ARTS2908 Course Outline
School of Humanities and Languages
ARTS2908, Premodern Japan
Status, Sex and Power
Semester 1, 2015
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
Course Staff and Contact Details
Course Details
Learning and Teaching Rationale
Teaching Strategies
Course Assessment
Assignment Extensions
Attendance
Class Clash
Academic Honesty and Plagiarism
Course Schedule
Course Resources
Course Evaluation and Development
Student Support
Grievances
Other Information
Japanese Names & Eras
Weekly Tutorial Guide
0
ARTS2908 Course Outline
1. Course Staff and Contact Details
Course Convenor (Lecturer & Tutor)
Name
Dr Hélène Bowen Raddeker
Phone
02 9385 2335
Consultation Time THURS 11-12 am & 3-4 pm
Room
Email
Morven Brown 361
[email protected]
1. Course Details
Units of Credit (UoC)
Course Description
6
This course offers a thematic overview of Japanese history from
prehistory to the Meiji Imperial Restoration of 1868. Since the
course features a special focus on women’s and gender history
(which includes social constructions of both femininity and
masculinity), it may be counted towards a minor in Women’s and
Gender Studies, as well as majors in History and Japanese and
Asian Studies.
The course includes a focus on historiography—a consideration
of issues in women’s and gender history, as well as different
approaches to other aspects of Japan’s history. Since it is
mostly a cultural and social history, we will not only discuss the
ideas and social practices of ruling ‘classes’ (civil aristocrats and
then bushi/warriors), but also look at popular Buddhism, folk
religion, peasant rebellion and commoner resistance, and
aspects of popular culture. In other words, we pay a lot of
attention to differences between the different ‘classes’ or, rather,
status groups in society.
Study Kit readings often include translated primary sources such
as plays, diaries, satirical fiction, legends, treatises, and so on,
not only because they can be more entertaining. Often they are
more revealing than secondary sources such as textbooks, and
also help to refine students’ interpretative skills.
The weekly topics are more varied than the subtitle of ‘Status,
Sex & Power’ would suggest, though central themes in the
course include the situation(s) and role(s) of Japanese women of
different classes from ancient times; gender constructs of
femininity and masculinity in the literature of different ‘classes’
and in scripture; and sexualities (sexual practices/norms and
also the nature of the ‘Meiji Restoration’/revolution.
Course Aims
In this course I aim to encourage students’ recognition both of
cultural difference and traditional Japan’s cultural heterogeneity:
that is, differences in the cultural practices, ideas and identities
1. of different ‘classes’ or status groups, particularly but not only
in connection with gender relations.
Another central aim is to help students refine their skills in
2. gender analysis.
Student Learning
Outcomes
I also seek to encourage a critical or ‘reflective’ (theorized and
3. more sophisticated) approach to interpretation in the discipline
of history
By the conclusion of this course students will have refined
1.
the following academic skills through completing assigned
1
ARTS2908 Course Outline
2.
3.
4.
Graduate Attributes
1.
assessment tasks such as the research proposal and
essay, reflective journals and tutorial participation:
critically evaluating both primary documents and
arguments in secondary sources;
conducting research in a self-motivated and independent
manner;
presenting one’s ideas effectively verbally and in writing;
and achieving an understanding of interdisciplinary
approaches to the study of women, gender and sexualities
in the context of the history of one culture, with particular
attention to intersecting ‘class’ or status differences.
The Learning Outcomes reflect several graduate attributes
identified by the Faculty. The first four below are generic
(common to FASS courses in general), the last three more
specific to this particular course in (Japanese) history:
the skills involved in scholarly enquiry;
2. the capacity for analytical and critical thinking;
the skills required for collaborative and multidisciplinary
3.
work;
4. the skills of effective communication;
an in-depth engagement with the relevant disciplinary
5.
knowledge in its interdisciplinary context;
6. an appreciation of, and respect for, diversity; and
7. an appreciation of, and a responsiveness to, change.
3. Learning and Teaching Rationale
In my history courses I seek to instill in students a more reflective and critical understanding of the
discipline of history through attention to historiography—differing approaches to history—and some of the
epistemological problems associated with history as a knowledge. A familiarity with critical history and
different styles and paradigms of history serves students well, especially those who seek to do Honours in
history or become history teachers in high schools. However, my approach in this course reflects desirable
graduate attributes also with regard its interdisciplinary focus on gender and Asian studies; as well as its
attention to ‘diversity’ or difference, as well as historical change and continuities.
I try to assist students in refining their scholarly skills and ability to work independently through making the
research project central to the course’s assignment tasks. The research component requires that early in
the course each student decide on a research topic, question and approach and submit a research
proposal. I then give detailed written feedback on sources, potential approaches and problems, and so on.
4.
Teaching Strategies
I aim for effective tutorial participation through treating student learning as derived partly from a student’s
peer group, not just from teachers. One thing that I resist is too much recourse to a common mode of
operation in classes (especially when students haven’t done the preparatory reading!) whereby students
ask questions and teachers supply ‘the’ answers in omniscient style. I often encourage students to work
first in small discussion groups so that everyone can get involved, and students learn from each other.
This is designed to encourage those who do not yet have the confidence to speak out in large groups.
The content of my lectures both reflects the above concern with a critical approach to history and is also
based on a belief in the conceptual maturity of university students. I assume that students want to be
challenged intellectually (and do not, for example, expect a history course to be merely an exercise in rote
2
ARTS2908 Course Outline
learning—of ‘the facts’). Whilst I do of course hope that students find my lectures interesting, they are
designed less to entertain than to teach critical thinking, to acquaint students with pertinent
historiographical debates and issues and, by extension, enable them to assess historical documents,
arguments, interpretations and approaches more critically.
5. Course Assessment
Assessment
Task
Length
Weight
Learning
Outcomes
Assessed
Especially 1
&3
Graduate
Attributes
Assessed
Due Date
Especially 4
Ongoing
Facilitation
10%
Quiz
(3@5% ea.)
15%
Especially 1
&3
Especially 2
and 4 to 7
In the tutorials
in weeks 5, 8
and 11
500 words
30%
All
All
26 March
2000 words
45%
All
All
7 May
Research
Proposal &
Bibliography
Research
Essay
Please Note: The Arts and Social Sciences Protocols and Guidelines state:
A student who attends less than 80% of the classes/activities and has not submitted appropriate supporting
documentation to the Course Authority to explain their absence may be awarded a grade of UF
(Unsatisfactory Fail).
The Attendance Guidelines can be found in full at:
https://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/current-students/academic-information/Protocols-Guidelines/
ASSESSMENT DETAILS:
Tutorial Facilitation (10%):
You will be assessed on the basis of your preparation and participation—i.e., not just on the frequency of
your contributions to discussion but also their quality, which of course includes a familiarity with lectures
and set readings. You are expected to help facilitate small group and class discussion by raising issues or
questions you feel are important or interesting—i.e., not just participating by answering questions put to the
class by the lecturer. Each week, you should read the Guide’s introduction to that tutorial’s topic and the
key questions before you begin reading.
Quizzes (3 @ 5% each):
In the tutorials in weeks 5, 8 and 11 you will be expected to complete a quiz on the content particularly of
lectures, though at times questions may be drawn from Study Kit readings. Each quiz will be comprised of
3 multiple choice questions (1% each) and a final question (2%) requiring a brief answer. I don’t go out of
my way to make these quizzes difficult—for e.g., I try to avoid too many questions that rely on your memory
of Japanese names—but there’s no doubt that those who fail to attend lectures (or keep up with lecture
3
ARTS2908 Course Outline
ppts) and don’t do tute reading generally do poorly in them. Of course this can make quite a difference to
final course marks.
Those who miss a quiz tutorial due to illness will have the opportunity to do the quiz the following Thursday
during my first consultation time (11-12am) IF they can provide a medical certificate.
Research Proposal (30%):
To help you develop your research skills, you are first expected to submit a tentative title, essay plan and
bibliography (on the Thursday of week 4, 26 Mar). The research essay is worth a considerable part of the
assessment, and doing a proposal early in the course will encourage you to begin researching it well in
advance of the due date (the Thursday of week 9). Your submission of a written plan will enable your
lecturer/tutor to give you written feedback on the feasibility of the research project of your choice—
