Pre-Modern Japan

This essay explores the social, political and psychological difficulties encountered by Murasaki and the Akashi lady in Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji. It argues that the challenges faced by the female characters in the novel are not simply fictional, but that they reflect the reality of life for women during the Heian Period.

A global study of the process in its entirety, from the rising of the Togukawa rule to the establishment of the 1889 constitution casts a doubt over the denomination of 'Restoration' when it comes to 1868. Is the Meiji rule a restoration, a revolution or a renewal?

LIEN pour la lecture / LINK to read it
https://www.yumpu.com/fr/document/read/16922453/universite-paris-sorbonne-e-sorbonne

Etude archéologique des techniques d’acquisition et de transformation du métal dans le cadre de la production des lames de sabre au Japon (IXe -XVIe siècle). / "Cette thèse a pour thème les techniques d’acquisition et de transformation du fer dans le cadre de la production des lames japonaises, sur une période courant du IXe à la toute fin du XVIe siècle. Une partie préliminaire est présente afin de donner une idée de l’évolution de la métallurgie du fer jusqu’à cette date. Le type de minerais, les sables ferrifères, est alors abordé avec ses techniques d’acquisition et d’extraction. S’en suit une étude des méthodes de transformation par le biais des techniques de réduction. L’étude des différents sites permet de mettre en lumière deux types majeurs de fourneau dans l’archipel : un type à cheminée semi-enterré et un type en forme de boîte rectangulaire. Ce dernier débouche d’ailleurs sur la mise au point, au début du XVIIe siècle, du fourneau traditionnel, le tatara. En outre, l’archipel présente un développement des techniques de forge antérieur aux techniques de réduction. A partir du IXe siècle, la forge japonaise se retrouve donc déjà à un niveau technique particulièrement élevé, ayant développé, en plus des techniques de mise en forme, des techniques d’affinage, de carburation et de grappage, autorisant un recyclage du fer, permettant d’affranchir en partie les forgerons de la production des sites de réduction. C’est donc sur cette base technique particulièrement développée qu’a pu se mettre en place une partie de la production des lames. Ce recyclage explique en partie la disparition d’un très grand nombre de lames, auquel il faut adjoindre à partir de la fin du XVIe siècle, des chasses au sabre, permettant de distinguer la classe des guerriers, les samouraïs par un port d’arme qui leur était réservé.

This thesis is dealing with the iron smelting and forge techniques in the
production of Japanese swords, from the 9th to the end of the 16th century.
A preliminary part presents the evolution of iron smelting techniques in Japan,
from the origin to the 9th century.
The types of ore (iron sand) and their acquisition and extraction techniques
are discussed for a period during from the 9th to the 16th century in a
second part.
The smelting techniques used at the same period are then studied. The
archaeological research sheds light on two major types of furnace in the
archipelago: a semi-buried shaft furnace and a rectangular box shape
furnace. This last one leads in the early 17th century to the development
of the traditional Japanese furnace, the tatara.
Concerning the forging techniques, their development in the archipelago was
prior to the smelting techniques. Therefore, from the 9th century, the
technology of the Japanese forge had already reached a high level,
having developed in addition to the basic forge techniques, the
refining, carburizing and clustering (oroshigane) techniques, allowing
the smith to not be entirely dependent on the iron production of the
smelting furnace, but to also be able to rely on the recycled iron.
Consequently, a large part of the blade production in this period might
have relied on that techniques. This recycling helps to explain the
disappearance of a large number of blades, associated to sword hunts in
the late 16th century which led to distinguish a warrior class, the
samurai, carrying a weapon which is, from the early 17th century,
reserved to them."

The first complete English translation of the 62 imperial edicts in Shoku Nihongi.

