著者
BURNS Susan L.
出版者
International Research Center for Japanese Studies
雑誌
Nichibunken Japan review : Journal of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (ISSN:09150986)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.16, pp.191-211, 2004-01-01

Following the promulgation of the 1931 “leprosy prevention law,” Japan’s leprosarium system expanded rapidly, and the number of confinees almost tripled between 1930 and 1940. During this decade there was a new fascination with what came to be termed “leprosy literature,” the short stories, essays, and poetry authored by sufferers of leprosy living within the leprosaria. Ho?jo? Tamio, the best known author of “leprosy literature,” published a series of works in literary journals, and a number of collections of “leprosy literature” were published for a general readership. This paper explores the phenomenon of “leprosy literature” by examining the social and cultural context of its production during the 1930s and its role in legitimating the confinement system. This history of leprosy literature is used to reflect upon a contemporary development, the recent publication of the Hansenbyo bungaku zenshu (Collected Works of Hansen Disease Literature).
著者
NOGUEIRA RAMOS Martin
出版者
International Research Center for Japanese Studies
雑誌
Japan review : Journal of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (ISSN:09150986)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.35, pp.59-90, 2021-03

By examining the dynamic interactions between the authorities, the Buddhist clergy, and the hidden Christians, this article aims to deepen our understanding of the Tokugawa anti-Christian policy in the aftermath of the Shimabara-Amakusa revolt (November 1637–April 1638), a period of international tension for Japan as the Iberian threat was not over. It focuses on Sessō Sōsai (1589–1649), a Rinzai monk who was summoned by the authorities of Nagasaki in mid-1647 to preach to the populace. Some of his writings and his working papers have survived. These firsthand sources enable us to bring together fields that previous scholarship has generally tackled separately: intellectual, institutional, and social history. This essay argues that around 1640, Sessō Sōsai and his patrons in Nagasaki felt that the religious inquiry had reached a deadlock as the alleged apostates could suddenly (and violently) return to their previous faith. They understood that, in order to be more efficient and obtain sincere apostasies, their fight against the forbidden cult should focus more on the actual beliefs of the hidden Catholics. They paid particular attention to the belief in miracles and in the omnipotence of God.
著者
SUZUKI Sadami
出版者
International Research Center for Japanese Studies
雑誌
Nichibunken Japan review : bulletin of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (ISSN:09150986)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.7, pp.23-32, 1996-01-01

No doubt, TANIZAKI Jun'ichirō is one of the greatest modern Japanese writers. The critical appraisal of his works, however, is by no means uniform. Especially, the texts TANIZAKI published during the 1910s and the early -1920s are regarded as the so-called culture of the erotic, grotesque, nonsensical (ero guro nansensu) which were the main characteristics of Japanese mass culture in the late-1920s and early-1930s. In this essay, I discuss briefly the significance of eroticism, grotesquerie, nonsense in the Taishō period, and the works TANIZAKI published, as well as during the Shōwa period, which exhibit a critical stance, a spirit of resistance, toward the dominant culture of each period. Although of the most politically minded writers in modern Japan.
著者
PRADHAN Gouranga Charan
出版者
International Research Center for Japanese Studies
雑誌
Japan review : Journal of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (ISSN:09150986)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.32, pp.69-88, 2019

This paper examines the English-language translation of Hōjōki by famed novelist Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916). Sōseki’s pioneering translation moved away from previous interpretive readings of the classic, which focused on its Buddhist elements, disaster narratives, and theme of reclusion. Rather, Sōseki’s interest lay in reading Hōjōki as a Romantic Victorian work on nature, to which end he likened its author, Kamo no Chōmei (1153 or 1155– 1216), to English poet William Wordsworth (1770–1850). Sōseki’s English literature professor, James Main Dixon (1856–1933), played a crucial role in the crafting of this novel and radical interpretation, yet the translation and essay present unique views on translation as well, namely that translation simultaneously comprises a critical element of cultural circulation and yet is of dubious efficacy as a mechanism of transference between cultures and languages. In addition to bringing such matters to light, this critical analysis of Sōseki’s Hōjōki translation and essay also shows how important perspectives on translation that would appear later in the novelist’s career actually took shape during his university days.
著者
TEEUWEN Mark
出版者
International Research Center for Japanese Studies
雑誌
Japan review : journal of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (ISSN:09150986)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.25, pp.3-19, 2013-01-01

