Haruo Shirane
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English
Description
Bringing together scholars from across the world, Haruo Shirane presents a fascinating portrait of The Tale of Genji's reception and reproduction over the past thousand years. The essays examine the canonization of the work from the late Heian through the medieval, Edo, Meiji, Taisho, Showa, and Heisei periods, revealing its profound influence on a variety of genres and fields, including modern nation building. They also consider parody, pastiche,...
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English
Description
Elegant representations of nature, explicitly the four seasons, fill a wide range of Japanese genres and media-from poetry and screen painting to tea ceremony, flower arrangement, and annual observances. Haruo Shirane shows, for the first time, how, when, and why this occurred and explicates the richly encoded social, religious, and political meanings these representations embodied. Refuting the long held belief that this phenomenon reflects agrarian...
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English
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This collection of setsuwa, or "explanatory tale" literature, compiled by a monk in eighth- or ninth-century Japan, records the spread of Buddhist ideas in Japan and ways in which Buddhism's principles were adapted to the conditions of Japanese society. Beginning its survey in the time before the introduction of Buddhism to Japan, the text captures the effects of the nation's initial contact with Buddhism--introduced by the king of the Korean state...
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English
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The Tales of the Heike is one of the most influential works in Japanese literature and culture, remaining even today a crucial source for fiction, drama, and popular media. Originally written in the mid-thirteenth century, it features a cast of vivid characters and chronicles the epic Genpei war, a civil conflict that marked the end of the power of the Heike and changed the course of Japanese history. The Tales of the Heike focuses on the lives of...
Author
Language
English
Description
Haruo Shirane and Burton Watson, renowned translators and scholars, introduce English-speaking readers to the vivid tradition of early and medieval Japanese folktales. Taken from seven major anthologies of anecdotal (setsuwa) literature compiled between the ninth and thirteenth centuries, these dramatic and often amusing stories offer a major view of the foundations of Japanese culture. Out of thousands of setsuwa, Shirane has selected thirty-eight...