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Imagery Of The Orchid Pavilion Gathering Visualizing Tokugawa Cultural Networks
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Book Synopsis Imagery of the Orchid Pavilion Gathering: Visualizing Tokugawa Cultural Networks by : Kazuko Kameda-Madar
Download or read book Imagery of the Orchid Pavilion Gathering: Visualizing Tokugawa Cultural Networks written by Kazuko Kameda-Madar and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-10-04 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the diverse visual representations of the Orchid Pavilion Gathering produced during the Edo period Japan.
Download or read book The Red Thread written by Bernard Faure and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1998-10-26 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is there a Buddhist discourse on sex? In this innovative study, Bernard Faure reveals Buddhism's paradoxical attitudes toward sexuality. His remarkably broad range covers the entire geography of this religion, and its long evolution from the time of its founder, Xvkyamuni, to the premodern age. The author's anthropological approach uncovers the inherent discrepancies between the normative teachings of Buddhism and what its followers practice. Framing his discussion on some of the most prominent Western thinkers of sexuality--Georges Bataille and Michel Foucault--Faure draws from different reservoirs of writings, such as the orthodox and heterodox "doctrines" of Buddhism, and its monastic codes. Virtually untapped mythological as well as legal sources are also used. The dialectics inherent in Mahvyvna Buddhism, in particular in the Tantric and Chan/Zen traditions, seemed to allow for greater laxity and even encouraged breaking of taboos. Faure also offers a history of Buddhist monastic life, which has been buffeted by anticlerical attitudes, and by attempts to regulate sexual behavior from both within and beyond the monastery. In two chapters devoted to Buddhist homosexuality, he examines the way in which this sexual behavior was simultaneously condemned and idealized in medieval Japan. This book will appeal especially to those interested in the cultural history of Buddhism and in premodern Japanese culture. But the story of how one of the world's oldest religions has faced one of life's greatest problems makes fascinating reading for all.
Book Synopsis Gas Mask Nation by : Gennifer Weisenfeld
Download or read book Gas Mask Nation written by Gennifer Weisenfeld and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2023-02-24 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Gas Mask Nation explores Japanese daily life during the widespread culture of civil defense that emerged through fifteen years of war, beginning with Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and only ending with Japan's decisive defeat in WWII. This fifteen-year period involved intense social mobilization and the militarization of citizens. As in nearly every war since the invention of the airplane, surveillance, secrecy, and physical safety became visual symbols of national preparedness and anxiety. Everybody was vulnerable, always. And everybody had a role to play. Prevailing scholarship tends to portray the war years in Japan as a landscape of privation where consumer and popular culture were suppressed under the massive censorship of the war machine. Weisenfeld claims otherwise: while not denying the horrors of war, she shows that pleasure, desire, wonder, creativity, and humor were all still abundantly present. Even amidst the fear, tasty caramels were sold to children with paper gas masks as promotional giveaways, and popular magazines featured everything from attractive models in the latest civil defense fashions to futuristic wartime weapons. Gas Mask Nation examines the multilayered construction of an anxious yet perversely pleasurable culture of civil air defense through a diverse range of art works and media including experimental and documentary photographs, newsreels, popular magazine illustrations, advertising, cartoons, and state propaganda"--
Book Synopsis Maṇḍalas in the Making by : Michelle C. Wang
Download or read book Maṇḍalas in the Making written by Michelle C. Wang and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-12-18 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the Maṇḍala of Eight Great Bodhisattvas during the Tibetan (786–848) and post-Tibetan Guiyijun (848–1036) periods at Dunhuang, focusing on the intersections between political authority, religious praxis, and visual language.