Available as a paperback at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1983595454

Available as a Kindle ebook at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+imperial+edicts+in&rh=n%3A154606011&ref=nb_sb_noss

In 2013 ‘traditional Japanese dietary culture’ (washoku) was added to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list. Washoku’s predecessor was ‘national people’s cuisine’, an attempt during the Second World War to create a uniform diet for all citizens. Japan’s Cuisines reveals the diversity of Japanese cuisine and explains how Japan’s modern food culture arose through the direction of private and public institutions. Readers will discover how tea came to be portrayed as the origin of Japanese cuisine, how lunch became a gourmet meal and how regions on Japan’s periphery are reasserting their distinct food cultures.

    ‘This wise and richly documented study provides an important corrective to the many misconceptions about Japanese food culture. Rath moves skillfully between high cuisine and the great diversity of local foodways to reveal how class cultures, national institutions, and economic change have shaped what Japanese eat and what most people think of as typical Japanese cuisine.’ – Professor Jordan Sand, Professor of Japanese History, Georgetown University

The last Empress of Nara Japan, Kōken/Shōtoku Tennō 孝謙/称徳天皇, was a formidably powerful ruler. Daughter of the great Buddhist Emperor Shōmu 聖武天皇 and his Fujiwara wife Kōmyō 光明皇后, she was an adroit politician who overcame numerous challenges to her rule by male aristocrats. As a devout Buddhist nun, she wrestled with the implications of her faith for the political legitimacy of the imperial house. Her numerous edicts bear witness to the sophistication of the intellectuals at her court who tried to reconcile the Buddhist doctrine of divine protection of the state with the native tradition of godlike sovereignty and with elements of classical Chinese ideas concerning the proper function of the ruler.

Paperback -- https://www.amazon.com/Edicts-Last-Empress-749-770-Translation/dp/1500896020/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+edicts+of+the+last+empress&qid=1560007652&s=books&sr=1-1

Ebook - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XDQKZXB

THE NARA SYNTHESIS

“In retrospect, we can see that by the close of the eighth century, several key patterns of institutional structure and political thought had been established in Japan. These include (1) the establishment of a major capital city on the Chinese model; (2) an imperial institution at the apex of a ranked bureaucracy; (3) an aristocracy grounded in law and based on wealth in landholding; and (4) an emerging syncretic royal political ideology. This political ideology incorporated elements of Buddhist protection of the emperor, Chinese philosophical and practical ideas about the conduct of an ideal state, and native ideas concerning the divine ancestry of the nation and its leaders.”
p. 119

EDITOR
Cynthea J. Bogel (Kyushu University)
MANAGING EDITOR
Tomoyuki Kubo (Kyushu University)
CONSULTING EDITORS
Ellen Van Goethem (Kyushu University)
Ashton Lazarus (Kyushu University)

ESSAYS, REPORTS, REVIEWS:

DAVID WEISS
Slaying the Serpent: Comparative Mythological
Perspectives on Susanoo’s Dragon Fight . . . . . . . 1
TOSHIFUMI KAWAHIRA
Chinese Poetry in Hiragana: Kana-shi in Thought and
Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
YAN YANG
Yamato-e: Illuminating a Concept through Historiographical
Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
FABIO RAMBELLI
Dharma Devices, Non-Hermeneutical Libraries,
and Robot-Monks: Prayer Machines in Japanese
Buddhism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
SATOMI YAMAMOTO
Futanari, Between and Beyond: From Male Shamans
to Hermaphrodites in The Illustrated Scroll
of Illnesses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
CHARI PRADEL
Illuminating the Sacred Presence of Hasedera’s Eleven-
Headed Avalokiteśvara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
D. MAX MOERMAN
Underground Buddhism: The Subterranean Landscape
of the Ise Shrines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Review
BOOK REVIEW BY JAMES ROBSON
Tansen Sen. India, China, and the World: A Connected
History. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. . . 129
Kyushu and Asia
LINDSEY E. DEWITT
Report on the 2017 Inscription of “Sacred Island of
Okinoshima and Associated Sites in the Munakata
Region” as a UNESCO World Heritage Site . . . . . 135