concerning the availability of sources, workable approaches, and so on. Of course, submitting a plan that
makes sense will require that you read a little in advance on the topic of your choice. Note that while my
readings lists are extensive, I give extra marks to students who have done good library searches
(comprised of respected academic sources, either books or refereed journals, not Internet drivel!).
The plan itself should be no longer than 500 words (up to about 2 pages of double-line spacing). You may
do it partly but not entirely in point-form, if you wish. You may set your own research essay question, or
choose one already set for weekly tutorial discussions in this Outline. (Note, however, that some questions
may be a bit narrow in focus for a research essay—focused just on one reading in the Kit, for example.)
Feel free to ask your lecturer for advice, verbally or by email, if you are uncertain about your topic, but
remember that the point of submitting a research plan is partly so that I can give each of you written
feedback.
In the proposal you should:
1) give the essay a tentative title (a real title, not an undergrad sort of question)
set out your general topic (e.g. peasant protest);
2) state the issue or question you will address (e.g., How political and/or religious was Tokugawa peasant
protest?);
3) comment on the historiographical significance of the topic/issue (e.g., Japan had a significant tradition of
peasant protest yet this was long ignored in English sources because….?);
4) ideally, also refer to available sources and their approach (and perhaps to how your own approach will
differ: e.g., Marxist and other historians have too often worked within a politics/religion binary as if the two
were so easily separable in peasant protest.....)
5) append a tentative bibliography of sources compiled not only from this Guide (to demonstrate that you
have put some effort into doing a search of library sources, journal articles etc).
6) and, finally, remember that this is an academic paper that must be referenced properly (with either intext/parenthetical references or footnotes, as well as a bibliography). Assignments that fail to do this will be
penalized.
Research Essay (45%)
This is due on the Thursday of week 9 (7 May). Since research and academic writing skills constitute a
central part of your tertiary training, the research project (research proposal and essay) represents well
over half of the assessment for the course. Apart from having to reference and set out the essay properly
(see the guidelines below under assignment submission), remember that the essay should be critical: that
is, problem-oriented or analytical. This means that it should present an argument or interpretation, not
merely a descriptive narrative (or ‘story’). Apart from taking care to acknowledge your sources properly
(i.e., avoid plagiarism), to do well you should try to:
1) research your essay widely;
2) demonstrate in it a good critical awareness of the issue at hand;
3) structure your argument clearly and well; and
4
ARTS2908 Course Outline
4) express yourself with clarity and polish. Note that reading works on theory (see list below)—whether
women’s history and gender analysis; or other historiography (eg., the historiography of Japan’s peasant
protest, if on the above topic); helps to add conceptual depth or sophistication to your work.
RETURN OF ASSIGNMENTS
The proposals will be handed back in class with detailed feedback. I will try to return assignments within a
few weeks from the due date. Assignments should not be enclosed in any sort of folder.
Requirements for ALL essays (referencing, format etc):
First, please note that:
 Two assignment copies must be submitted for every written assessment: one paper copy and
one ‘soft’/electronic copy. Thel hardcopy should be posted into the Assignment Drop Boxes at
the School of Humanities, level 2, Morven Brown Building by 4pm on the due date. A completed
and signed cover sheet must be securely attached to assignments.
 A soft/electronic copy must also be uploaded to Moodle/Turnitin by 4pm on the due date. Note,
however, that hardcopies not submitted on time will be subject to penalties for lateness. It
is the hardcopy that is marked, but since Turnitin is used only to check for plagiarism the
hardcopy will not be marked if the paper has not been uploaded to Moodle>Turnitin.
 The coordinator will NOT accept assignments sent by email.
Otherwise:
 Please include a word-count on your cover-sheet or elsewhere in your assignment.
 Written work should be typed in double line-spacing.
 Written work must include references and a bibliography. Essays without references
(parenthetical in-text references or footnotes) will be penalized because this constitutes
plagiarism. You must use either footnotes or parenthetical in-text references, but not both. If your
references consistently fail to include the page number of the text being quoted or referred to, you
will incur a penalty.
 Internet sites that are not legitimate academic ones should NOT be used unless they are the focus
of a research project—i.e., if there is a special reason to consult online public opinion. Otherwise, if
you are doing an essay on ‘bushidô’, for e.g., you cannot rely on websites by martial arts
enthusiasts.
 Work must not be plagiarized. That is, your work must be in your own words except where you
(occasionally) quote the exact words of an author using quotation marks and acknowledging your
source with a reference. When you draw on another author for information or an argument but do
not quote them, you must paraphrase or change the author’s words substantially (express the
information or point in your own words) whilst still acknowledging your source with a reference.
Plagiarizing (presenting someone else’s words or ideas as your own) the first time will mean loss of
marks (or failing the essay if it is extensive); you risk failing the course if you plagiarize a second
time after a warning. For more on plagiarism, see the University’s statement below.
 Papers that are significantly longer (or a lot shorter) than required will be penalized.
Grades
All results are reviewed at the end of each semester and may be adjusted to ensure equitable marking
across the School.
The proportion of marks lying in each grading range is determined not by any formula or quota system, but
by the way that students respond to assessment tasks and how well they meet the objectives of the
course. Nevertheless, since higher grades imply performance that is well above average, the number of
distinctions and high distinctions awarded in a typical course is relatively small. At the other extreme, on
5
ARTS2908 Course Outline
average 6.1% of students do not meet minimum standards and a little more (8.6%) in first year courses.
For more information on the grading categories see: https://student.unsw.edu.au/grades
The following is a guide to marking compiled by History staff, which may prove helpful.
High Distinction
85% +
An outstanding essay, excellent in every regard. A High Distinction essay shows flair, originality and
creativity in its analysis. Based on extensive research and reading, it engages with complex
historiographical issues, demonstrates theoretical acumen and involves both the critical analysis of
argument and innovative interpretation of evidence. This essay is a delight to read and the prose is of
exceptionally high standard. A High Distinction essay shows the potential to undertake post-graduate
studies in History.
Distinction
75%-84%
An essay of a superior standard. Well written, closely argued and based on wide, thoughtful and critical
reading, a distinction essay answers the question convincingly and shows an understanding of complex
historiographical issues. At its best, it is elegantly expressed and pursues an argument with subtlety and
imagination. Distinction students are encouraged to progress to Honours in History.
Credit 65%-74%
A credit essay is work of a high degree of competence. It answers the question well, demonstrating a
sound grasp of subject matter, and arguing its case with clarity and confidence. It engages critically and
creatively with the question, attempts to critique historical interpretations and positions itself within the
relevant historiography. A credit essay demonstrates the potential to complete honours work in history.
Pass
50%-64%
A pass essay is work of a satisfactory standard. It answers the question but does not do so fully or
particularly well. It has a coherent argument, and is grounded in the relevant reading but the research is
not extensive and the argument fails to engage important historiographical issues. The prose is capable
but could be much improved. A pass grade suggests that the student can (with application) complete a
satisfactory pass degree; it does not qualify a student for admission to honours. There is a world of
difference between a bare and a high pass essay. The latter signals far more reading and a much deeper
understanding of the question. With work, a high pass essay can achieve credit standard.
Fail
Under 50%
This is work of unacceptable standard for university study. It fails to answer the question and/or is based
on inadequate reading. A failed essay usually has serious faults in terms of prose, presentation and
structure.
Submission of Assessment Tasks
Assignments which are submitted to the School Assignment Box must have a properly completed School
Assessment Coversheet, with the declaration signed and dated by hand. The Coversheet can be
downloaded from https://hal.arts.unsw.edu.au/students/courses/course-outlines/. It is your responsibility to
make a backup copy of the assignment prior to submission and retain it.
Assignments must be submitted before 4:00pm on the due date. Assignments received after this time will
be marked as having been received late.
6
ARTS2908 Course Outline
Late Submission of Assignments
The Arts and Social Sciences late submissions guidelines state the following:

An assessed task is deemed late if it is submitted after the specified time and date as set out in the
course Learning Management System (LMS).

The late penalty is the loss of 3% of the total possible marks for the task for each day or part
thereof the work is late.

Work submitted 14 days after the due date will be marked and feedback provided but no mark will
be recorded. If the work would have received a pass mark but for the lateness and the work is a
compulsory course component a student will be deemed to have met that requirement. This does
not apply to a task that is assessed but no mark is awarded.

Work submitted 21 days after the due date will not be accepted for marking or feedback and will
receive no mark or grade. If the assessment task is a compulsory component of the course a
student will automatically fail the course.
The Late Submissions Guidelines can be found in full at:
https://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/current-students/academic-information/Protocols-Guidelines/
The penalty may not apply where students are able to provide documentary evidence of illness or serious
misadventure. Time pressure resulting from undertaking assignments for other courses does not constitute
an acceptable excuse for lateness.
6. Extension of Time for Submission of Assessment Tasks
The Arts and Social Sciences Extension Guidelines apply to all assessed tasks regardless of whether or
not a grade is awarded, except the following:
1. any form of test/examination/assessed activity undertaken during regular class contact hours
2. any task specifically identified by the Course Authority (the academic in charge of the course) in the
Course Outline or Learning Management System (LMS), for example, Moodle, as not available for
extension requests.
A student who missed an assessment activity held within class contact hours should apply for Special
Consideration via myUNSW.
The Arts and Social Sciences Extension Guidelines state the following:

A student seeking an extension should apply through the Faculty’s online extension tool available in
LMS.

A request for an extension should be submitted before the due time/date for the assessment task.

The Course Authority should respond to the request within two working days of the request.

The Course Authority can only approve an extension up to five days. A student requesting an
extension greater than five days should complete an application for Special Consideration.

The Course Authority advises their decision through the online extension tool.

If a student is granted an extension, failure to comply will result in a penalty. The penalty will be
invoked one minute past the approved extension time.
7
ARTS2908 Course Outline
7. Attendance
The Arts and Social Sciences Attendance Guidelines state the following:

A student is expected to attend all class contact hours for a face-to-face or blended course and
complete all activities for a blended or fully online course.

If a student is unable to attend all classes for a course due to timetable clashes, the student must
complete the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences Permitted Timetable Clash form (see information at
Item 8 below). A student unable to attend lectures in a course conducted by the School of
Education can apply for “Permission to Participate in Lectures Online”.

Where practical, a student’s attendance will be recorded. Individual course outlines/LMS will set out
the conditions under which attendance will be measured.

A student who arrives more than 15 minutes late may be penalised for non-attendance. If such a
penalty is imposed, the student must be informed verbally at the end of class and advised in writing
within 24 hours.

If a student experiences illness, misadventure or other occurrence that makes absence from a
class/activity unavoidable, or expects to be absent from a forthcoming class/activity, they should
seek permission from the Course Authority, and where applicable, should be accompanied by an
original or certified copy of a medical certificate or other form of appropriate evidence.

Reserve members of the Australian Defence Force who require absences of more than two weeks
due to full-time service may be provided an exemption. The student may also be permitted to
discontinue enrolment without academic or financial penalty.

If a Course Authority rejects a student’s request for absence from a class or activity the student
must be advised in writing of the grounds for the rejection.

A Course Authority may excuse a student from classes or activities for up to one month. However,
they may assign additional and/or alternative tasks to ensure compliance.

A Course Authority considering the granting of absence must be satisfied a student will still be able
to meet the course’s learning outcomes and/or volume of learning.

A student seeking approval to be absent for more than one month must apply in writing to the Dean
and provide all original or certified supporting documentation.

The Dean will only grant such a request after consultation with the Course Authority to ensure that
measures can be organised that will allow the student to meet the course’s learning outcomes and
volume of learning.

A student who attends less than 80% of the classes/activities and has not submitted
appropriate supporting documentation to the Course Authority to explain their absence may
be awarded a final grade of UF (Unsatisfactory Fail).

