizhen’s Bencao gangmu in Early-modern Japan: The Cases of Honchō shokkan, Yamato honzō, and Wakan sansai zue","PeriodicalId":197397,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129909634","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Kyokutei Bakin’s Philological Research and the Writing of Historical Narrative","authors":"Mollard","doi":"10.7221/sjlc04.019.0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7221/sjlc04.019.0","url":null,"abstract":"Chinsetsu yumiharizuki 椿説弓張月(The Marvelous Story of the Drawn-Bow Moon, 1807–1811) enjoys a long-lasting popularity among Kyokutei Bakin’s 曲亭馬琴 (1767–1848) readership and has also been the subject of numerous scholarly studies and commentaries. Among these, Gotō Tanji’s 後藤丹治 edition, published in 1958 and 1962, laid the foundation for contemporary source criticism.1 Since then the identification of hypotexts has been considerably expanded and refined, ranging from Cui Xianglan’s 崔香蘭 excavation of new Chinese sources to Miyake Hiroyuki’s 三宅宏幸 focus on Edo-period editions of medieval sources—to name only two recent examples.2 But as Glynne Walley has pointed out in his review of the scholarship on Nansō Satomi hakkenden 南総里見八犬伝 (The Lives of the Eight Dogs of the Nansō Satomi, 1814–1842), locating sources is an endless and sometimes sterile task, because it does not always answer the hows and whys.3 Why was a source selected in the first place? How was it adapted, and for what purpose? This process of adaptation or transposition has often been understood within the framework of the sekai/shukō aesthetic derived from the dramatic arts.4 In kabuki 歌舞伎 or jōruri Kyokutei Bakin’s Philological Research and the Writing of Historical Narrative: Study of the Izu Islands in the Marvelous Story of the Drawn-Bow Moon","PeriodicalId":197397,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132570574","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Genealogy of Saikaku’s ukiyo-zōshi","authors":"Daniel","doi":"10.7221/sjlc04.001.0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7221/sjlc04.001.0","url":null,"abstract":"In an article published in 2014 in Bungaku 文学,1 Nakano Mitsutoshi 中野三敏 repeated his previous call for an extension of the term gesaku 戯作, or “comical writings”—used to describe most vernacular prose from the middle of the 18th century onward—to those prose works of Ihara Saikaku 井原西鶴 (1642–1693) known collectively as ukiyo-zōshi 浮世草子, and even to the literary works of the early 17th century known as kana-zōshi 仮名草子. This article, presented the same year at the spring session of the Saikaku kenkyū kai 西鶴研究会 (Society for Saikaku Studies), was the starting point of a heated debate, something which is seldom seen lately in the field of Edo-period literary studies. Nakano Mitsutoshi’s view was rejected by his colleagues in Saikaku studies, and the debate ended once again inconclusively.2 Still, this episode is notable because it underlined the need to retell and reinvent the history of Edo-period prose literature, and to replace the existing narrative based on traditional categories such as kana-zōshi, ukiyo-zōshi, yomihon 読本, and gesaku. These are probably still indispensable, but are also too vague and lack precise definitions, being in addition too local, something that makes it difficult to relate Edo-period literature to the global movement of world literature in modern times.3 Nakano Mitsutoshi is certainly right when he underlines the continuity between Saikaku—or even Saikaku’s predecessors— and later prose writers (gesakusha 戯作者) such as Hiraga Gennai 平賀源内 A Genealogy of Saikaku’s ukiyo-zōshi","PeriodicalId":197397,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114524173","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"On the Reception and Uses of Li Shizhen’s Classified Materia Medica (Bencao gangmu) in 17th-century Japan","authors":"M. Hayek","doi":"10.7221/sjlc04.095.0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7221/sjlc04.095.0","url":null,"abstract":"The Bencao gangmu 本草綱目 (Classified Materia Medica, Jp. Honzō kōmoku), a summa on pharmacology (bencao 本草, Jp. honzō) published in 1596 in Nanjing, has been praised as a truly epoch-making book. The richness of the work alone could justify its fame: it lists, describes, and discusses the medicinal properties of 1,895 different kinds of plants, herbs, minerals, and animals. Nor did its compiler, Li Shizhen 季時珍 (1518–1593), stop at merely collecting the more traditional sort of bencao material: fully endorsing the Neo-Confucian epistemological paradigm of “investigation of things” (gewu zhizhi 格物致知, Jp. kakubutsu chichi),2 he extended the purview of his compilation to the basic components of the surrounding world, as well as to the realm of man. If, as Georges Métailié has meticulously shown, Li cannot really be considered a “precursor” to modern zoology, he nevertheless devised a system that, while retaining most of the subjective categories of “folk taxonomy,” still strove after a renewed form of coherency.3 On the Reception and Uses of Li Shizhen’s Classified Materia Medica (Bencao gangmu) in 17th-century Japan: Text, Categories, Pictures1","PeriodicalId":197397,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124491069","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}