The Old Japanese edicts in Shoku Nihongi have been intensively if not exhaustively studied. Remarkably, the readings that Motoori Norinaga assigned to them in the eighteenth century are essentially in place still today. Senmyō, due to Norinaga’s prescribing of the canon, has come to be the categorization for these sixty-two imperial rescripts. However, little to no attention has been paid either in Japan or the West to a larger number of Old Japanese edicts in senmyōtai appearing in the later National Histories. In addition, the four ninth-century official court histories inscribed in classical Chinese -- Nihon Kōki, Shoku Nihon Kōki, Nihon Montoku Tennō Jitsuroku, and Nihon Sandai Jitsuroku -- have received nothing like the interest that has been devoted over the years to Nihon Shoki and Shoku Nihongi. Stylistically these later senmyō are very much like those in Shoku Nihongi, inscribed in Old Japanese with large and small characters.

Visual and cultural analysis of Nihon no shiro 日本の城 (Japanese Castles, 1944), a book containing text by architectural historian Kishida Hideto and woodblock print illustrations by artist Hashimoto Okiie. The book is in the Pulverer Collection of Japanese illustrated books of the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC and is featured on The World of the Japanese Illustrated Book website. My commentary, along with a complete set of readable images of the book, may be found here: http://pulverer.si.edu/node/429/title/1.

Chinese society experienced many vicissitudes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including the collapse of the Ming dynasty and the ascendance of the Qing dynasty.  The people and the groups that lived along the southeast coast were, at different times, recognized differently and many of their activities were at times sanctioned and at other times outlawed.  I argue that in a basic sense the pirates and the merchants were generally the same people––southeast coastal natives.  These “outlawed” or “law-abiding” people, as well as most of the commoners, took on the identities of pirates or merchants to reap different benefits, moving back and forth between these two categories or identities.  Similarly, the Westerners and Chinese officials alternated between labeling these people “pirates” and “merchants,” depending on whether they wished to oppose or cooperate with them.  The reason different subjects needed to label others was that they collided with each other right there at that time.  The studies of piracy produced in the last fifteen years have fundamentally broken with earlier paradigms, and I reveal directly how the marginal people and society came into the national system, and how the non-stateless peoples claimed their own order in their own way.


日本语要约 (Japanese summary trans. by Prof. Hamada Maya)
动乱か贸易か ——16－17 世纪中国东南沿海部における「寇」—— 陈博翼
「倭寇」 ,あるいはそれに相当する「海寇」は,中国明代が抱えていた大きな问题であっ た.明人の记载から, 彼らは「倭贼」とも「海贼」とも称されていたことがわかっている. 明代の一级资料である『明実录』の叙述さえも,これらの呼称をしばしば混同して用いて いる.それは「倭•海•寇•盗」の本质が「化外の民」と「体制内の民」の间の紧张関系 を反映したものであることを示唆していよう.これら呼称の混乱が起きた背景を明らかに しなければ,その过程と结果を理解することはできない.异なる时期における「寇」の呼 称について分析を加えることによって,同じ人々が异なる情势下では异なる呼び方をされ るのだという事実のみならず,社会そのものが変迁してゆく过程をも见てとることができ るだろう.倭寇,倭贼,海寇,海盗というのはみな同じカテゴリーの人々で,动乱と贸易 も表裏一体の関系にあったのだ.1617 世纪,中国社会は重大な変革期にあった.朝廷 が従来の地方的「秩序」に干渉しようと试みる一方で,地方は郷村一族の势力を强化する ことでこうした干渉を牵制しようとしていた.双方とも一种の同质な支配を指向していた という点で一致するとはいえ,この过程において,中国南方沿岸部の生活と秩序は绝えず 影响され,変化を余仪なくされ,この地域の人々の様々な活动は,异なる解釈を施される ことになった.このようにして,同じ人々が或いは「贼」となり「民」となり,あるいは 「商」となり「盗」となったのである. 本论は, 同じ人々が异なる情势のもとで异なる呼称を赋与されている事実を分析し, 人々 について改めて考察を加えるとともに,一歩进んで社会変迁の过程をも捉え直そうとする ものである.まず倭寇の学术史を回顾したうえで,社会史的な分析の有効性について提示 する.次に嘉靖年间•庆から天启年间(朝鲜半岛における戦争の影响をうけた万暦年间 は敢えて除外した) •天启から崇祯年间という三つの时期の寇盗の活动状况を分析し,矛 盾があるように见える文献记载から,民と寇,贼と兵の区别とがしばしば混同されうるも のであったことを指摘し,その背景にある実质的な问题について论じた.最后に简洁に结 论を述べたが,纸幅に限りがあることもあって,これらの人々が消失してゆく过程につい ては论じることができなかった(それもまた,これらの人々の実质を述べるためには必要不可欠な作业なのだが) . 百年という时间を通じて,人々の活动形式と名称の主な変化の过程を追うことができた が,その过程はとりもなおさず社会の変化过程でもあり,様々な段阶の常态と非常事态が せめぎあっていたのである. 动乱と贸易はもとよりよく论じられてきたテーマではあるが, この二者は往々にして対立しているとみなされてきた.しかし如上の分析を通じて,この 二者は同一の背景のもとにおこった同质の活动であったことがわかる.人々は変化してい ないのに,歴史がその叙述を変化させたのだ.16 - 17 世纪の中国东南沿海部は,この ような分析に绝好の时间と空间を提供しているのである. (作成:神戸大学大学院人文学研究科 滨田麻矢)

