Wondrous Brutal Fictions

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Wondrous Brutal Fictions

Author :
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231518331
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Wondrous Brutal Fictions by :

Download or read book Wondrous Brutal Fictions written by and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-09 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wondrous Brutal Fictions presents eight seminal works from the seventeenth-century Japanese sekkyo and ko-joruri puppet theaters, many translated into English for the first time. Both poignant and disturbing, they range from stories of cruelty and brutality to tales of love, charity, and outstanding filial devotion, representing the best of early Edo-period literary and performance traditions and acting as important precursors to the Bunraku and Kabuki styles of theater. As works of Buddhist fiction, these texts relate the histories and miracles of particular buddhas, bodhisattvas, and local deities. Many of their protagonists are cultural icons, recognizable through their representation in later works of Japanese drama, fiction, and film. The collection includes such sekkyo "sermon-ballad" classics as Sansho Dayu, Karukaya, and Oguri, as well as the "old joruri" plays Goo-no-hime and Amida's Riven Breast. R. Keller Kimbrough provides a critical introduction to these vibrant performance genres, emphasizing the role of seventeenth-century publishing in their spread. He also details six major sekkyo chanters and their playbooks, filling a crucial scholarly gap in early Edo-period theater. More than fifty reproductions of mostly seventeenth-century woodblock illustrations offer rich, visual foundations for the critical introduction and translated tales. Ideal for students and scholars of medieval and early modern Japanese literature, theater, and Buddhism, this collection provides an unprecedented encounter with popular Buddhist drama and its far-reaching impact on literature and culture.

Buddhisms in Asia

Author : Nicholas S. Brasovan
Publisher : SUNY Press
ISBN 13 : 1438475853
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis Buddhisms in Asia by : Nicholas S. Brasovan

Download or read book Buddhisms in Asia written by Nicholas S. Brasovan and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2019-09-01 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide to Buddhism’s rich variety of traditions and cultural expressions for educators who would like to include Buddhism in their undergraduate courses. Over its long history, Buddhism has never been a simple monolithic phenomenon, but rather a complex living tradition—or better, a family of traditions—continually shaped by and shaping a vast array of social, economic, political, literary, and aesthetic contexts across East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Written by undergraduate educators, Buddhisms in Asia offers a guide to Buddhism’s rich variety of traditions and cultural expressions for educators who would like to include Buddhism in their undergraduate courses. It introduces fundamental yet often underrepresented Buddhist texts, concepts, and material in their historical contexts; presents the major “ecologies” of Buddhist belief, practice, and cultural expression; and provides methodological insights regarding how best to infuse Buddhist content into undergraduate courses in the humanities and social sciences. The text aims to represent “Buddhisms” by approaching the subject from a broad range of disciplinary perspectives, including art history, anthropology, history, literature, philosophy, religious studies, and pedagogy. “I teach an introductory course on Buddhism on a regular basis, and every single chapter of this book gave me ideas for materials I could incorporate, new modules I might develop, and/or better ways I might organize and present existing content to students. I think that the book will be particularly useful to educators in Asian studies who are not themselves specialized in areas of Buddhism or religion. The collection gives them the information on Buddhist philosophy, doctrine, and practice that they would need to better incorporate the role of Buddhism into classes on Asian culture, history, society, and politics.” — Leah Kalmanson, coeditor of Buddhist Responses to Globalization

Parody, Irony and Ideology in the Fiction of Ihara Saikaku

Author : David J. Gundry
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004344314
Total Pages : 314 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (43 download)

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Book Synopsis Parody, Irony and Ideology in the Fiction of Ihara Saikaku by : David J. Gundry

Download or read book Parody, Irony and Ideology in the Fiction of Ihara Saikaku written by David J. Gundry and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-07-31 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first monograph published in English on Ihara Saikaku’s fiction, Gundry’s lucid, compelling study examines works by Edo-period Japan’s leading writer of ‘floating world’ literature both in their local context and as part of transnational trends in early bourgeois narrative.

