Japanese History

In the Amaterasu eclipse story, the gods use a rope to draw her out of the cave. Ropes have a long tradition in Shinto as symbols of divinity and authority. Often you see ropes as part of Shinto shrines, as in this sacred tree:

You see a similar rope as part of the ceremonial garb worn by Sumo Yokozuna — the title is usually translated “Grand Champion” but literally means “horizontal rope”!

There are some truly extraordinary shrine ropes, though, created as part of massive community festivals:

On 3 lists:

• http://japanese-history.suite101.com/article.cfm/womens_status_in_japan, “Women’s Status in Medieval Japan: Female Marriage and Labour in Japan’s 14th-17th Centuries.”
• www.womeninworldhistory.com/sample-08.html – on women warriors

On 2 lists:

• www2.gol.com/users/friedman/writings/p1.html, “The Changing Roles of Women in Japanese Society,”
• http://www.koryu.com/library/wwj1.html – on women warriors.

On one list:

• http://asianhistory.about.com/od/imagegalleries/ss/samuraiwomen.htm – female Samurai.
• http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/_generate/JAPAN.html – compilation of female writers from Japan
• http://homepages.which.net/~james.phillips/hist.htm female wrestlers in Japan
• http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art153.asp – brief but informative reality of what exactly a Geisha is, and how their were different “ranks” among them, and how this was, in many ways, far from the ideal life for a young Japanese girl.
• http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art24550.asp female samurai rule in ancient Japan.
• http://www.columbia.edu/~hds2/BIB95/03womens_studies_kline.html – Resources in Japanese Women’s History.
• http://www.immortalgeisha.com
• http://www.iz2.or.jp/english/fukusyoku/kosode/50.htm – ancient hairstyles of Japanese Women,
• http://www.samurai-archives.com/women.html – specific women famous in Japanese history. It covers their roles in history and society.
• http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/ANCJAPAN/WOMEN.HTM – Women and Women’s Communities in Ancient Japan
• www.iop.or.jp/0313/kurihara.pdf, “A History of Women in Japanese Buddhism: Niceren’s Perspectives on the Enlightenment of Women,” told of how Buddhism helped women, but also injured them by labeling women “impure.”

Due midnight, Tuesday (8/25) by email to me (jdresner@pittstate.edu)

Spend a little time (half an hour to an hour) researching the history of Japanese women on the internet. Keep track of the websites you visit, and make note of any themes, continuties, oddities or great finds. Write a short summary of your experience (400 words, max) and include five to ten of the most interesting (best, worst, whatever) websites, with notes about what makes them interesting. Email your results to me by midnight on Tuesday, and also bring a copy to class.

There’s a Michael Dirda essay on the newest translation of one of the great early social satires.

In what is called her Pillow Book — Makura no Soshi — Sei Shonagon celebrates the highly refined and ordered world of the imperial court, in particular what Arthur Waley once called “its rampant aestheticism and sophisticated unmorality.” In lists, mini-essays on love and life, descriptions of rainstorms and religious ceremonies, portraits of witty courtiers and their even more witty ladies, in romantic anecdotes and fragments of short stories and in her own occasional personal confessions, Sei jots down anything and everything that catches her attention. The result is a virtually unique book — a mixture of diary, aide-memoire, naturalist’s journal, gossip column and oral history. It is an early form of what the Japanese call zuihitsu, meaning occasional writings or random notes. At its heart, Makura no Soshi simply records quite ordinary things, memorializing in its darting, quicksilver fashion the wonderful dailiness of life.

He goes on to discuss the book in more detail, and ends up discussing the history of the translations:

As with The Tale of Genji, there are currently three important English versions of The Pillow Book. In 1928 Arthur Waley published a slender volume that mixes in his own commentary with a translation of about a quarter of the original text. In some ways, his is the most appealing version for the general reader: Waley writes beautifully and he emphasizes the best passage of Sei. The most scholarly translation is that by Ivan Morris, first published in 1967, in two volumes, the second being entirely devoted to notes and appendices. Morris’s text generally feels more careful and punctilious, sometimes even academic, as one might expect of a contribution to the Columbia College Program of Translations from the Oriental Classics. But Morris certainly knows Heian literature, as he is also the author of The World of the Shining Prince, the best popular account of “Court Life in Ancient Japan”; it is an absolutely enthralling work of cultural history.

The newest translation of The Pillow Book is Meredith McKinney’s recent Penguin, which uses an alternate base text to that chosen by Morris and gives Sei a more modern, colloquial voice. It also provides excellent maps, glossaries, and notes. This is now the obvious edition for anyone wishing to read the text in its entirety and is the one I quote from. Yet none of the three translators holds an absolute monopoly for the passionate admirer of Sei’s work. Consider that among “Things that make you feel nostalgic,” McKinney includes this item: “On a rainy day when time hangs heavy, searching out an old letter that touched you deeply at the time you received it.” But here is Morris: “It is a rainy day and one is feeling bored. To pass the time, one starts looking through some old papers. And then one comes across the letters of a man one used to love.” The McKinney version is doubtless accurate in its succinctness and may even reflect a slightly different original text, but Morris’s words catch us by the heart.