The ideal of the cultured warrior is a recurrent theme in premodern Japanese writings. This paper aims to provide a critical analysis of discourses on violence and/in knowledge as synthesized in the motto bunbu nidō 文武二道, the “double path of writing and warring.”
Recent scholarship on the topic has shown how the bunbu binary changed constantly over time, adapting to the contingencies of each historical juncture. Between the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the weakening of Ashikaga authority opened the way for regional potentates, whose claim to power often found its legitimating source in this rhetorical weapon. Prescriptive textbooks from those years promote the “civil virtues” (bun) as an indispensable prerequisite for any would-be leader, exhorting him to pursue a variety of interests for the sake of good governance. However, the acquisition of cultural capital from literacy alone was arguably insufficient in an age of discord; thus the need arose to establish tighter control through the exercise of force (bu)—if not materially, at least discursively. As a consequence, contemporary warrior house precepts displayed a growing interest in the military sphere, significantly altering the bunbu equilibrium as it was expounded in previous sources.
This paper sheds new light on medieval social representations by comparing the didactic pamphlet Sekyōshō (Mirror of the World) and other texts written by warriors of different provenance and status. In particular, I argue that the recursive trope of bunbu served the purpose of empowering an ever-shifting rule, substantiating warriors’ essential traits and justifying their political primacy in inter- and intra-class conflicts. Furthermore, I show how this notion and the varying degrees of its components (bun/bu) spread across social classes and—borrowing Pierre Bourdieu’s expression—emerged as a peculiar form of symbolic violence.

https://sites.google.com/view/ajls/annual-meeting/proceedings/pajls-19-violence?authuser=0

From the beginning, ours has been a land
Where the gods protect the emperor.
The vow of this god in particular
Illumines the night
Like the light of the moon.
The waters of Iwashimizu flow ceaselessly,
And as long as the stream runs on
Living beings are released.
How glorious is the god's compassion!
Truly this is an auspicious time.


These lines express the true theme of the play. The work presents an image of Hachiman in his tutelary aspect; this is the Heian conception of the god, and that most closely associated with the Iwashimizu shrine and the protection of the emperor. Near the end of the play Hachiman is revealed as a Bodhisattva, the symbol of profound and eternal compassion. But the Bodhisattva is seen as having a political function: not only does he release living beings, but he protects the emperor as well.

This companion introduces the connections between early medieval societies that have previously been studied in isolation. By bringing together nineteen experts on different regions across the globe, from Oceania to Europe and beyond, it transcends conventional disciplinary boundaries and synthesizes parallel historiographical narratives.

