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

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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

MORI Maryellen T.

出版者

International Research Center for Japanese Studies

雑誌

Nichibunken Japan review : bulletin of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies

巻号頁・発行日

vol.12, pp.231-246, 2000-01-01

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This essey briefly examines three stories by Edogawa Rampo that treat the theme of "doll-love". Hitodenashi no koi, Osie to tabi suru otoko, and Mushi. The relationshio between doll-love and the desire for self-metamorphosis that prevades Ranpo's literature is considerd. The essey suggests that the doll functions as a fetish to both reveal and disguise a male characte's perverse desires, by elevating them to a quasi-religious form of love.

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

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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

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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

KENT Pauline

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.6, pp.107-125, 1995-01-01

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Although Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword did not contain a bibliography when published, it has been possible to build one up from the notes she left on her research of the Japanese. A list of references used during her wartime research on the Japanese is provided here, along with a list of the people she worked with, in a team effort to fathom the wartime Japanese morale, at the Foreign Morale Analysis Division in the U. S. Office of War Information.

著者

ISHII Satoshi

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.10, pp.109-122, 1998-01-01

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For decades Japanese scholars have been willing to import and apply Euro-America-centered research paradigrms not only in the natural sciences but also in the social sciences and the humanities. They have been doing so without trying to devejop their own-Western frames of research. Today Japanese reseachers are expected to develop new research paradigms and perspectives based on their own Japanese cultural background and to contribute these to the international academic arena. This paper provides scholars of Japanese culture with a distincly Asian paradigm for future research, theory construstion, and methodological development.To achieve these goals, first, Western views of interpersonal relationships are discussed. Then the Buddhist en-based world view and its influence on Japanese human relationships are described. Next, general systems theory is introduced, suggesting its possible application to Japanese human relationships psychology. Finally, a hypothetical cosmic systems framework based on the Buddhist en-belief is proposed to conceptualize Japanese human relationships and help promote research in the area.

著者

SAEKI Junko

出版者

International Research Center for Japanese Studies

雑誌

Nichibunken Japan review : bulletin of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies

巻号頁・発行日

vol.8, pp.127-142, 1997-01-01

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This article analyzes Mishima Yukio's Confession of a Mask (1949), focusing on the sexuality of the male protagonist "I". Although "I" confesses his sexual desire to the same sex, it is not appropriate to apply the term "homosexual" to him, because his sexual inclination is not exactly equal to the "homosexuality" in the modern Western sense. The fact that he is attracted to men of a different age group from his own is related to the traditional make-up of the same sex couple in nanshoku (the Japanese tradition of male-love), which typically consisted of an older man and a younger boy. There were two different nanshoku traditions; monastic and military, and "I" possesses the features of both: the idolization of the love object of the former, and the educational function of the latter.However, in contrast with traditional nanshoku, which was tolerated and even celebrated in pre-modern Japan, "I" considers his same sex desires sinful and shameful. His notions about his sexuality are influenced by Western prejudices about male love seen in discourses on homosexuality in the West. At the same time, he has a strong sense of subjectivity that makes him capable of expressing and confessing his own sexual desires. With "I"'s confession, a modern subjectivity and sexual identity emerges, and in this sense, he can be called a "homosexual", in the same sense as, for example, the male protagonist Billy in John Fox's Boys on the Rock (1984), a representative work of American gay fiction. By comparing "I" with Billy, I will point out modernized and Westernized aspects of the narrator's sexuality, and conclude that the character "I" represents the mixed characteristics of indigenous and exogenous elements of male love in modernized Japan.

著者

BUCKLAND Rosina

出版者

International Research Center for Japanese Studies

雑誌

Nichibunken Japan review : bulletin of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies

巻号頁・発行日

vol.26, pp.259-276, 2013

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This article examines the final period of shunga, customarily defined as erotic imagery produced by the woodblock-printing technique. It takes up artist who continued the earlier traditions of shunga (such as Kawanabe Kyosai and Tsukioka Yoshitoshi) and those who developed new modes (among them, Tomioka Eisen). The new Meiji administration was anxious to suppress material it deemed inappropriate, and new censorship legislation was introduced in 1872. However, the clandestine production and sale of shungacontinued until the early 1900s. As was always the case, quality varies, but the best Meiji era shunga is distinguished by fine draughtsmanship and deluxe printing effects. As part of modernization, women gained new, more visible roles in society and these were quickly taken up as characters in shunga. Japan's engagement in hostilities with first China and then Russia provided the impetus for the further production of erotica to supply to troops. Yet, by this point such material was seen as a potential embarrassment to the nation, and its suppression thereafter intensified. At the same time, the shifting role of the naked body within visual culture had a major impact on shunga, and rival rechnologies, such as photography and lithography, were supplanting woodblock-printing. The result was the emergence of a new genre of sex-related imagery, which, when compared with shunga, is marked by its directly explicit nature and a lack of humour.

著者

SAEKI Junko

出版者

International Research Center for Japanese Studies

雑誌

Nichibunken Japan review : bulletin of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies

巻号頁・発行日

vol.8, pp.127-142, 1997

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This article analyzes Mishima Yukio's Confession of a Mask (1949), focusing on the sexuality of the male protagonist "I". Although "I" confesses his sexual desire to the same sex, it is not appropriate to apply the term "homosexual" to him, because his sexual inclination is not exactly equal to the "homosexuality" in the modern Western sense. The fact that he is attracted to men of a different age group from his own is related to the traditional make-up of the same sex couple in nanshoku (the Japanese tradition of male-love), which typically consisted of an older man and a younger boy. There were two different nanshoku traditions; monastic and military, and "I" possesses the features of both: the idolization of the love object of the former, and the educational function of the latter.