The Japanese medieval age consists of the Kamakura and Muromachi periods (from approximately 1185 to 1600). During this time, the political power was switching from the imperial family to a militaristic government. In addition, civil wars (from 1156 to 1568) were increasing throughout Japan. This change of centrality in society’s focus from court to warriors shifted the perception and style of Japanese literature.
As we learned during the first half of the course, the Heian period focused their attentions on elegance, aesthetics (of actions or objects), and relationships (specifically the feelings of love, longing, and waiting). This is reflected that period’s literature. In “Genji Monogatari,” the characters continuously behaved elegantly and gracefully spoke in poems. “Makura no Sōshi” acted as a reference and guide for appropriately refined court behavior. While various nikki, such as “Izumi Shikibu Nikki” and “Kagerō Nikki,” gave readers insight into the lives and relationships of people in the Heian period court.
In comparison, tone of medieval age Japanese literature becomes more intense, realistic, and darker in scope as focus shifts more to the lives and interests of people outside of court. In particular, the warrior class contributed a lot to Japanese literature during the Kamakura and Muromachi periods, because of the increase in civil wars and shift in political power. This is clearly evident in the works of gunki monogatari, especially “Heike Monogatari,” because the tales depict inelegant things that were not to be mentioned in Heian period literature, such as blood and gore.
The illustration of the atrocities of war shows the increase in battles and wars of the period. This coincides with the European m...
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...rical poetry,” aside from tanka, chōka, and haikai (McCullough 558).
Although the political power shifted and dominant warrior class did not put as much emphasis on the arts as members of the court, Japanese literature was still preserved because the people held it in value and continued to view it as a denotation of refinement. As a result, there were various changes and innovations to Japanese literature when entering into the medieval period. This included literature written from new perspectives, the spread of religion, and new poetic devices (including one new form of poetry) were created.
Works Cited
LaFleur, William R. The Karma of Words: Buddhism and the Literary Arts in Medieval Japan. 1983: University of California Press, Berkeley.
McCullough, Helen Craig. Classical Japanese Prose: An Anthology. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990.
World War I is marked by its extraordinary brutality and violence due to the technological advancement in the late 18th century and early 19th century that made killing easier, more methodical and inhumane. It was a war that saw a transition from traditional warfare to a “modern” warfare. Calvary charges were replaced with tanks; swords were replaced with machine guns; strategic and decisive battles were r...
Yu, Han. “Memorial on Buddhism”. Making of the Modern World 12: Classical & Medieval Tradition. Trans. Richard F. Burton. Ed. Janet Smarr. La Jolla: University Readers, 2012. 111-112. Print.
Musui’s Story is the exciting tale of a low class samurai’s life towards the end of the Tokugawa era. Although one would normally imagine a samurai to be a noble illustrious figure, Musui’s Story portrays the rather ignominious life of an unemployed samurai. Nonetheless, this primary account demonstrates the tenacity of samurai values and privileges present at the end of the Tokugawa shogunate. The social status of samurai had been elevated to such a state that even someone like Musui was easily able to gain influence in everyday affairs with his privileges. Not only that, but he had retained his values as a warrior and still kept great pride for his arts in weaponry.
Throughout history artists have used art as a means to reflect the on goings of the society surrounding them. Many times, novels serve as primary sources in the future for students to reflect on past history. Students can successfully use novels as a source of understanding past events. Different sentiments and points of views within novels serve as the information one may use to reflect on these events. Natsume Soseki’s novel Kokoro successfully encapsulates much of what has been discussed in class, parallels with the events in Japan at the time the novel takes place, and serves as a social commentary to describe these events in Japan at the time of the Mejeii Restoration and beyond. Therefore, Kokoro successfully serves as a primary source students may use to enable them to understand institutions like conflicting views Whites by the Japanese, the role of women, and the population’s analysis of the Emperor.
Based on Murasaki Shikibu’s “The Tale of Genji” the ideal man and the ideal woman of the Heian Court can easily be discerned as not truly existing, with the main character, Genji, being the nearly satirical example of what was the ideal man, and descriptions of the many women in the story as prescription of the ideal woman with the young Murasaki playing a similar role to that of Genji in the story.
“Until the seventeenth century, Japanese Literature was privileged property. …The diffusion of literacy …(and) the printed word… created for the first time in Japan the conditions necessary for that peculiarly modern phenomenon, celebrity” (Robert Lyons Danly, editor of The Narrow Road of the Interior written by Matsuo Basho; found in the Norton Anthology of World Literature, Second Edition, Volume D). Celebrity is a loose term at times; it connotes fortune, flattery, and fleeting fame. The term, in this modern era especially, possesses an aura of inevitable transience and glamorized superficiality. Ironically, Matsuo Basho, (while writing in a period of his own newfound celebrity as a poet) places an obvious emphasis on the transience of life within his travel journal The Narrow Road of the Interior. This journal is wholly the recounting of expedition and ethos spanning a fifteen hundred mile feat, expressed in the form of a poetic memoir. It has been said that Basho’s emphasis on the Transient is directly related to his and much of his culture’s worldview of Zen Buddhism, which is renowned for its acknowledgement of the Transient as a tool for a more accurate picture of life and a higher achievement of enlightenment. Of course, in the realization that Basho does not appear to be unwaveringly religious, perhaps this reflection is not only correlative to Zen Buddhism, but also to his perspective on his newfound celebrity. Either way, Matsuo Basho is a profound lyricist who eloquently seeks to objectify and relay the concept of transience even in his own name.