The period 600-900 CE witnessed important historical developments, such as the establishment of a Southeast Asian thalassocracy by the Shailendra dynasty and the expansion of the Frankish polity under Charlemagne on the far ends of Eurasia and the consolidation of the Abbasid and Tang empires in between. A Companion to the Global Early Middle Ages integrates these contemporaneous processes and presents new insights into a neglected phase of world history

"THE POLITICAL MEANING OF THE HACHIMAN CULT

IN ANCIENT AND EARLY MEDIEVAL JAPAN



ROSS LYNN BENDER


This is a study of the state cult of the Shinto deity Hachiman from the eighth century through early medieval times. During this period there flourished three major state shrines to Hachiman: Usa, an ancient shrine in Kyushu of uncertain origin which gained the patronage of the Nara court; Iwashimizu, founded near Kyoto in the ninth century, and supported by the Heian emperors; and Tsurugaoka, sponsored by the military government at Kamakura. The entries in official historical chronicles describing the worship of Hachiman at these shrines form the basic source material for this study. My purpose in analyzing these fragmentary accounts of the body of beliefs which I term the state cult of Hachiman is to identify political ideas embodied in the Hachiman faith.

The first chapter describes the rise of the Usa Shrine from obscurity to national prominence, and emphasizes that the Hachiman oracles given through a medium at Usa were an important reason for that development. The role of the Hachiman belief in the crisis of 769, when the Buddhist priest Dokyo attempted to usurp the throne by claiming Hachiman's support, is the subject of Chapter Two. In this crisis of legitimacy, the deity Hachiman was looked to as an arbiter to decide who should rule Japan.

Chapter Three is a study of the new identities, those of Great Bodhisattva and Imperial Ancestor, which Hachiman acquired in the early Heian period, and of the imperial tutelary cult which developed at Iwashimizu on the basis of these identities. Hachiman, bot in his role as imperial ancestor and as bodhisattva, was viewed as a divine guardian of the state and of the emperor.

The development of the association of the warrior clan of the Minamoto with Hachiman at Tsurugaoka Shrine is analyzed in Chapter Four. This chapter emphasizes that the Minamoto worshipped Hachiman as a tutelary deity and as a source of legitimacy for their new military government, and not just as a god of war.

The fifth chapter examines the images of Hachiman in selected medieval literary works. Three historical aspects, or stages, of the cult described in the previous chapters -- the oracular, tutelary, and martial -- are used as classifications of the Hachiman material in those works.

In the conclusion I argue that the political meaning of the Hachiman cult throughout the five and a half centuries studied was that the body of beliefs about Hachiman comprised ideas concerning legitimacy -- the right to exercise political power. This body of beliefs was a consistent and coherent system of thought, even though it was not fully articulated as political philosophy."

Western audiences have become familiar with the great gems of classical and medieval Japanese literature.  Four translations into English have been made of Genji Monogatari and at least three of Heike Monogatari and renditions of these classics exist in almost all European languages. By contrast the ancient Japanese classics have been neglected. Only recently has there been a new blossoming of studies and translations of Kojiki, Nihon Shoki, Man’yōshū, and Shoku Nihongi.

The paper argues that the well-established distinction between "formal" / "public" (hare) and "informal" / "private" (ke) poetry in waka studies not only fails to describe adequately the styles it purports to illustrate but actively hinders a more accurate understanding of the literary cultures to which it is applied. After briefly reviewing the debate on formal and informal styles in waka scholarship and a brief analysis of the zōtōka ("poetic dialogues") as a particular kind of poetic communication, I provide close readings of the personal poetry collections of Fujiwara no Morosuke (907-960) and Fujiwara no Kishi (929-985) in order to show that, when viewed against its historical context, so-called "private" poetry was as politically significant and as consequential for the state as its formal counterpart, albeit in a different way. Whereas formal, daiei-style composition reflected and celebrated the vertical, emperor-centric structure of the ritsuryō state, everyday exchanges between court aristocrats were the perfect literary complement to the "privatized," cooperative, and consensus-based order now known as the "court-centered polity" (ōchō kokka).