A student who has submitted the appropriate documentation but attends less than 66% of the
classes/activities will be asked by the Course Authority to apply to discontinue the course without
failure rather than be awarded a final grade of UF. The final decision as to whether a student can be
withdrawn without fail is made by Student Administration and Records.
Students who falsify their attendance or falsify attendance on behalf of another student will be dealt
with under the Student Misconduct Policy.
8
ARTS2908 Course Outline
8. Class Clash
Students who are enrolled in an Arts and Social Sciences program (single or dual) and have an
unavoidable timetable clash can apply for permissible timetable clash by completing an online application
form. Students must meet the rules and conditions in order to apply for permissible clash. The rules and
conditions can be accessed online in full at:
https://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/media/FASSFile/Permissible_Clash_Policy.pdf
For students who are enrolled in a non-Arts and Social Sciences program, they must seek advice from their
home faculty on permissible clash approval.
9. Academic Honesty and Plagiarism
Plagiarism is presenting someone else’s thoughts or work as your own. It can take many forms, from not
having appropriate academic referencing to deliberate cheating.
In many cases plagiarism is the result of inexperience about academic conventions. The University has
resources and information to assist you to avoid plagiarism.
The Learning Centre assists students with understanding academic integrity and how to not plagiarise.
Information is available on their website: https://student.unsw.edu.au/plagiarism/. They also hold
workshops and can help students one-on-one.
If plagiarism is found in your work when you are in first year, your lecturer will offer you assistance to
improve your academic skills. They may ask you to look at some online resources, attend the Learning
Centre, or sometimes resubmit your work with the problem fixed. However, more serious instances in first
year, such as stealing another student’s work or paying someone to do your work, may be investigated
under the Student Misconduct Procedures.
Repeated plagiarism (even in first year), plagiarism after first year, or serious instances, may also be
investigated under the Student Misconduct Procedures. The penalties under the procedures can include a
reduction in marks, failing a course or for the most serious matters (like plagiarism in an Honours thesis) or
even suspension from the university. The Student Misconduct Procedures are available here:
http://www.gs.unsw.edu.au/policy/documents/studentmisconductprocedures.pdf
9
ARTS2908 Course Outline
10. Course Schedule
Classes: Lecture Thurs 1-3pm, CLB2; Tutorials 4-5 and 5-6 in MB G4
To check course timetable, please visit: http://www.timetable.unsw.edu.au/
Wk
1
2
Date
5 Mar
12 Mar
3
19 Mar
4
5
26 Mar
2 Apr
6
16 Apr
7
23 Apr
8
30 Apr
9
7 May
10
14 May
11
12
13
21 May
28 May
4 Jun
Lecture & Tutorial Topic
No lecture nor tutorials
Origins of ‘Japan’ & the ‘Japanese’
Mythical Origins: ‘Age of the Gods’ (&
Goddesses)
State Formation: His- and Her-stories
Reforming & Performing Buddhism
Mid-Semester Break
Heian: The Classical World in Women’s
Diaries
Zen Culture/Warrior Culture
16th-Century Revolution & the ‘Christian
Century’
Bushidô, Masculinities, Women
Urban Popular Culture: The ‘Pleasure’
Quarters?
Riotous Pilgrimages & Peasant Protest
Tokugawa Ideology: Toward Restoration
The Meiji Restoration/Revolution.
Readings
See the
detailed
weekly
guide to
topics,
Issues &
readings
11. Course Resources
Moodle, Lectures, Library etc
Important: the School no longer provides printed hardcopies of course outlines, so you
must consult Moodle before the first lecture. I will upload a full Course Outline for
downloading for those who prefer to keep in on their desktop or print a hardcopy.
Lecture recordings will be available to students, and both recordings and lecture
powerpoints can be accessed via Moodle.
By going to the library homepage (www.info.library.unsw.edu.au/web/services/services.html)
you can access a list of books in the HUC and get online access to some extra book chapters
or journal articles simply by typing in the course number. This might be useful for further
reading for essays. (It includes some important, high demand sources such as Ackroyd on
women’s declining status, rights and autonomy in warrior society, or sources on the samurai
and Bushidô.) Library staff have also prepared “Subject Guides” on East Asian History and
Japanese Studies and Gender Studies to help you find further sources for essays.
Sources/Reading
A study kit will be made available for students to buy from the bookshop. It contains
primary documents as well as essays/book chapters on specialized topics, so I
recommend that students supplement their kit reading with some general reading from a
good textbook. I recommend Anne Walthall’s Japan: A Cultural, Social and Political
History, 2006, multiple copies of which are both in the bookshop and library (one in the
HUC).
Almost all readings listed in the guide are available from the library. Apart from the further
readings listed each week, many general textbooks on Japanese history are readily
10
ARTS2908 Course Outline
available and some sections will be useful even for specialized essay topics. A list is
included below.
Textbooks & Reference Works
General Overviews:
Anne Walthall, Japan: A Cultural, Social, and Political History, Boston and New York,
Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006 (the recommended textbook: 1 copy in High Use
Collection)
Conrad Totman, Japan Before Perry: A Short History, University of
California Press, 1981 (also his more recent book, A History of Japan, 2000).
Kenneth G. Henshall, A History of Japan: From Stone Age to Superpower,
Hampshire and London, Macmillan, 1999.
The Cambridge History of Japan, Volumes 1—5, London, New York and
Melbourne, Cambridge University Press. 1988–1999
Peter Duus, Feudalism in Japan, New York, Knopf, 1969.
John W. Hall, Japan: From Prehistory to Modern Times, Delacorte,
1970.
Edwin O. Reischauer & Albert M. Craig, Japan: Tradition and
Transformation, Allen & Unwin, 1989 (revised ed.).
George B. Sansom, Japan: A Short Cultural History , London,
Cresset Press, 1962 (old but good: a ‘classic’).
W. Scott Morton, Japan: Its History and Culture, McGraw-Hill Inc., 1994.
From the 15th-16th centuries:
Kenneth Pyle, The Making of Modern Japan, Lexington, Mas. & Toronto,
D.C. Heath and Co., 1996 (Second Edition: a very good work).
Jean-Pierre Lehmann, The Roots of Modern Japan, London, Macmillan,
1982 (includes a couple of sections on women)
Andrew Gordon, A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present,
Oxford University Press, 2003
Women’s or Gender history (Japan):
Dorothy Robins-Mowry, The Hidden Sun: Women of Modern Japan, Boulder,
Colorado, Westview Press, 1983 [early chapters on pre- and early modern
Women: approach a bit dated, see the better collections of essays Women and Class
in Japanese History; Recreating Japanese Women; & Japanese Women: New
Feminist Perspectives on the Past, Present, and Future ].
The Cambridge histories are comprehensive,, quite recent and useful for research on a
broad range of topics. Check them if you’re having trouble finding sources; also other
collections of essays such as Japan Before Tokugawa; or Warlords, Artists and
Commoners; Studies in the Institutional History of Early Modern Japan;; and, of course,
journals.
Reference Works & Documentary Collections:
Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan, Tokyo, Kodansha, 1983 (probably avail online)
John W. Dower, Japanese History and Culture from Ancient to
Modern Times: Seven Basic Bibliographies, Manchester
University Press, 1986.
Tsunoda Ryusaku et. al. Sources of Japanese Tradition, Columbia
University Press, 1958.
D.J. Lu, Sources of Japanese History, I, 1974.
J. Livingston et. al., The Japan Reader I, Penguin, 1973.
The documentary collections are most important, for they would be useful for short
11
ARTS2908 Course Outline
supplementary reading on various topics. They contain translations of primary sources
with brief editorial essays about the historical context and significance of the sources and
their authors.
Historiography or History Theory:
All tertiary students of History should be familiar with historiography— debates on the
changing philosophy and practice of History, and different approaches to writing History.
This means History in general and also with regard to specific cultural areas, in this case
Japan, and to specific topic areas, say, Japan peasant studies or gender studies. This is
particularly important for History majors, especially those intending to do Honours in
History or teach History in high schools. The following are just some of the