I’m pretty sure that the Genji translations he’s referring to are the Waley, Seidensticker, and Tyler editions. The McCullough translation of the Pillow Book that we’ll be reading doesn’t include that passage, so I can’t compare it directly, but if McKinney’s version is “doubtless accurate” then Morris’ translation includes interpolations that alter the meaning. Not unusual for older translations, but as an historian (rather than a literateur) I prefer accuracy to imposed emotion.

The history of Japanese women is a complex and challenging topic, which offers a lot of different windows into Japanese history and culture and into the study of gender and society. There is no good textbook for a course like this, so I will provide historical and cultural context, and the readings for the course will mostly be the writings and experiences of Japanese women themselves. Here’s the books I’ve ordered, in more or less the order we’re going to read them:

• Murasaki Shikibu, Diary of Lady Murasaki, trans. Richard Bowring, Penguin, 1999. ISBN  9780140435764
• Karen Brazell, ed. and trans., The Confessions of Lady Nijo, Stanford UP, 1973. ISBN 9780804709309
• Yamakawa Kikue, Kate Wildman Nakai (Translator), Women of the Mito Domain: Recollections of Samurai Family Life, 1997, Stanford UP. ISBN 9780804731492
• Robert John Smith, Ella L. Wiswell, Women of Suye Mura, 1982, Chicago UP. ISBN 9780226763453
• Mikiso Hane, ed. and trans., Reflections on the Way to the Gallows: Rebel Women in Prewar Japan. University of California Press, 1993. ISBN 9780520084216
• Elisabeth Bumiller, The Secrets of Mariko: A Year in the Life of a Japanese Woman and her Family, Vintage/Random House, 1995. ISBN 9780679772620

Feel free to get them from any source: The bookstore should have them.

Japanese history from early years to 1700 covers a lot of interesting ground. You’re welcome to purchase these books anywhere, of course, but the bookstore does have them on order.

The basic textbook, covering all the basic historical narrative, is:

• Conrad Totman, Japan Before Perry, UCal Press, 2nd edition (2008). ISBN 9780520254077

This is actually a revised edition of a textbook I used myself as an undergraduate: it’s well-done, but, like any textbook it has omissions, flaws, and sometimes picks one interpretation from several available. Textbooks are great, but they’re not perfect, and I’ll say so when I think so.

A big part of this course is going to be reading and thinking about primary sources, original materials (in translation). For basic political, religious and intellectual sources, we’ll use:

• David J. Lu, Japan: A Documentary History. Volume 1: The Dawn of History to the Late Tokugawa Period. M. E. Sharpe/East Gate, 1997. ISBN 9781563249075

For a survey of cultural materials from the classical and medieval ages, some of the most interesting literature in world history, we’ll use:

• Helen Craig McCullough, ed., Classical Japanese Prose: An Anthology. Stanford University Press, 1990. ISBN 9780804719605

But a survey isn’t enough, and some literature rewards reading in detail and extensively. To get a closer look at the two great civilizations of Early Japan — aristocratic and warrior — we’ll read large chunks of the landmark works which defined excellence in Japanese society for centuries:

• Helen Craig McCullough, trans., Genji & Heike: Selections from The Tale of Genji and The Tale of Heike. Stanford University Press, 1994. ISBN 9780804722582

FInally, to get a closer look at the 17th century, the early Tokugawa period, and to give you a chance to read and discuss a great work of historical scholarship, we’ll use one of my favorite historians:

• Mary E. Berry, Japan in Print: Information and Nation in the Early Modern Period, University of California Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-520-25417-6

The first three works listed — Totman, Lu and the Prose collection — will be used from the first weeks of class, so if you’re going to order them online, please do so early. The Genji and Heike collection will be used a few weeks in, and the Berry book will be late in the semester.

I’ll be in my office in the morning from 10-12 on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and Friday afternoon until about 3. If you want to pick up graded tests and papers, that’s the time to do it. If you want to check your grade, you can come in, or send me an email.

If you want your graded final back, you can give me a self-addressed stamped envelope with your final, or come get it in the Fall — I don’t throw these things away for years.

Remember: your final essays are due in my office no later than 2 pm on Friday the 15th.

The answer to a question we had about drinking habits. According to the WHO, the US and Japan are roughly equal in per capita alcohol consumption.

Japan Focus has a long discussion of differing views of the Japanese economic slowdown and our own. My own, shorter, take on this from a year ago is here.

Japan Focus also has a long discussion of Japanese discourses on WWII and the US-Japan relationship. It’s fairly raw stuff, and very long. If you do read it, make sure you get through the whole thing: just reading the first parts without the rest would be too depressing (also a false impression).

As I mentioned in the email, I’m shifting the last few weeks to accomodate our not having class today: see the schedule here. We’ll do the second midterm like the first one: you design questions for the second half material, and fold that discussion in with the biography presentation day.