Monsters, Animals, and Other Worlds

Author : Keller Kimbrough
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231545509
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Monsters, Animals, and Other Worlds by : Keller Kimbrough

Download or read book Monsters, Animals, and Other Worlds written by Keller Kimbrough and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-20 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Monsters, Animals, and Other Worlds is a collection of twenty-five medieval Japanese tales of border crossings and the fantastic, featuring demons, samurai, talking animals, amorous plants, and journeys to supernatural realms. The most comprehensive compendium of short medieval Japanese fiction in English, Monsters, Animals, and Other Worlds illuminates a rich world of literary, Buddhist, and visual culture largely unknown today outside of Japan. These stories, called otogizōshi, or Muromachi tales (named after the Muromachi period, 1337 to 1573), date from approximately the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries. Often richly illustrated in a painted-scroll format, these vernacular stories frequently express Buddhist beliefs and provide the practical knowledge and moral education required to navigate medieval Japanese society. The otogizōshi represent a major turning point in the history of Japanese literature. They bring together many earlier types of narrative—court tales, military accounts, anecdotes, and stories about the divine origins of shrines and temples––joining book genres with parlor arts and the culture of itinerant storytellers and performers. The works presented here are organized into three thematically overlapping sections titled, “Monsters, Warriors, and Journeys to Other Worlds,” “Buddhist Tales,” and “Interspecies Affairs.” Each translation is prefaced by a short introduction, and the book features images from the original scroll paintings, illustrated manuscripts, and printed books.

Pleasure in Profit

Author : Laura Moretti
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 023155205X
Total Pages : 323 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Pleasure in Profit by : Laura Moretti

Download or read book Pleasure in Profit written by Laura Moretti and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-22 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the seventeenth century, Japanese popular prose flourished as waves of newly literate readers gained access to the printed word. Commercial publishers released vast numbers of titles in response to readers’ hunger for books that promised them potent knowledge. However, traditional literary histories of this period position the writings of Ihara Saikaku at center stage, largely neglecting the breadth of popular prose. In the first comprehensive study of the birth of Japanese commercial publishing, Laura Moretti investigates the vibrant world of vernacular popular literature. She marshals new data on the magnitude of the seventeenth-century publishing business and highlights the diversity and porosity of its publishing genres. Moretti explores how booksellers sparked interest among readers across the spectrum of literacies and demonstrates how they tantalized consumers with vital ethical, religious, societal, and interpersonal knowledge. She recasts books as tools for knowledge making, arguing that popular prose engaged its audience cognitively as well as aesthetically and emotionally to satisfy a burgeoning curiosity about the world. Crucially, Moretti shows, readers experienced entertainment within the didactic, finding pleasure in the profit gained from acquiring knowledge by interacting with transformative literature. Drawing on a rich variety of archival materials to present a vivid portrait of seventeenth-century Japanese publishing, Pleasure in Profit also speaks to broader conversations about the category of the literary by offering a new view of popular prose that celebrates plurality.

The Land We Saw, the Times We Knew

Author : Gerald Groemer
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824877179
Total Pages : 377 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (248 download)

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Book Synopsis The Land We Saw, the Times We Knew by : Gerald Groemer

Download or read book The Land We Saw, the Times We Knew written by Gerald Groemer and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2018-11-30 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japanese zuihitsu (essays) offer a treasure trove of information and insights rarely found in any other genre of Japanese writing. Especially during their golden age, the Edo period (1600–1868), zuihitsu treated a great variety of subjects. In the pages of a typical zuihitsu the reader encountered facts and opinions on everything from martial arts to music, food to fashions, dragons to drama—much of it written casually and seemingly without concern for form or order. The seven zuihitsu translated and annotated in this volume date from the early seventeenth to the late nineteenth centuries. Some of the essays are famous while others are less well known, but none have been published in their entirety in any Western language. Following a substantial introduction outlining the development of the genre, “Tales That Come to Mind” is an early seventeenth-century account of Edo kabuki theater and the Yoshiwara “pleasure quarters” penned by a Buddhist monk. “A Record of Seven Offered Treasures,” composed by a retired samurai-monk near the end of the seventeenth century, starts as a treatise on the proper education of youth but ends as a critique of the author’s own life and moral failings. Perhaps the most famous piece in the volume, “Monologue,” was drafted by the renowned Confucianist Dazai Shundai, a keen and insightful observer of life during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Dazai treats, in turn, poetry, the tea ceremony, comic verse, music, theater, and fashion. “Idle Talk of Nagasaki” is an entertaining record of a journey to Nagasaki by a group of Confucianists in the early eighteenth century. In “Kyoto Observed,” a mid-eighteenth-century Edo resident compares the shogun’s and the emperor’s capital in a series of brief vignettes. An 1814 zuihitsu classic written by a physician, “A Dustheap of Discourses” presents another colorful mosaic of topics related to life in Edo. The book closes with “The Breezes of Osaka,” a lively essay by a highly cultured Edo administrator contrasting the food, life, and culture of his hometown with that of Osaka, where he briefly served as mayor in the 1850s.