historiographical essays or works available. (cf. journals of history theory below)
On the historiography of Japan:
J. P. Mass, Antiquity and Anachronism in Japanese History, Stanford University Press,
1992 (chaps 1, 2, 5 on John Hall’s scholarship, anachronism in History, and
translation).
Stephen Vlastos (ed.), Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern Japan,
Berkeley L.A. and London, University of California Press, 1998
John Dower (ed), Origins of the Modern Japanese State: Selected Writings of E.H.
Norman, Pantheon, 1975 (Introduction on the scholarship of E.H.N, a very
influential essay on the political nature of historical scholarship)
Jon Halliday, A Political History of Japanese Capitalism, Monthly Review Press, 1975
(Dower’s introduction)
Najita Tetsuo & J. Victor Koschmann (eds), Conflict in Modern Japanese History: The
Neglected Tradition, Princeton University Press, 1982 (intro : against harmony &
homogeneity approaches).
Adriana Boscaro et al (eds), Rethinking Japan, II (1990) [contains short reflective essays
on various topics: traditional religion, ‘Shinto’, Tokugawa thought/ideology,
peasant society, and so on]
Miyoshi Masao and H.D. Harootunian, Postmodernism and Japan, Durham: Duke
University Press, 1989
Adriana Boscaro et al (eds), Rethinking Japan, II, 1990. [contains short reflective essays
on various aspects of the historiography of Japan].
Also Review articles such as:
Nagahara Keiji, ‘Reflections on Recent Trends in Japanese Historiography’, Journal of
Japanese Studies, vol. 10, no. 1 (Winter 1984), pp. 167-83;
Carol Gluck, ‘The People in History: Recent Trends in Japanese Historiography’, Journal
of Asian Studies, vol. xxxviii, no. 1 (November 1978), pp. 25-50;
———‘House of Mirrors: American History Writing on Japan’, Chapter 12, in Imagined
Histories: American historians interpret the past (Anthony Molho and Gordon S.
Wood, eds) Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998
Barrington Moore Jr, ‘Japanese Peasant Protests and Revolts in Comparative Historical
Perspective’ (review essay on works by Bix, Kelly, Vlastos & Walthall; old but
good on peasant studies; copy available from lecturer)
And on feminist (women’s/gender) history in Japan:
Tamanoi Mariko Asano, ‘Women’s Voices: Their Critique of the Anthropology of Japan’,
Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 19 (1990), pp. 17-37.
Andrea Germer, ‘Feminist History in Japan: National and International Perspectives’,
Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context, Issue 9, August
2003 (e-journal, easily accessed for downloading; article is on Takamure Itsue,
Japan’s founder of women’s history, who did pioneering research into ancient to
12
ARTS2908 Course Outline
medieval women’s history in Japan)
Theodore C. Bestor, ‘Gendered Domains; A Commentary on Research in Japanese
Studies’, Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 11, no. 1 (1985), pp. 283–7.
Ueno Chizuko, ‘The Politics of Memory’, History and Memory, vol. 11, no. 2 (1999) (or
other works by Ueno, eg., in Multicultural Japan; she is one of Japan’s leading
feminist scholars)
Check journals for more recent review essays, too. Reading these is one of the best ways
to survey historiographical trends (in general or in peasant studies, women’s/gender
studies, and so on).
Cultural theory & Japan:
Befu Harumi, Hegemony of Homogeneity: An Anthropological Analysis of Nihonjinron,
Melbourne, Trans Pacific Press, 2001.
Ross Mouer and Sugimoto Yoshio, Images of Japanese Society: A Study in the Social
Construction of Reality, 1986 [or other works by Sugimoto, a leading critic of the
political ideology of J’ese homogeneity]
Peter Dale, The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness….
Donald Denoon et al (eds), Multicultural Japan: Palaeolithic to Postmodern,
Cambridge University Press, 1996 [a good collection of essays on cultural
heterogeneity: class differences, women, minorities etc]
Tanaka, Stefan, Japan's Orient: Rendering Pasts into History, Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1993
David Suzuki’s book on marginalized groups in Japan such as the Ainu—The Japan We
Never Knew—would also be useful for research essays on status/’class’ and other
differences or traditional heterogeneity, as would works on the outcaste groups known in
modern times as ‘burakumin’ (‘hamlet people’) and in Tokugawa (pejoratively) as ‘eta’
(‘unclean/polluted’) or ‘hinin’ (‘non-people’ or ‘non-human’).
On History Theory, General:
T.K. Rabb & R.I. Rotberg, The New History, The 1980s and Beyond: Studies in
Interdisciplinary History, Princeton University Press, 1982 (this and the next two
are not recent but good on basic historiography, eg., re the different styles of
political, intellectual, social and new cultural history etc)
Juliet Gardiner, What is History Today?, Macmillan, 1988.
Terry Crowley (ed.), Clio’s Craft: A Primer of Historical Methods, Toronto, Longman,
1988.
Georg G. Iggers, New Directions in European Historiography, Connecticut, Wesleyan
University Press, 1975 (old but good on Marxist and social history).
Ellen Somekawa & Elizabeth Smith, ‘Theorizing the Writing of History or ‘I Can‘t Think
Why It Should Be So Dull, For A Great Deal Of It Must Be Invention’,’ Journal of
Social History, vol. 22, no. 1 (1988), pp. 149-61 (on the inevitable presentism of
History)
Alun Munslow, Deconstructing History, Routledge, 1997 (new edition 2006).
Keith Jenkins, Rethinking History, London and New York, Routledge, 1991 (and
Refiguring History, 2003).
Keith Jenkins (ed.), The Postmodern History Reader, Routledge, 1997.
Joyce Appleby et al (eds), Knowledge and Postmodernism in Historical Perspective, New
York and London, 1996 (also Telling the Truth of History).
Ann Curthoys and John Docker, Is History Fiction?, UNSW Press, 2006.
Keith Jenkins and Alun Munslow (eds), The Nature of History Reader, Routledge, 2004
On History’s Androcentrism; feminism and history etc:
Bonnie G. Smith, The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice,
Cambridge Mas. and London, Harvard University Press, 1998.
Mary Spongberg, Writing Women’s History since the Renaissance, U.K. and New York,
13
ARTS2908 Course Outline
Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
Hélène Bowen Raddeker, Sceptical History: Feminist and Postmodern Approaches in
Practice, London and New York: Routledge, 2007
Sue Morgan (ed.), The Feminist History Reader, Routledge, 2006
Journals (Japan Studies, Asian Studies, History Theory):
Ampo: Japan-Asia Quarterly Review
Asian Studies Review (Aust.)
Japan Interpreter
Japan Forum
Japan Quarterly
Japanese Studies (Aust.)
Japanese Journal of Religious Studies
Journal of Japanese Studies
Monumenta Nipponica
Intersections (e-journal focused on Asia and gender studies)
East Asian Survey
Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies Journal of Asian Studies
Journal of Asian Studies
Modern Asian Studies
Positions: East Asia Culture Critique
History and Theory
Rethinking History
— ETC
Websites
Japanese Studies Association of Australia: http://www.arts.unimelb.edu.au/Dept/J
Japan Echo (On Line): http://ifrm.glocom.ac.jp/japanecho/hp.html
Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs: http://infomofa.nttls.co.jp.infomofa
Mainichi (newspaper): http://www.mainichi.co.jp/index-e.html
Japan Times ( ‘ ): http://www.japantimes.co.jp/
Asahi Newspaper: http://www.asahi.com/english/enews/html
Asian Studies Association of Australia: http://www.ssn.flinders.edu.au/asian/asaahpge.htm
12. Course Evaluation and Development
Courses are periodically reviewed and students’ feedback is used to improve them. Feedback is
gathered using various means including UNSW’s Course and Teaching Evaluation and Improvement
(CATEI) process.
13. Student Support
The Learning Centre is available for individual consultation and workshops on academic skills. Find out
more by visiting the Centre’s website at:
http://www.lc.unsw.edu.au
14
ARTS2908 Course Outline
14. Grievances
All students should be treated fairly in the course of their studies at UNSW. Students who feel they
have not been dealt with fairly should, in the first instance, attempt to resolve any issues with their tutor
or the course convenors.
If such an approach fails to resolve the matter, the School of Humanities and Languages has an
academic member of staff who acts as a Grievance Officer for the School. This staff member is
identified on the notice board in the School of Humanities and Languages. Further information about
UNSW grievance procedures is available at: https://student.unsw.edu.au/complaints
15. Other Information
myUNSW
myUNSW is the online access point for UNSW services and information, integrating online services for
applicants, commencing and current students and UNSW staff. To visit myUNSW please visit either of
the below links:
https://my.unsw.edu.au
https://my.unsw.edu.au/student/atoz/ABC.html
OHS