Seji kenbunroku (Masters of the World: An Account of What I Have Seen and Heard) is an extensive critique of all manner of social evils, written by an anonymous samurai author with the pseudonym of Buyo Inshi in 1816. Although this work is much quote, it has hardly been studied in any depth. By analyzing the (overwhelmingly negative) role ascribed to "priests" in this work, this article seeks to shedlight on early modern understandings of "religion" before that concept was introduced to Japan. Buyo goes beyond the anti-clericalism shared by many Edo period authors and develops a more elaborate critique of all "Ways," either as inherently corrupt or as mere moralistic pretense. In Buyo's discourse, a secular domain sets bounds to the realm of religion in a manner that reminds one of modern notions of secularity. Buyo was hardly an original thinkers; rather, his ideas should be seen as representative for a larger body of opinion in the later Edo period. To understand perceptions of religion in this period, we must recognize the existence of secularis thought prior to the introduction of the conceptual pair of religion and secularity in modern times. This goes against the notion, established under the influence of writes such as Talal Asad and Charles Taylor, that secularism is a product of Western history exported around the globe by colonialism. This article argues that analyses of Seji kenbunroku and similar works will reveal the existence of non-Western secularist ideas that must have hada a considerable impact on the reception of modern secularism in the second half of the nineteenth century.
著者
PALMER Edwina
出版者
International Research Center for Japanese Studies
雑誌
Nichibunken Japan review : journal of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (ISSN:09150986)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.19, pp.47-75, 2007-01-01

This discussion attempts to reconcile various seemingly contradictory research results regarding the origins of Jōmon Japanese. The focus is on testing Oppenheimer’s theory of Holocene outmigration from the former continent of Sundaland in present-day Southeast Asia against the evidence relating to Jōmon Japan and the “Out of Taiwan” hypothesis for Austronesian language dispersal. It is argued here that postglacial flooding of Sundaland prompted some former inhabitants to migrate from around ten or eleven thousand years ago, and that they followed the expanding belt of lucidophyllous forest, eventually to settle in what is now Japan during the Jōmon Period, in accordance with the theory of regional pockets of “laurilignosa culture.” It is stressed that some of these people were probably speakers of Austronesian languages. Further, it is argued that the “Out of Taiwan” movement of Austronesian language speakers could have occurred later as a migratory counterflow accompanying the Holocene maximum, and that an “Out of Sunda” scenario of migration to Japan in the Jōmon period is not necessarily entirely incompatible with such an “Out of Taiwan” theory.
著者
SCHRIMPF Monika
出版者
International Research Center for Japanese Studies
雑誌
Japan review : Journal of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (ISSN:09150986)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.36, pp.139-164, 2022-02

This paper explores how ordained Buddhist women define and implement their clerical role within the context of a secularized society, and the indeterminacy of the clerical lifestyle in contemporary Japan. Ordained women may live a monastic life or head a temple, or they may also live "secular" lives, married or not. How do they claim religious authority and legitimize their agency under these conditions? I argue here that boundary work, or the creation, contesting, bridging, and dissolving of boundaries, is an important means to this end. On the one hand, boundaries such as those of gender are often experienced as having strongly constraining and even discriminating effects. On the other hand, actively drawing or bridging boundaries from male clerics, other ordained women, or lay Buddhists is a means of creating solidarity, elevating women's contribution to the clerical role, and legitimizing various actions and appearances as conforming to that role.
著者
SHIRAISHI Eri
出版者
International Research Center for Japanese Studies
雑誌
Japan review : Journal of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (ISSN:09150986)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.36, pp.89-109, 2022-02