Book Synopsis Twelve Years a Slave by : Solomon Northup
Download or read book Twelve Years a Slave written by Solomon Northup and published by Lindhardt og Ringhof. This book was released on 2024-01-04 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Filmatized in 2013 and the official recipient of three Oscars, Solomon Northup's powerful slave narrative 'Twelve Years a Slave' depicts Nortup's life as he is sold into slavery after having spent 32 years of his life living as a free man in New York. Working as a travelling musician, Northup goes to Washington D.C, where he is kidnapped, sent to New Orleans, and sold to a planter to suffer the relentless and brutal life of a slave. After a dozen years, Northup escapes to return to his family and pulls no punches, as he describes his fate and that of so many other black people at the time. It is a harrowing but vitally important book, even today. For further reading on this subject, try 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Solomon Northup (c.1807-c.1875) was an American abolitionist and writer, best remembered for his powerful race memoir 'Twelve Years a Slave'. At the age of 32, when he was a married farmer, father-of-three, violinist and free-born man, he was kidnapped in Washington D.C and shipped to New Orleans, sold to a planter and enslaved for a dozen years. When he gained his freedom, he wrote his famous memoir and spent some years lecturing across the US,on behalf of the abolitionist movement. 'Twelve Years a Slave' was published a year after 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' by Harriet Beecher Stowe and built on the anti-slavery momentum it had developed. Northup's final years are something of a mystery, though it is thought that he struggled to cope with family life after being freed.
Book Synopsis Authentic Replicas by : Hsueh-man Shen
Download or read book Authentic Replicas written by Hsueh-man Shen and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2018-10-31 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As belief in the Buddha grew and his teachings were transmitted across Asia, Buddhist images, scriptures, and relics were duplicated and reduplicated to satisfy the needs of increasing numbers of the faithful. Yet how were these countless copies of sacred objects able to retain their authenticity and efficacy? Authentic Replicas explores how Buddhists in medieval China (seventh to twelfth centuries) solved this conundrum through the use of traditional methods of replication such as stamping, mold casting, and woodblock printing to create objects that fulfilled the spiritual aspirations of those who possessed them. Setting aside Western notions about the relative value of copies versus the “original,” the book posits Buddhist ideas on what imbues an object with credibility and authority and offers fresh insights into the ways authenticity was represented and reproduced in the Chinese Buddhist context. Each section of the volume focuses on an area of artistic output to provide readers with a thorough grasp of the theological concepts underpinning each act of duplication. Part I looks at the replication of sutras to clarify how the spiritual value of a handwritten sutra differed from a printed one. In Part II, clay tablets, woodblock prints, silk paintings, and cave murals are examined to trace iconographic lineages and uncover the divine identity in each new replica. The chapters in Part III describe in detail the copying of the Buddha’s bodily relics and the endlessly repeated votive act of burying these in stupas. Of particular significance is the visual and textual vocabulary used on reliquaries to persuade adherents to believe in the actual presence of the Buddha concealed inside. Deftly weaving together data and research from several disciplines, including Buddhist studies, archaeology, and art history, Authentic Replicas vividly conveys how replication lay at the heart of Buddhist worship in medieval China, offering a new understanding of how religious belief guided the artistic output of an entire age.
Book Synopsis The Aura of Confucius by : Julia K. Murray
Download or read book The Aura of Confucius written by Julia K. Murray and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-25 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Aura of Confucius is a ground-breaking study that reconstructs the remarkable history of Kongzhai, a shrine founded on the belief that Confucius' descendants buried the sage's robe and cap a millennium after his death and far from his home in Qufu, Shandong. Improbably located on the outskirts of modern Shanghai, Kongzhai featured architecture, visual images, and physical artifacts that created a 'Little Queli,' a surrogate for the temple, cemetery, and Kong descendants' mansion in Qufu. Centered on the Tomb of the Robe and Cap, with a Sage Hall noteworthy for displaying sculptural icons and not just inscribed tablets, Kongzhai attracted scholarly pilgrims who came to experience Confucius's beneficent aura. Although Kongzhai gained recognition from the Kangxi emperor, its fortunes declined with modernization, and it was finally destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. Unlike other sites, Kongzhai has not been rebuilt and its history is officially forgotten, despite the Confucian revival in contemporary China.
Download or read book Hinges written by Julia M. White and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published on the occasion of an exhibition of the same name organized by the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA).