The Shoku Nihongi (Chronicles of Japan, Continued) is the official court history of eighth-century Japan. Presented to the court of Emperor Kanmu in two recensions, 794 and 797, it comprises the annals of the Japanese imperial court from 697 to 791. This voluminous chronicle, five volumes in the standard edition, contains an enormous amount of information on the imperial institution, economic and demographic history, and also a great amount of detail on the system of court ranks instituted in the Taihō Ritsuryō, promulgated in 701 and 702. In this study I present briefly data on the total numbers of court ranks appearing in Shoku Nihongi, as well as information on the growth of the system over the forty volumes, or maki, of the chronicle. The raw data appears in a matrix developed in an MS Excel spreadsheet and available here: https://hcommons.org/docs/court-rank-in-shoku-nihongi-rank-matrix/. Below are a number of preliminary charts and graphs based on this data. These are merely suggestions, and those students with an interest in the subject are welcome to make use of the data in any way they might see fit. Note that the old system of court ranks instituted by Emperor Tenmu gives way almost immediately to the new Ritsuryō system. The data were compiled by searching for each occurrence of the 112 ranks appearing in Shoku Nihongi in each of the forty maki. This produced a gross count of 9,929 instances. The largest single court rank, that of Jr Fifth Lower, appeared 2,555 times. The next largest was Jr Fifth Upper, with a total frequency of 1,020. This demonstrates that the bulk of the court aristocracy held these ranks. Obviously there is much repetition, since individuals with the same rank are counted repeatedly, so that a putative net count of individual courtiers would be much smaller. However, one possible avenue of research might be to identify particular courtiers and to trace their ascent through the bureaucracy over the eighth century. Fujiwara no Asomi Nakamaro would be an excellent test case for such an approach. The first graph shows the frequency of each type of court rank, with the obvious peak at 2,555, while the second shows the growth over time, with a trendline. Note that the table on page 3 gives a breakdown of the forty maki by date. Some maki cover only a single year in the western calendar, while others extend over as many as six years. The final two graphs show the growth over time of the Jr Fifth rank and the top six ranks.

Unlike the Buddhists of the Southern Song, Japanese Buddhists believed that the Final Dharma (Ch. mofa; J. mappō) would come in 1052, and they prepared for the calamity by building sutra mounds. Sutra burial was particularly popular between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries in Japan, but the situation was completely different for China: no sutra mounds have yet been found there. Many Chinese objects—porcelain sutra containers, ceramic jars, bronze mirrors, and copper coins—however, have been excavated from sutra mounds in Japan. An investigation of the distribution and the functions of the Chinese objects sheds light on the transportation routes of objects from the continent, the influence of the Song on Heian and Kamakura Japan, and the Japanese perception of Chinese objects. Archaeological reports from Japan and China, inscriptions on sutra containers, and Chinese local gazetteers show how the original purposes of most Chinese objects changed when buried in sutra mounds. The discovery of porcelain sutra containers is even more noteworthy. So far they have only been found in Japan. Taiwan scholar Xie Mingliang has suggested that they were produced in southeast China specifically for the Japanese market. Yet a comparison with Liao wooden pagoda-shaped containers and porcelain pagoda-shaped bottles suggests an alternative explanation: these porcelain sutra containers were manufactured in Liao territory. The documentary record of trade contacts between Liao and Japan is scarce, but archaeological evidence suggests a larger-than-expected trade circle.

Muhammad b. Sulayman al-Wali était, au cours des dernières décennies du XVIIe siècle, un érudit renommé dans les régions du Baghirmi et du Bornou actuels. La définition radicale du mécréant qu´il avait développée était différente des idées du commun des mortels, mais était devenue influente sur sa génération et les générations futures. Les faits historiques sur la vie d'al-Wali sont rares, mais elles nous permettent de suivre l´évolution de ses idées les plus importantes. D'une part, ces idées indiquent une excellente éducation dans les sciences musulmanes; de l'autre, elles répondent aux préoccupations de la population de son environnement local en ce qui concerne l´identité musulmane, qu´elle soit «réelle» ou «fictive».