Reading the Puppet Stage

Author : Claudia Orenstein
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000918424
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (9 download)

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Book Synopsis Reading the Puppet Stage by : Claudia Orenstein

Download or read book Reading the Puppet Stage written by Claudia Orenstein and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-08-21 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on the author’s two decades of seeing, writing on, and teaching about puppetry from a critical perspective, this book offers a collection of insights into how we watch, understand, and appreciate puppetry. Reading the Puppet Stage uses examples from a broad range of puppetry genres, from Broadway shows and the Muppets to the rich field of international contemporary performing object experimentation to the wealth of Asian puppet traditions, as it illustrates the ways performing objects can create and structure meaning and the dramaturgical interplay between puppets, performers, and language onstage. An introductory approach for students, critics, and artists, this book underlines where significant artistic concerns lie in puppetry and outlines the supportive networks and resources that shape the community of those who make, watch, and love this ever-developing art.

The Tokugawa World

Author : Gary P. Leupp
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000427412
Total Pages : 1484 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (4 download)

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Book Synopsis The Tokugawa World by : Gary P. Leupp

Download or read book The Tokugawa World written by Gary P. Leupp and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-20 with total page 1484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With over 60 contributions, The Tokugawa World presents the latest scholarship on early modern Japan from an international team of specialists in a volume that is unmatched in its breadth and scope. In its early modern period, under the Tokugawa shoguns, Japan was a world apart. For over two centuries the shogun’s subjects were forbidden to travel abroad and few outsiders were admitted. Yet in this period, Japan evolved as a nascent capitalist society that could rapidly adjust to its incorporation into the world system after its forced "opening" in the 1850s. The Tokugawa World demonstrates how Japan’s early modern society took shape and evolved: a world of low and high cultures, comic books and Confucian academies, soba restaurants and imperial music recitals, rigid enforcement of social hierarchy yet also ongoing resistance to class oppression. A world of outcasts, puppeteers, herbal doctors, samurai officials, businesswomen, scientists, scholars, blind lutenists, peasant rebels, tea-masters, sumo wrestlers, and wage workers. Covering a variety of features of the Tokugawa world including the physical landscape, economy, art and literature, religion and thought, and education and science, this volume is essential reading for all students and scholars of early modern Japan.

The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance

Author : Dassia N. Posner
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317911725
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (179 download)

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Book Synopsis The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance by : Dassia N. Posner

Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance written by Dassia N. Posner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-07-17 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance offers a wide-ranging perspective on how scholars and artists are currently re-evaluating the theoretical, historical, and theatrical significance of performance that embraces the agency of inanimate objects. This book proposes a collaborative, responsive model for broader artistic engagement in and with the material world. Its 28 chapters aim to advance the study of the puppet not only as a theatrical object but also as a vibrant artistic and scholarly discipline. This Companion looks at puppetry and material performance from six perspectives: theoretical approaches to the puppet, perspectives from practitioners, revisiting history, negotiating tradition, material performances in contemporary theatre, and hybrid forms. Its wide range of topics, which span 15 countries over five continents, encompasses: • visual dramaturgy • theatrical juxtapositions of robots and humans • contemporary transformations of Indonesian wayang kulit • Japanese ritual body substitutes • recent European productions featuring toys, clay, and food. The book features newly commissioned essays by leading scholars such as Matthew Isaac Cohen, Kathy Foley, Jane Marie Law, Eleanor Margolies, Cody Poulton, and Jane Taylor. It also celebrates the vital link between puppetry as a discipline and as a creative practice with chapters by active practitioners, including Handspring Puppet Company’s Basil Jones, Redmoon’s Jim Lasko, and Bread and Puppet’s Peter Schumann. Fully illustrated with more than 60 images, this volume comprises the most expansive English-language collection of international puppetry scholarship to date.