UNSW's Occupational Health and Safety Policy requires each person to work safely and responsibly, in
order to avoid personal injury and to protect the safety of others. For all matters relating to Occupational
Health, Safety and environment, see https://www.ohs.unsw.edu.au/
Special Consideration
In cases where illness or other circumstances produce repeated or sustained absence, students should
apply for Special Consideration as soon as possible.
The application must be made via Online Services in myUNSW. Log into myUNSW and go to My
Student Profile tab > My Student Services channel > Online Services > Special Consideration.
Applications on the grounds of illness must be filled in by a medical practitioner. Further information is
available at:
https://student.unsw.edu.au/special-consideration
Student Equity and Disabilities Unit
Students who have a disability that requires some adjustment in their learning and teaching
environment are encouraged to discuss their study needs with the course convener prior to or at the
commencement of the course, or with the Student Equity Officers (Disability) in the Student Equity and
Disabilities Unit (9385 4734). Information for students with disabilities is available at:
http://www.studentequity.unsw.edu.au/
Issues that can be discussed may include access to materials, signers or note-takers, the provision of
services and additional examination and assessment arrangements. Early notification is essential to
enable any necessary adjustments to be made.
15
ARTS2908 Course Outline
16. Japanese Eras
(Terms used by historians to denote different ages or periods)
Jômon
Yayoi
Kofun (Tumulus)
Asuka/Suiko
To 200 BCE
200 BCE–250 CE
250–552 CE
552–645
[or ‘Yamato’: c.300–710]
[Borrowing from China & Korea: 552–866]
Imperial age
(ancient to early medieval)
early Nara
late Nara
early Heian
late Heian (Fujiwara)
645–710
710–794
794–898
898–1185
Warrior rule
(medieval to early modern)
Kamakura
1185–1333
Ashikaga (or Muromachi)
1392–1573
1482–1558: ‘Warring States’ period
1540s–1640s: ‘Christian Century’
[Azuchi-]Momoyama
Tokugawa (or Edo)
1573–1603
1603–1867
‘Imperial’ & Postwar Japan
Meiji
Taishô
Shôwa
Heisei
1868–1912
1912–1926
1926–1989
1989–
JAPANESE TERMS AND NAMES
It can be hard at first to become familiarized with all the Japanese terms used in classes and
sources, but the same would be true of unfamiliar European languages. However, students soon
become familiar with many of the terms that are commonly used in works of Japanese history. It is
difficult to do much about this, though I do hand out a quite extensive glossary at the beginning of
the course and also try to restrict my use of Japanese terminology to commonly encountered words
or phrases.
A knowledge of the Japanese language is not necessary to do well in this course, but to avoid
confusion remember that in English-language Japanese history texts Japanese people’s names are
usually given in the East Asian order with surnames first. (Publishers, however, like to confuse the
issue by sometimes using the English order on book covers, etc.) Japanese surnames come first
16
ARTS2908 Course Outline
traditionally: e.g., if ‘Tanaka Etsuko’, the surname, ‘Tanaka’ (unlike ‘Smith’), would come first in
footnotes; like ‘Smith’ it would also come first in a bibliography.
Generally, it is the surname you should use when referring to authors or historical actors in the text
of an essay. There are exceptions, however, for eg., people with literary pen-names such as
(Ihara) ‘Saikaku’ or (Ejima)‘Kiseki’. Famous historical personages such as (Minamoto) ‘Yoritomo’,
(Tokugawa) ‘Ieyasu’, or (Toyotomi) ‘Hideyoshi’ are also often referred to in academic texts by their
given names. But, in general, in order to avoid confusion, please use full names in the text of an
essay, footnotes and bibliographies, not initials for given names; it is common for students to mix
up the names and give only a given name).
17
ARTS2908 Course Outline
17.
Weekly Tutorial Guide
Students should note that below I include some questions each week to help guide discussion of
topics/issues for the week and your understanding of sources in the Study Kit. Questions that are
broader in focus than, say, just interpreting one particular document can also be used as research
essay questions.
Note that below an asterisk (*) denotes study kit readings.
Week One (5 March)
No lecture, nor tutorials
Week Two (12 March)
Origins of ‘Japan’ & the ‘Japanese’
Since in the first tutorial a fair bit of time is likely to be taken up with introductions and ensuring that
students understand what’s required of them, the set reading is only the first chapter of the recommended
textbook, Anne Walthall’s Japan: A Cultural, Social, and Political History (Boston & New York: Houghton
Mifflin Co., 2006, Chap. 1, pp. 1–29). Unlike in later weeks where extra textbook reading is advised, this
chapter has been included in the Study Kit.
The chapter will provide a good introduction to topics over the next few weeks. You may read all 29 pages
for this week, or leave the section on state formation (pp. 12–23) to week four and the material on
Buddhism (pp. 18–19 & 24–29) to week five.
You should note that Walthall’s text represents an exception amongst English-language textbooks, in that it
does not ignore women or gender issues. In this early chapter she at least refers to early female rulers a
number of times, and also refuses to attribute important innovations only to male rulers or administrators
(an example being Prince Shôtoku and not his aunt, Emperor Suiko, as well).
To understand the questions posed below we should also be aware that the emphasis by conservative
scholars and Japanese nationalists alike has been on Japan’s unusual degree of racial and cultural
‘homogeneity’. Of course, this has had it’s political uses, as a description not only of what (supposedly) is
(and has always been), but what should be: ie., it’s long been a political strategy used to enforce
obedience and conformism, and to marginalize those who differ.
Note that Sugimoto Yoshio and others listed above under ‘Cultural Theory’ have been leading critics of the
‘homogeneity’ thesis, and should be consulted for research essays on this or other expressions of cultural
essentialism. We see one example of cultural essentialism at work in Week 7 where, since ‘the Japanese’
must necessarily be groupist and hierarchical, samurai codes of ethics and heroism could not possibly
have been individualistic in any significant way (individualism being the possession, it would seem, solely
of ‘the West’). Another example is the common representation of ‘Shinto’ as central to ‘the’ religio-spiritual
identity of ‘the’ Japanese, which is problematic not only for its cultural essentialism, but also its ahistoricity
(as seen in the week on Buddhism).
Questions (for discussion or, possibly, research essays)
a) How does Walthall’s description of early ‘Japan’ underline its heterogeneity?
b) Around what time and due to what factors did the archipelago we now know as ‘Nihon’ (Japan) begin to
take on some semblance of political and cultural unity?
18
ARTS2908 Course Outline
c) One often encounters the assumption that from the beginning of time patriarchies have been universal
(ubiquitous). Does Walthall’s account of early ‘Japan’ suggest this? (Note that ‘matriarchy’ or rule by
mothers/women is not the only alternative to patriarchy; & that there’s a question on matriarchy in
week 4.)
Readings
(see under next week’s list: e.g., by Amino and Befu, as well as Multicultural Japan, and works on
Okinawa. The famous environmentalist, David Suzuki, by the way, is amongst the authors who have
published on marginalized groups in Japan such as the Ainu— in The Japan We Never Knew. For works
on women, see the list for the next two weeks.
[Research proposal due Wk4, 26 March]
Week Three (19 March)
Mythical Origins: ‘Age of the Gods’ (& Goddesses)
Themes:
This week we start with a selection of origin myths and heroic legends from what is now known as
‘Japan’, from both the Yamato people and the Ainu who now live in the northern island of Hokkaido.
The Ainu have only recently been officially recognized in Japan as its indigenous people–that is, as
the earliest immigrants to the islands (though somehow the former are often assumed to be the
ancestors of ‘the’ Japanese).
Over time, the hunter-gatherer Ainu in the main island of Honshu were pushed north by the (mostly
rice agriculturalist) Yamato and other later immigrants, becoming subjugated in the main island of
Honshu by the classical era. The Ainu have remained a marginalized group in modern Japan.
Partly for political reasons, therefore, modern sources emphasize the cultural differences between
the two. This week, however, we see some of the cultural similarities in areas such as language;
the importance of both female and male ‘gods’ (kami in Japanese); and the important role played