Ethnopharmacological relevance: Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) has a recorded history of over 2000 years that may be used to authenticate and guide modern treatments for disease, and also identify neglected but potentially useful treatment strategies. However this process is often based on oversimplistic conceptions of tradition and history that fail to take into account the dynamic nature of these ‘traditions’ and underestimate the importance of contextual factors in their interpretation. Materials and methods: As part of a process of defining good practice for a clinical trial of CHM for recurrent urinary tract infections, a selective review of classical Chinese medical texts was undertaken to investigate the historical treatment of urinary diseases specified by the traditional category of Lin

Visual and cultural analysis of Kawakami Sumio's Haraiso (Paradise, 1951), a handprinted book pairing text and images on the Christian paradise theme. The book is in the Pulverer Collection of Japanese illustrated books of the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC and is featured on The World of the Japanese Illustrated Book website. My commentary, along with a complete set of readable images of the book, may be found here: http://pulverer.si.edu/node/439/title/1.

Table of Contents:

The Junnin Interregnum and the Nakamaro Supremacy
Foreign Relations: Parhae, Tang, and Silla
Coinage, Inflation, and Natural Disasters
Political Theology: A Dialog Between Throne and Officialdom

Paperback:

https://www.amazon.com/Nara-Japan-749-757-Translation-Nihongi/dp/1517638429/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1537532125&sr=1-4

Kindle edition:

https://www.amazon.com/Nara-Japan-749-757-Translation-Nihongi-ebook/dp/B07HC1STJ3/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1537532125&sr=1-4

"I was greatly impressed by Dr. Ross Bender's valuable article, 'The Hachiman Cult and the Dokyo Incident', in Monumenta Nipponica, XXXIV:2, but I would like to discuss one major issue which is of much significance as regards the cultural and political history of eighth-century Japan.

We can sum up one of the most important conclusions of this article by quoting Dr. Bender's own words:'...during the Nara period there was a crisis in the emperor's relations with the gods; since the gods were appealed to as an ultimate sanction for human reign, this meant a crisis of legitimacy' (p.146).

Nobody can deny the growing power of Buddhism in the Nara period and its influence over political issues in Japan was quite significant. But at the same time, one should not overestimate this power, and this may be proved by a qualitative and quantitative analysis of Nihon Shoki and Shoku Nihongi."

The article discusses Ki no Tsurayuki's strategic othering of " China " (Kara, Morokoshi) in order to theorize an independent " Yamato " cultural identity. It opens with an overview of the debate on the wa-kan issue in Japanese and Anglo-American scholarship and then moves on to explore Tsurayuki's use of the wa-kan dychotomy in such texts as the Kokinsh! prefaces (905) and the Tosa nikki (935). Although Tsurayuki often appears to adopt a regionalist stance in his writings, I stress the strategic nature of these claims (his priority was to exalt his genre of choice, not to lambast Chinese forms), and argue against seeing the making of the Kokinsh! as the beginning of a cultural move away from China. Rather, cases like Tsurayuki's point to the multiplicity of functions that Kara played within Heian culture. With remarkable pliability, Heian Japan's " China " was both unquestionably part of the Heian self and a convenient inner Other in opposition to which new personal, political, ethnic, and cultural identities could be fashioned.

Western audiences have become familiar with the great gems of classical and medieval Japanese literature.  Four translations into English have been made of Genji Monogatari and at least three of Heike Monogatari and renditions of these classics exist in almost all European languages. By contrast the ancient Japanese classics have been neglected. Only recently has there been a new blossoming of studies and translations of Kojiki, Nihon Shoki, Man’yōshū, and Shoku Nihongi.

This PowerPoint presentation is to accompany the article.