Stories about war and implements of such can be observed throughout the course of Japanese history. This shows the prevalence of martial training and the profession of arms as a tradition that has not faded since ancient times (Friday and Humitake 13).
Being a student interested in the field of biology, one knows that studying life in the past plays an important role in the history of organisms that lived on this earth. Similarly, being Japanese, studying the past of how Japanese were plays an important role in Japanese history. Despite all the general aspects of life that have changed from the Heian period, the one idea that has definitely not changed is the romantic relationships between a man and woman. Though the general concept is the same, from reading The Tale of Genji, it is what was considered the ideal woman and ideal man that were both surprising and thus worth discussing.
Due to the geographic location of Japan and China as well as the association between both cultures, many early works of Japanese literature were heavily influenced by Chinese figures and Chinese culture. Because of this intimate relationship between Japan and China, the majority of Japanese literary works up to the end of the early modern literary period (ending around 1868) was dominated by Chinese cultural references and figures. However during Japan’s opening to the West, this dominance by Chinese literature and culture was reduced as an influx of Western ideals transformed the Japanese literary scene into a fusion of East and West, a fusion that can still be seen today as it permeates a great deal of Japanese popular culture and society.
Murasaki Shikibu’s Tale of Genji, set in the Heian Period, gives a good idea of what the model Heian man and Heian woman should look like. Genji himself is like a physical embodiment of male perfection, while a large portion of the Broom Tree chapter outlines the ideal of a woman—that it is men who decide what constitutes a perfect woman, and the fact that even they cannot come to decide which traits are the best, and whether anyone can realistically possess all of those traits shows that the function of women in the eyes of men of that period was largely to cater to their husbands and households. Broken down, there are similarities and differences between the standard for Heian men and women, and the Tale of Genji provides excellent examples of characters who fit into their respective gender roles.
Shirane Haruo. et al. Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology 1600-1900. New York: Colombia University Press, 2002. Print.
Asian American Literature Asian Americans seem to be fighting an unwinnable battle when it comes to the content of their writing. Writers are criticized by whites for speaking out against discrimination, and by their fellow Asian Americans for contributing to the stereotypes through their silence. I believe that Asian Americans should include politics in their writing as they so choose, but should not feel obligated to do so, as Frank Chin suggests. For those Asian Americans who make known their discontent with the injustice and discrimination that they feel, in the white culture, this translates to attacking American superiority and initiating insecurities. For Mura, a writer who dared to question why an Asian American was not allowed to audition for an Asian American role, his punishment was “the ostracism and demonization that ensued”.
The concept of a warrior has changed little in history; one who fights to defend his or her ideals or society. Yet the methods and tools of a warrior have evolved into something more complex and dynamic today. From the three novels—The Nibelungenlied, Njal’s Saga, and Beowolf—readers are exposed to the concept of a warrior in vastly different contexts. First, the philosophy of the warrior in the novels and modern day will be examined in the essay, such as the goals and code of conduct. Furthermore, who is a warrior today as opposed to warriors then? And lastly, the key difference lies in the technology and the battlefield. Knights fought for honor and idealized death in battle in order to gain admission to Valhalla, the Hall of the Fallen. Knights of legend used weapons from the familiar swords and spears to phenomenal ones such as an invisibility cloak. Furthermore, knights and warriors seldom worried about legal disputes or the law; they were more concerned with alliances, honor, and love. Women were also forbidden from engaging in battle since it was deeply looked down upon and even deemed wretched. However in modern society, the concept of the warrior remains the same but has grown several layers of complexity. Technology has taken weapons to a whole new height from rifles to unmanned predator drones. Battles are fought not only on land and sea, but also in the air and the cyber domain. In fact, honor has taken a smaller role in modern society and replaced with the concept of patriotism, pride, and family tradition. Furthermore, it is now common for women to be in the military. There ...
The Heian period(794-1185), the so-called golden age of Japanese culture, produced some of the finest works of Japanese literature.1 The most well known work from this period, the Genji Monogatari, is considered to be the “oldest novel still recognized today as a major masterpiece.”2 It can also be said that the Genji Monogatari is proof of the ingenuity of the Japanese in assimilating Chinese culture and politics. As a monogatari, a style of narrative with poems interspersed within it, the characters and settings frequently allude to Chinese poems and stories. In addition to displaying the poetic prowess that the Japanese had attained by this time period, the Genji Monogatari also demonstrates how politics and gender ideals were adopted from the Chinese.
It has been seen that though Europe and Japan did not have any kind of contact during the period of medieval, but still they have same socio political systems. These systems are however labeled as feudal. The Feudal system of Japan and Europe are built on the system of hereditary classes. In this hierarchy, the nobles were at the very top, which then included the warriors and then the tenant’s farmers. The bad standard found was based on the lack of social mobility where the children of farmers also were becoming farmers while on the other hand, children of lords become ladies and lords. In Europe and Japan, there are constant warfare that are made warriors in the society and are also the most important class in Japan and Europe. These warriors are named as “Samurai” in Japan and “Knights” in Europe.