historically in both cultures by female shamans. Ancient Chinese chronicles (from about 200AD/CE
and later) about the ‘land of Wa’ (probably in Kyushu) mention shaman queens/chieftans, Pimiko
and Iyo; but women continued to play an important spiritual-secular role in the pre-Heian imperial
court as influential shamans (miko), as Carmen Blacker indicates in her chapter on the ancient
‘sibyl’. Shamans were the ‘mouthpieces’ of deities, oracles who through prophecy might gain
considerable influence. Typically, around the world, shamans were also often responsible for
performing, and handing down the tribe’s myths and legends. Female shamans retained an
influential role both in Okinawa and amongst the Ainu in the north till modern times.
Yamato’s oral myths concerning ‘Japan’s’ founding kami and so-called origins were taken down by
scribes who by the early eighth century (Nara period) were putting into writing, in Chinese, Japan’s
‘imperial’ chronicles. The surviving ones are the Nihongi and Kojiki. Recording the ‘history’ of the
imperial line was one of many ways in which the early ‘Japanese’ modeled themselves on Chinese
state models. What differed, however, was that it was under the orders of a female emperor,
Gemmei/Gemmyô, that such ‘official histories’ were put into writing (and, paradoxically, in order to
legitimize an increasingly patriarchal system of rule). These origin myths concerned the ancestral
gods of the leading clan whose claim to imperial status meant that their ancestors purportedly
became the founding and most powerful kami of ‘Japan’ but, interestingly, the most important of
these ancestral deities continued to be the female sun god, Amaterasu,
Questions
19
ARTS2908 Course Outline
a) What do the imperial ‘myth-histories’ (Kojiki and Nihongi) suggest about politics and power in
prehistorical and ancient Japan? [Note that this question could cover a number of issues: not just
changing gender roles and relations.]
b) Does the material this week about female gods and shaman-priestesses (and even early female
emperors) reveal much about women’s status in ancient ‘Japan’?
c) Reflect upon the contrasts and/or parallels between the Chinese ‘chronicles’ (in Tsunoda, pp. 3-12, also
cited in Totman, 2000) and the Japanese imperial histories or ‘legends’. Is the first ‘History’ and the
other ‘myth’, the one unproblematically ‘factual’ and the other entirely ‘fictive’?
d) What do Ainu epic legends suggest about real historical beliefs and practices in Ainu society and their
similarities and/or differences to Yamato history and culture?
th
th
d) Did the ‘new religions’ of the 19 and 20 centuries involve any apparent historical continuities from
ancient Japanese shamanism? (cf. other chapters by Blacker, Hori etc)
Key Readings
*Carmen Blacker, The Catalpa Bow: A Study of Shamanistic Practices in Japan, London: George Allen &
Unwin Ltd, 1975 (Chapter 6; ‘The Ancient Sibyl’) pp. 104-25.
*Tsunoda et al, Sources of Japanese Tradition, I, Columbia University Press, 1958, pp. 12-17, 25-29, 3233.
*Donald L. Philippi (trans.), Songs of Gods, Songs of Humans: The Epic Tradition of the Ainu, Princeton
University Press, 1979, pp. 44-50, 69-74, 78-82.
Tsunoda et al, Sources of Japanese Tradition, I, Columbia University Press, 1958 (‘Japan in the Chinese
Dynastic Histories’), pp. 3-12.
Hori Ichirô, Folk Religion in Japan: Continuity and Change, Chicago University Press,1968 (Intro, Chap 5
on shamanism, and chap 6 on the ‘The New Religions and the Survival of Shamanic Tendencies’)
Amino Yoshihiko, ‘Deconstructing ‘Japan’,’ East Asian History, no. 3 (June 1992), pp. 121-42.
Further Reading
Conrad Totman, A History of Japan, Blackwell Publishers, 2000 (Chap. 3: ‘Political Consolidation to 671
CE’), pp. 38-59.
W.G. Aston (trans.), Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697, Rutland, Vermont
and Tokyo, Charles E. Tuttle, 1972.
Donald L. Philippi (trans.), Kojiki, University of Tokyo Press, 1969.
Japanese Gods and Myths, Leichhardt NSW, Sandstone Books, 1998.
On folk religion/folklore:
Robert J. Smith, Ancestor Worship in Contemporary Japan, Stanford University Press, 1974 (particularly
Chap. 2, ‘Spirits, Ghosts, and Gods’), pp. 39-68.
R. Dorson (ed.), Studies in Japanese Folklore, Indiana University Press, 1963 (Chap. entitled 'The Concept
of Tamashii in Japan', pp. 181-97).
R.M. Dorson (ed.), Studies in Japanese Folklore, Indiana University Press, 1963 (Chap. entitled 'Menstrual
Taboos Imposed on Women'), pp. 239-50.
Fanny Hagin Mayer (trans.), Ancient Tales in Modern Japan: an Anthology of Japanese Folk Tales,
Indiana University Press, 1985.
Yanagita Kunio, Japanese Manners and Customs in the Meiji Era, Tokyo, Ôbunsha, 1957 (very famous, a
‘classic’: Chap. 13 on folklore, in my possession).
On the ‘new religions’:
(works by Helen Hardacre, other than her book on Shintô, such as an article in Senri Ethnological Studies,
vol. 11, 1984, on ‘gender-bending’ by the founder of the modern ‘new’ religion, Ômotokyô, and her male
20
ARTS2908 Course Outline
successor; if you can access the journal there’s an article on spirit possession as a supposedly
‘indigenous’ religion in Japan by Sasaki Kokan)
Carmen Blacker, ‘Millenarian Aspects of the New Religions in Japan’, in Donald Shively (ed.), Tradition and
Modernization in Japanese Culture, Princeton University Press, 1971, pp. 563-600.
Richard W. Anderson, ‘Vengeful Ancestors and Animal Spirits: Personal Narratives of the Supernatural in
a Japanese New Religion’, Western Folklore, vol. 54, no. 2 (April 1995), pp. 113-28.
[Also H. Byron Earhart’s Japanese Religion—section on the new religions; and Japanese Journal of
Religious Studies, special issue on the new religions—Aum Shinrikyô (Tokyo subway gassing incident)
and others.]
On the Ainu, and Okinawan religion/shamanism:
Richard Siddle, ‘Ainu: Japan’s Indigenous People’, in Michael Weiner (ed.), Japan’s Minorities, London
and New York, Routledge, 1997, pp. 17-49 [includes a short overview of Ainu history—see also his
book on the Ainu].
Richard Siddle, ‘The Ainu: Construction of an Image’, in John Maher and Gaynor Macdonald (eds),
Diversity in Japanese Culture and Language, London and New York, Kegan Paul International, 1995
[also Multicultural Japan, chapter on the Ainu].
David Suzuki and Oiwa Keibo, The Japan We Never Knew, Allen & Unwin, 1996.
Josef Kreiner, ‘Changing Images: Japan and the Ainu as Perceived by Europe’, in Adriana Boscaro et al
(eds), Rethinking Japan, II, New York, St Martin’s Press, 1990, pp. 134–46.
Katarina Sjoberg, The Return of the Ainu, Switzerland, Harwood, 1974.
William Fitzhugh and Chisato Dubreuil (eds), Ainu, Spirit of a Northern People, University of Washington
Press,1999.
Honda Katsuichi, Harukor: An Ainu Woman’s Tale, (Kyoko Selden (trans.), University of California Press,
2000 [may not be in the library….]
Matthew Allen, Identity and Resistance in Okinawa, Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002
Kamata Hisako, ‘‘Daughters of the Gods’: Shaman Priestesses in Japan and Okinawa’, in J. Pittau (ed.),
Folk Cultures of Japan and East Asia, Monumenta Nipponica Monographs, 1966, pp. 56-73.
William P. Lebra, Okinawan Religion—Belief, Ritual and Social Structure, University of Hawaii Press, 1966.
Leith Morton, The Alien Within: Representations of the Exotic in Twentieth-Century Japanese Literature,
University of Hawaii Press, 2009 (essay on female shamans in Okinawa)
Also:
Befu Harumi, Hegemony of Homogeneity: An Anthropological Analysis of Nihonjinron, Melbourne, Trans
Pacific Press, 2001 [useful for research essays, if on the situation of marginalized groups such as Ainu,
Okinawans & the (outcaste) Burakumin in this ostensibly ’homogeneous’ culture]
Week Four (26 March)
(Imperial) State Formation: His- and Her-stories
Themes:
The focus this week is on the transition from the 6th-7th centuries from loose tribal/chieftan rule to a
more centralized form of ‘imperial’ rule modeled on China’s. In general terms, this paralleled world
patterns with the rise of settled agriculture leading to state formation, ie., struggles over
property/resources and the rise of ruling classes and religions/philosophies that legitimated their control
and privileges. Just as ‘class’ or status inequalities accompanied this process, it is clear that
patriarchies also emerged or were strengthened. Accompanying this process or before long, patriarchal
religions arose that reinforced male-domination (in the case of early Japan, Buddhism and
Confucianism). In this period, for example, laws were first introduced to limit the succession/inheritance
and property rights of women; and after the 8th century women did not become emperors (only one
special exception many centuries later).
21
ARTS2908 Course Outline
Thus, we consider the role of existing and imported religion/philosophy in legitimizing the new system,
whilst also looking at the (related) diminishing role of women in the new ‘imperial’ court. The myths