Goze

Author : Gerald Groemer
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190259043
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (92 download)

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Book Synopsis Goze by : Gerald Groemer

Download or read book Goze written by Gerald Groemer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Goze were Japanese female musicians with visual disabilities. The origins of goze can be traced to the medieval era, but it took until the Edo period (1600-1868) for goze to form guildlike occupational associations and create an identifiable musical repertory. From this time onward countless goze toured the Japanese countryside as professional singers and contributed immeasurably to rural musical culture. The best-documented goze lived in Echigo province in the Japanese northwest. This book recounts the history of goze and examines their way of life, their institutions, and their songs.

The Cambridge History of Japanese Literature

Author : Haruo Shirane
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1316368289
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (163 download)

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Book Synopsis The Cambridge History of Japanese Literature by : Haruo Shirane

Download or read book The Cambridge History of Japanese Literature written by Haruo Shirane and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-12-31 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

A History of Japanese Theatre

Author : Jonah Salz
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1316395324
Total Pages : 1066 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (163 download)

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Book Synopsis A History of Japanese Theatre by : Jonah Salz

Download or read book A History of Japanese Theatre written by Jonah Salz and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-07-14 with total page 1066 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japan boasts one of the world's oldest, most vibrant and most influential performance traditions. This accessible and complete history provides a comprehensive overview of Japanese theatre and its continuing global influence. Written by eminent international scholars, it spans the full range of dance-theatre genres over the past fifteen hundred years, including noh theatre, bunraku puppet theatre, kabuki theatre, shingeki modern theatre, rakugo storytelling, vanguard butoh dance and media experimentation. The first part addresses traditional genres, their historical trajectories and performance conventions. Part II covers the spectrum of new genres since Meiji (1868–), and Parts III to VI provide discussions of playwriting, architecture, Shakespeare, and interculturalism, situating Japanese elements within their global theatrical context. Beautifully illustrated with photographs and prints, this history features interviews with key modern directors, an overview of historical scholarship in English and Japanese, and a timeline. A further reading list covers a range of multimedia resources to encourage further explorations.

The Japanese Buddhist World Map

Author : D. Max Moerman
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824890051
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (248 download)

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Book Synopsis The Japanese Buddhist World Map by : D. Max Moerman

Download or read book The Japanese Buddhist World Map written by D. Max Moerman and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2021-12-31 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the fourteenth through the nineteenth centuries Japanese monks created hundreds of maps to construct and locate their place in a Buddhist world. This expansively illustrated volume is the first to explore the largely unknown archive of Japanese Buddhist world maps and analyze their production, reproduction, and reception. In examining these fascinating sources of visual and material culture, author D. Max Moerman argues for an alternative history of Japanese Buddhism—one that compels us to recognize the role of the Buddhist geographic imaginary in a culture that encompassed multiple cartographic and cosmological world views. The contents and contexts of Japanese Buddhist world maps reveal the ambivalent and shifting position of Japan in the Buddhist world, its encounter and negotiation with foreign ideas and technologies, and the possibilities for a global history of Buddhism and science. Moerman’s visual and intellectual history traces the multiple trajectories of Japanese Buddhist world maps, beginning with the earliest extant Japanese map of the world: a painting by a fourteenth-century Japanese monk charting the cosmology and geography of India and Central Asia based on an account written by a seventh-century Chinese pilgrim-monk. He goes on to discuss the cartographic inclusion and marginal position of Japan, the culture of the copy and the power of replication in Japanese Buddhism, and the transcultural processes of engagement and response to new visions of the world produced by Iberian Christians, Chinese Buddhists, and the Japanese maritime trade. Later chapters explore the transformations in the media and messages of Buddhist cartography in the age of print culture and in intellectual debates during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries over cosmology and epistemology and the polemics of Buddhist science. The Japanese Buddhist World Map offers a wholly innovative picture of Japanese Buddhism that acknowledges the possibility of multiple and heterogeneous modernities and alternative visions of Japan and the world.

The Problem of Women in Early Modern Japan

Author : Marcia Yonemoto
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520965582
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (29 download)

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Book Synopsis The Problem of Women in Early Modern Japan by : Marcia Yonemoto

Download or read book The Problem of Women in Early Modern Japan written by Marcia Yonemoto and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2016-09-27 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early modern Japan was a military-bureaucratic state governed by patriarchal and patrilineal principles and laws. During this time, however, women had considerable power to directly affect social structure, political practice, and economic production. This apparent contradiction between official norms and experienced realities lies at the heart of The Problem of Women in Early Modern Japan. Examining prescriptive literature and instructional manuals for women—as well as diaries, memoirs, and letters written by and about individual women from the late seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century—Marcia Yonemoto explores the dynamic nature of Japanese women’s lives during the early modern era.