In 1789, there was an Ainu uprising against Wajin (Japanese) in the Kunashiri and Menashi districts of eastern Ezo. The uprising was quickly quelled in what is often referred to as the Battle of Kunashiri-Menashi. A year later, Matsumae domain, assigned by the Tokugawa shogunate to govern Ezo, completed Ishū retsuzō, a set of portraits of twelve Ainu chiefs who collaborated with the domain in suppressing the uprising. The paintings, executed by Kakizaki Hakyō (1764–1826), were intended not just to honor the chiefs' deeds but also to represent Confucian ideals. This was a time when the shogunate was campaigning to revive Confucianism. It duly commissioned a work of similar style and purpose, namely the Kenjō no sōji, a set of wall panels for the Shishinden Hall in the imperial palace in Kyoto featuring thirty-two Chinese sages. Was the contemporaneous creation of these two sets of paintings a mere coincidence? Ishū retsuzō was first taken to Kyoto, where it was viewed by Confucian scholars, court nobles, and the emperor himself. The visually striking portraits enjoyed a quiet popularity among intellectuals and daimyo in Kyoto and Edo. Toward the end of the Edo period, part of the Ishū retsuzō was included in publications by Ezo explorer Matsuura Takeshirō. Contrary to the original intent of the work, it was used to introduce the "customs" of the Ainu, and was even introduced to Europe as such.
著者
PARTNER Simon
出版者
International Research Center for Japanese Studies
雑誌
Japan review : Journal of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (ISSN:09150986)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.36, pp.61-87, 2022-02

This essay examines the social, cultural, and economic life of Kawai Koume (1804–1889), a bushi housewife and artist living in the Wakayama castle town of Kishū domain in the final years of the Tokugawa era and the early years of Meiji. Using a diary that Koume kept over a period of at least fifty years, the essay examines the ways in which Koume's art was integrated with her daily life as household manager, and it explores the transformations of those relationships after the Meiji Restoration. While acknowledging the reality of class and gender ideologies and their effects on daily life, the essay focuses on Koume's determination to contribute meaningfully to her family's social, cultural, and economic life. And in the wake of a decade of disruption and transformation following the Meiji Restoration, it points to the unsung heroism of many women in forging new paths to economic recovery and self-sufficiency.
著者
FISTER Patricia
出版者
International Research Center for Japanese Studies
雑誌
Japan review : Journal of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (ISSN:09150986)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.36, pp.33-59, 2022-02

Zuiryūji has been notably absent from research related to Japan's imperial convents, despite being founded by Toyotomi Hideyoshi's sister. One of the reasons the convent has been overlooked is its relocation from Kyoto to Ōmi Hachiman in the 1960s, physically removing it from the public eye. In addition, a male was appointed head following the death of the last abbess, so officially it was no longer functioning as a convent. However, for more than two hundred and fifty years, it was one of the highest ranking and wealthiest (by landholdings) bikuni gosho in Kyoto, headed by a succession of abbesses heralding from aristocratic families. The founder, Nisshū, was also an important patron for two major Hokke (Nichiren) sect temples, Honkokuji in Kyoto and Kuonji on Mt. Minobu. Historical documents have purportedly not survived at the convent itself, but I discovered many important objects (including portraits) and documents at Zenshōji, where all of the Zuiryūji abbesses are buried. Bringing together what I have uncovered to date, this article comprises an overview of Zuiryūji's history, highlighting the founder as well as the tenth-generation abbess who vastly expanded the convent's network by establishing a women's association with branches throughout Japan. As the only Hokke sect imperial convent in Kyoto, Zuiryūji has always had a unique status. But faced with unprecedented challenges to survive in the modern era, its abbesses broke through the glass walls traditionally defining "convent culture."
著者
HANIHARA Kazuro
出版者
International Research Center for Japanese Studies
雑誌
Nichibunken Japan review : bulletin of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (ISSN:09150986)
巻号頁・発行日
no.2, pp.1-33, 1991-01-01