Book Synopsis The Borders of Chinese Architecture by : Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt
Download or read book The Borders of Chinese Architecture written by Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2022-01-11 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An internationally acclaimed expert explains why Chinese-style architecture has remained so consistent for two thousand years, no matter where it is built. For the last two millennia, an overwhelming number of Chinese buildings have been elevated on platforms, supported by pillars, and covered by ceramic-tile roofs. Less obvious features, like the brackets connecting the pillars to roof frames, also have been remarkably constant. What makes the shared features more significant, however, is that they are present in Buddhist, Daoist, Confucian, and Islamic milieus; residential, funerary, and garden structures; in Japan, Korea, Mongolia, and elsewhere. How did Chinese-style architecture maintain such standardization for so long, even beyond ChinaÕs borders? Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt examines the essential features of Chinese architecture and its global transmission and translation from the predynastic age to the eighteenth century. Across myriad political, social, and cultural contexts within China and throughout East Asia, certain design and construction principles endured. Builders never abandoned perishable wood in favor of more permanent building materials, even though Chinese engineers knew how to make brick and stone structures in the last millennium BCE. Chinese architecture the world over is also distinctive in that it was invariably accomplished by anonymous craftsmen. And Chinese buildings held consistently to the plan of the four-sided enclosure, which both afforded privacy and differentiated sacred interior space from an exterior understood as the sphere of profane activity. Finally, Chinese-style buildings have always and everywhere been organized along straight lines. Taking note of these and other fascinating uniformities, The Borders of Chinese Architecture offers an accessible and authoritative overview of a tradition studiously preserved across time and space.
Book Synopsis Craft Culture in Early Modern Japan by : Christine Guth
Download or read book Craft Culture in Early Modern Japan written by Christine Guth and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2021-09-21 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Crafts were central to daily life in early modern Japan. They were powerful carriers of knowledge, sociality, and identity, and how and from what materials they were made were matters of serious concern among all classes of society. In Craft Culture in Early Modern Japan, Christine M. E. Guth examines the network of forces--both material and immaterial--that supported Japan's rich, diverse, and aesthetically sophisticated artifactual culture between the late sixteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. Exploring the institutions, modes of thought, and reciprocal relationships among people, materials, and tools, she draws particular attention to the role of women in crafts, embodied knowledge, and the special place of lacquer as a medium. By examining the ways and values of making that transcend specific media and practices, Guth illuminates the 'craft culture' of early modern Japan"--
Book Synopsis The Mists of Rāmañña by : Michael A. Aung-Thwin
Download or read book The Mists of Rāmañña written by Michael A. Aung-Thwin and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2017-04-01 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars have long accepted the belief that a Theravada Buddhist Mon kingdom, Rāmaññadesa, flourished in coastal Lower Burma until it was conquered in 1057 by King Aniruddha of Pagan—which then became, in essence, the new custodian and repository of Mon culture in the Upper Burmese interior. This scenario, which Aung-Thwin calls the "Mon Paradigm," has circumscribed much of the scholarship on early Burma and significantly shaped the history of Southeast Asia for more than a century. Now, in a masterful reassessment of Burmese history, Michael Aung-Thwin reexamines the original contemporary accounts and sources without finding any evidence of an early Theravada Mon polity or a conquest by Aniruddha. The paradigm, he finds, cannot be sustained. How, when, and why did the Mon Paradigm emerge? Aung-Thwin meticulously traces the paradigm's creation to the merging of two temporally, causally, and contextually unrelated Mon and Burmese narratives, which were later synthesized in English by colonial officials and scholars. Thus there was no single originating source, only a late and mistaken conflation of sources. The conceptual, methodological, and empirical ramifications of these findings are significant. The prevalent view that state-formation began in the maritime regions of Southeast Asia with trade and commerce rather than in the interior with agriculture must now be reassessed. In addition, a more rigorous look at the actual scope and impact of a romanticized Mon culture in the region is required. Other issues important to the field of early Burma and Southeast Asian studies, including the process of "Indianization," the characterization of "classical" states, and the advent and spread of Theravada Buddhism, are also directly affected by Aung-Thwin’s work. Finally, it provides a geo-political, cultural, and economic alternative to what has become an ethnic interpretation of Burma’s history. An electronic version of this book is freely available thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched, a collaborative initiative designed to make high-quality books open access for the public good. The open-access version of this book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means that the work may be freely downloaded and shared for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. Derivative works and commercial uses require permission from the publisher.