Street Performers and Society in Urban Japan, 1600-1900

Author : Gerald Groemer
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317409892
Total Pages : 416 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (174 download)

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Book Synopsis Street Performers and Society in Urban Japan, 1600-1900 by : Gerald Groemer

Download or read book Street Performers and Society in Urban Japan, 1600-1900 written by Gerald Groemer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-01-13 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a thoroughly researched and meticulously documented study of the emergence, development, and demise of music, theatre, recitation, and dance witnessed by the populace on thoroughfares, plazas, and makeshift outdoor performance spaces in Edo/Tokyo. For some three hundred years this city was the centre of such arts, both sacred and secular. This study outlines the nature of the performances, explores the social relations which lay behind them, and reveals vast complexity: an obligation of gift-giving on the part of observers; performers who were often economic migrants fallen on hard times; relations of performance to social class; a class system much more finely gradated than the official four caste system; and institutions of professional organization and registration, enforced by government, with penalties for unregistered performers. The book discusses how performing, witnessing, and rewarding performance were closely bound up with economy, society and government, how the interaction between various groups related to socio-economic advancement, how the system of street performance reinforced social control, and how the balance between different groups shifted over time.

Tracing the Itinerant Path

Author : Caitilin J. Griffiths
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824859391
Total Pages : 233 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (248 download)

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Book Synopsis Tracing the Itinerant Path by : Caitilin J. Griffiths

Download or read book Tracing the Itinerant Path written by Caitilin J. Griffiths and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2016-10-31 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women have long been active supporters and promoters of Buddhist rituals and functions, but their importance in the operations of Buddhist schools has often been minimized. Chin’ichibō (?–1344), a nun who taught male and female disciples and lived in her own temple, is therefore considered an anomaly. In Tracing the Itinerant Path, Caitilin Griffiths’ meticulous research and translations of primary sources indicate that Chin’ichibō is in fact an example of her time—a learned female who was active in the teaching and spread of Buddhism—and not an exception. Chin’ichibō and her disciples were jishū, members of a Pure Land Buddhist movement of which the famous charismatic holy man Ippen (1239–1289) was a founder. Jishū, distinguished by their practice of continuous nembutsu chanting, gained the support of a wide and diverse populace throughout Japan from the late thirteenth century. Male and female disciples rarely cloistered themselves behind monastic walls, preferring to conduct ceremonies and religious duties among the members of their communities. They offered memorial and other services to local lay believers and joined itinerant missions, traveling across provinces to reach as many people as possible. Female members were entrusted to run local practice halls that included male participants. Griffiths’ study introduces female jishū who were keenly involved—not as wives, daughters, or mothers, but as partners and leaders in the movement. Filling the lacunae that exists in our understanding of women’s participation in Japanese religious history, Griffiths highlights the significant roles female jishū held and offers a more nuanced understanding of Japanese Buddhist history. Students of Buddhism, scholars of Japanese history, and those interested in women’s studies will find this volume a significant and compelling contribution.

Japanese Singers of Tales: Ten Centuries of Performed Narrative

Author : Alison McQueen Tokita
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351925512
Total Pages : 351 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (519 download)

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Book Synopsis Japanese Singers of Tales: Ten Centuries of Performed Narrative by : Alison McQueen Tokita

Download or read book Japanese Singers of Tales: Ten Centuries of Performed Narrative written by Alison McQueen Tokita and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 narratives such as The Tale of the Heike). Much scholarly attention has focused on Japanese pre-modern literature and drama, but the tradition of oral narrative has barely been touched. Tokita argues that it is possible to identify a continuous tradition of performed narrative in Japan from the tenth to the twentieth centuries. The elements of variation and change relate to the move away from oral narrative to text-based performance, and from a simple narrative situation with one performer to complex theatrical narratives with dancers, singers and other musicians. The resulting complexity led to the pre-eminence of the musical aspects in some cases, and of dramatic or dance aspects in others. Tokita includes substantial musical analysis and exploration of theoretical issues, as well as documentation of important performance traditions, all of which are extant.