This paper proposes a 'dual structure model' to explain the population history of Japanese, including the Okinawa islanders (Ryukyus) and Ainu under a single hypothesis. The model assumes that the first occupants of the Japanese Archipelago came from somewhere in Southeast Asia in the Upper Palaeolithic age and they gave rise to the people in the Neolithic Jomon age, or Jomonese; then the second wave of migration from northeast Asia took place in and after the Aeneolithic Yayoi age; and the populations of both lineages gradually mixed with each other. The 'dual structure model' also assumes that the population intermixture is still going on and the dual structure f the Japanese population is maintained even today. Thus, several regional differences such as those between east and west Japan in physical as well as cultural characteristics can be explained by the varying rates of intermixture from region to region. In general, this model agrees well not only with physical and cultural evidence but also with non-human evidence as revealed by Japanese dogs, mice, etc. At the same time, the model provides a reasonable way of explanation in regard to the relationships among the Japanese main islanders, Ryukyus, and Ainu.
著者
THURUTA Kinya
出版者
International Research Center for Japanese Studies
雑誌
Nichibunken Japan review : bulletin of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (ISSN:09150986)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.11, pp.75-94, 1999-01-01

Akutagawa Ryǔnosuke did not write a single love story.In fact Women do not paaer in his narratives nealy as often as men do.When they do appear,many are portrayed as selfish, aggressive, deceitful, dominating and ultimately destructive, while male figures are often described as vistims of female dominance and venom.This is one aspect which characterizes Akutagawa's writings.
著者
KUITERT Wybe
出版者
International Research Center for Japanese Studies
雑誌
Japan review : Journal of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (ISSN:09150986)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.27, pp.77-101, 2014-11-27

At the origin of a voluminous discourse on picturesque taste in eighteenth century England stands an essay by Sir William Temple (1628–99) that contains the word sharawadgi, which he claims is Chinese. As a result of his introducing this concept, Temple is considered the originator of the English landscape garden movement. In extended academic debates on urban planning or contemporary art, the term has played an ever-increasing role since the mid twentieth century. Several attempts have been made to decipher the word and grasp its meaning. Nonetheless, sharawadgi cannot be apprehended in terms of sound and meaning only. It needs to be understood from a functional and historic context in the lands of its origin—Japan as we will see—as well as a practice of landscape design in Europe where it inspired new creative ideas. Imported art works, strikingly with their Japanese aesthetics, were re-interpreted to fit a European understanding. This reconstruction in turn was framed within the complex world of European tastes for landscape and other applied arts. Men of letters, widely learned and erudite like Temple, maintained their networks by writing letters and exchanging books and other gifts, eager for the most recent news on developments in the world of learning. In northern Europe these savants communicated in French, English, Dutch, German, or Latin; conceptual ideas were sometimes expressed in Greek. Temple’s world was this cosmopolitan Europe, receptive to the beauty of Asian art and concepts like his enigmatic sharawadgi. This paper intends to unravel the meaning and context of the word in Japan; to show the context in which it traveled to Europe and entered the circles of Temple; and to make clear how he placed it in a slightly different setting to serve his purpose. It concludes that “literary picturesque taste” is a proper translation for sharawadgi.
著者
FLORES Linda
出版者
International Research Center for Japanese Studies
雑誌
Japan review : Journal of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (ISSN:09150986)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.31, pp.141-169, 2017

This article examines Furukawa Hideo’s Umatachi yo, soredemo hikari wa muku de (Horses, Horses, in the End the Light Remains Pure) and Kawakami Hiromi’s “Kamisama 2011” (God Bless You, 2011), two 3.11 narratives that employ intertextuality to construct radical counter-narratives to trauma. As rewritings of earlier source texts by the respective authors, these intertextual narratives draw the reader into a dynamic relationship with the text, creating a subject position for the reader that is fluid and unsettled. As in the Barthesian “writerly text,” the reader becomes engaged not only in the consumption of the meaning of the text, but also in the very production of meaning. With Kawakami’s “Kamisama 2011” this occurs primarily through the use of language in the text; with Furukawa’s Horses, Horses this takes place through the necessary act of assembling the fragmented pieces of the narrative. This article explores how Kawakami and Furukawa employ intertextuality to represent hallmark trauma narratives that also function as counter-narratives to trauma through their engagement of the reader. These intertextual 3.11 narratives serve as examples of the Barthesian “writerly” text but simultaneously disrupt this aspect of Barthes’s narrative theory by placing emphasis on how the reader is actively implicated in the production of meaning of the text, and how this is contingent on the shared historical, temporal, and sociocultural experience or knowledge of trauma.