Download or read book Ogata Kōrin written by Frank Feltens and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lush portrait introducing one of the most important Japanese artists of the Edo period Best known for his paintings Irises and Red and White Plum Blossoms, Ogata Kōrin (1658-1716) was a highly successful artist who worked in many genres and media--including hanging scrolls, screen paintings, fan paintings, lacquer, textiles, and ceramics. Combining archival research, social history, and visual analysis, Frank Feltens situates Kōrin within the broader art culture of early modern Japan. He shows how financial pressures, client preferences, and the impulse toward personal branding in a competitive field shaped Kōrin's approach to art-making throughout his career. Feltens also offers a keen visual reading of the artist's work, highlighting the ways Kōrin's artistic innovations succeeded across media, such as his introduction of painterly techniques into lacquer design and his creation of ceramics that mimicked the appearance of ink paintings. This book, the first major study of Kōrin in English, provides an intimate and thought-provoking portrait of one of Japan's most significant artists.
Book Synopsis Where China Meets India by : Thant Myint-U
Download or read book Where China Meets India written by Thant Myint-U and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2011-09-13 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thant Myint-U's Where China Meets India is a vivid, searching, timely book about the remote region that is suddenly a geopolitical center of the world. From their very beginnings, China and India have been walled off from each other: by the towering summits of the Himalayas, by a vast and impenetrable jungle, by hostile tribes and remote inland kingdoms stretching a thousand miles from Calcutta across Burma to the upper Yangtze River. Soon this last great frontier will vanish—the forests cut down, dirt roads replaced by superhighways, insurgencies crushed—leaving China and India exposed to each other as never before. This basic shift in geography—as sudden and profound as the opening of the Suez Canal—will lead to unprecedented connections among the three billion people of Southeast Asia and the Far East. What will this change mean? Thant Myint-U is in a unique position to know. Over the past few years he has traveled extensively across this vast territory, where high-speed trains and gleaming new shopping malls are now coming within striking distance of the last far-flung rebellions and impoverished mountain communities. And he has explored the new strategic centrality of Burma, where Asia's two rising, giant powers appear to be vying for supremacy. At once a travelogue, a work of history, and an informed look into the future, Where China Meets India takes us across the fast-changing Asian frontier, giving us a masterful account of the region's long and rich history and its sudden significance for the rest of the world.
Book Synopsis Commerce of Taste by : Barry Magrill
Download or read book Commerce of Taste written by Barry Magrill and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2012 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How books of church drawings marketed taste and status alongside social change.
Book Synopsis Fabricating the Tenjukoku Shūchō Mandara and Prince Shōtoku's Afterlives by : Chari Pradel
Download or read book Fabricating the Tenjukoku Shūchō Mandara and Prince Shōtoku's Afterlives written by Chari Pradel and published by Japanese Visual Culture. This book was released on 2016 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this comprehensive study of the Tenjukoku Shūchō Mandara, Chari Pradel provides a new interpretation of this assemblage of embroidered textile fragments associated with Prince Shōtoku (574-622). By analyzing the scant visual evidence in the context of East Asian visual art of the period, the author recreates the subject represented on the seventh century artifact and demonstrates that it was not Buddhist (as previously believed), but associated with the funerary iconography of China that arrived in Japan with immigrants from the Korean peninsula. In addition, by closely investigating the context for the compilation of each of the documents associated with the artifact, Pradel illuminates the history of the embroidery and its changing significance and perception over the centuries.
Download or read book Kashmir and Tibet written by and published by Mittal Publications. This book was released on 1984 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis The Artful Recluse by : Peter Charles Sturman
Download or read book The Artful Recluse written by Peter Charles Sturman and published by Prestel Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This catalogue accompanies the exhibition The Artful Recluse: Painting, Poetry, and Politics in Seventeenth-Century China, organized by Susan S. Tai in collaboration with Peter C. Sturman and presented at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California, October 20, 2012-January 20, 2013, and the Asia Society, New York, March 5-June 2, 2013.