about ‘Japan’s’ founding gods in the Nihongi and Kojiki, extracts from which we read in week three,
were themselves methods of legitimating the rule of one particular clan/lineage. However, Buddhism
(as ‘protector’ of the state) and, to a lesser extent, Confucianism were also used to safeguard and
further Japanese ‘imperial’ power.
As my subtitle suggests, we will also discuss the androcentrism (ie., lit. ‘male-centredness’: genderblindness or bias) of most historians of early Japan, since they continue to perpetuate the silence about
(elite) women’s important roles in ancient Japanese history. A comparison of Piggott’s essay or book
with works by others, for example Kitagawa or Morton, reveals glaring omissions with such women
being mentioned only in passing, if at all.
Questions
a) Reflect upon the various means (practical and philosophical/ideological) used to legitimize and
strengthen Japan’s new imperial system.
b) Japan’s process of state formation might be seen to conform broadly to common world models. How
so? And are there ways in which it differed. [a world history or two would be helpful here, ones that do
not ignore women and gender issues: such as Peter Stearns’ Gender in World History]
c) Consider how and why Morton’s and/or Kitagawa’s accounts represent good examples of androcentric
‘his-story’.
d) Could Japan have once been a ‘matriarchy’? [apart from Piggott’s article and/or her book on early
‘kingship’ (sic), for this question sources from week two, and some listed under the Heian week re
aristocratic women’s diminishing legal rights etc would be useful, eg., Ackroyd,, Tonomura or Wakita.
Wakita questions the thesis of Takamure Itsue, Japan’s founder of women’s history, that it was, but
nevertheless argues that Japanese women’s public roles and social status lessened significantly over
the centuries. This was especially true for the upper classes, but she does give other examples.]
Key Readings
Textbook (Walthall), especially pp. 12–23, in Kit for first tutorial (for a less male-centred account than is
usual in textbooks, ie., most if not all of those listed below)
*Joan Piggott, ‘Chieftan Pairs and Corulers: Female Sovereignty in Early Japan’, in Tonomura Hitomi et al
(eds), Women and Class in Japanese History, Ann Arbor, Center for Japanese Studies, The University
of Michigan, 1999, pp. 17-26, 40-43 (note that the whole essay could not be included in the Kit for
copyright reasons & some important info had to be excluded; the whole article can be downloaded
from the library catalogue, however).
*Wakita Haruko, Women in Medieval Japan: Motherhood, Household Management and Sexuality (Alison
Tokita, trans.), Clayton: Monash Asia Institute, 2006, (excerpt from Chap. 4) pp. 90–96 (book ordered)
* Joseph Kitagawa, ‘Some Reflections on Japanese Religion and its Relationship to the Imperial System’,
Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, vol. 17, nos. 2-3 (June-September 1990), pp. 132-45.
W. Scott Morton, Japan, Its History and Culture, McGraw-Hill Inc, (3rd Ed.) 1994 (Chap. 3: ‘The Introduction
of Chinese Thought and Culture. Asuka Period: 552-710), pp. 17-26.
Joan R. Piggott, The Emergence of Japanese Kingship, Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press, 1997
Further Reading
Kenneth Henshall, A History of Japan: From Stone Age to Superpower, Macmillan 1999 (Parts 1.5 and
2.1)
David John Lu (ed.), Sources of Japanese History, McGraw-Hill, 1974 (Chap. 2).
22
ARTS2908 Course Outline
John Whitney Hall, Japan: From Prehistory to Modern Times, Tokyo, Tuttle, 1971 (Chaps 4 & 5).
Conrad Totman, A History of Japan and/or Japan Before Perry….
Cambridge History of Japan, vol 1
Other textbooks
[first quiz is held in week 5 tute]
Week Five (2 Apr)
Reforming & Performing Buddhism
Themes:
This week we look at the differences between early aristocratic Buddhism and medieval (Kamakura)
popular Buddhism—medieval schools being the ‘Jôdo’/Pure Land and ‘Shinshû’/True Pure Land;
Nichiren; and Zen. (The two main Zen denominations have been Rinzai and Sôtô.) These were all
founded between the late 1100s and early 1200s, and ultimately became the most influential schools in
Japan. Also of interest is the issue of whether all forms of Buddhism are as different from, say,
Christianity as is often supposed (Zen certainly is, but the Pure Land is another matter.)
In the area of gender, representations of women in Mahayana Buddhism are pertinent, both in scripture
and in Nô theatre (a medieval Japanese art-form that was essentially Buddhist in inspiration). We saw
last week, moreover, how women’s diminishing role in public life extended further in medieval times into
areas such as the performing arts (Wakita).
Whilst there was no space for a reading on it in the Kit (and it is covered also in my modern Japan
course), another important topic for discussion is the intimate (inter-) relationship by this time between
Buddhism and what is normally termed (erroneously) ‘Shintô’. Mahayana Buddhism is known for its
syncretistic style, and thus from the time it was embraced as the state religion Buddhism came to
absorb existing folk religious beliefs and practices. These were disparate and unsystematized, taking
various forms and deriving from various geographical (Chinese, continental, Pacific etc) origins. They
included shamanism and the worship of ancestral ‘kami’ of families/clans and protective deities of
villages. (Note that the term ‘kami’ has a broader meaning than ‘god/s’, covering spirits, ghosts, and just
about anything or anyone with an apparently supernatural mystique or power/s.) As Kuroda’s seminal
article shows, it was only in modern times that all kami-related beliefs and practices’ were lumped
together by the State, called ‘Shintô’, and represented as a ‘purely Japanese’ ancient-national state
religion that, supposedly, had always been distinct from Buddhism. However, the myth of ‘indigenous
Shintô’ continues to be propagated in most standard history texts (as other readings in the Kit reveal).
Students doing research essays on this are urged to read critiques by Kuroda and/or Hardacre carefully
and use the arguments therein to deconstruct ahistorical treatments of ‘Shintô’ (this being what most
sources are). Conventional sources (such as by Ono, Hori etc) should be treated with the critical
awareness that they use anachronistic language (referring to ‘Shinto’ as the traditional folk ‘religion’ or
even Japan’s own indigenous religion), reflecting a modern invention of ‘tradition’ or ‘history’ for
political/nationalistic ends.
Questions
a) Why did Amidist and Nichiren Buddhism become so popular, especially amongst commoners in
medieval and later Japan?
b) Discuss the differences and similarities between popular Buddhism, particularly the Pure Land
schools, and Christianity.
23
ARTS2908 Course Outline
c)
In what ways is Nô theatre Buddhist? [Apart from reading more Nô plays, LaFleur is essential
reading for this question, particularly Chap. 6 on Zeami and Nô.}
d) Diana Paul’s book is about the ambivalence (lit., a coexistence of love and hate) in Mahayana
Buddhism toward women. Do the primary texts and other readings this week reveal such an
ambivalence? (if for a research essay you might read some of this; otherwise, also works by
Pandey on Japan)
e) In what ways are Nô plays gendered? (this need not concern only women/femininity, but also
constructs of masculinity, for e.g. in the warrior genre of plays)
f)
What does the issue of ‘Shintô's’ questionable antiquity suggest about the present-past relation in
representations of History? [For this historiographical question, you would be expected to reflect
upon how the present (context of writing History) commonly determines how the past is
mis/represented.]
Key Readings
Textbook (Walthall), pp. 18-19 and pp. 24-29 (included in Study Kit for week two)
* Tamura Yoshiro, Japanese Buddhism: A Cultural History, Tokyo, Kôsei Publishing Co., 2000 (Chap. 9,
‘Key Features of Kamakura Buddhism’), pp. 103–12.
*Motomochi Nakamura Kyoko (trans.), Miraculous Stories from the Japanese Buddhist Tradition: The
Nihon Ryôiki of the Monk Kyôkai, Surrey, Curzon Press, 1997, (excerpts; 9th century source), pp. 17577, 246-49.
* John Lu (ed.), Excerpts from 'Kamakura Buddhism', in Sources of Japanese History, McGraw-Hill, 1974,
pp. 127-33 (docs by Hônen and Shinran).
*Wakita Haruko, Women in Medieval Japan: Motherhood, Household Management and Sexuality (Alison
Tokita, trans.), Clayton: Monash Asia Institute, 2006, (excerpts from Chap. 3) pp. 62–70.
*Donald Keene (trans, ed.), Twenty Plays of the Nô Theatre, Columbia University Press, 1970
(‘Motomezuka’), pp. 38-50
Thomas Hoover, Zen Culture, Arkana, 1977 (chapter on Nô)
William R. LaFleur, The Karma of Words: Buddhism and the Literary Arts in Medieval Japan, University of
California Press, 1983 (Chap. 2, 'In and Out of the Rokudô' re Kyôkai’s miraculous tales of karma and
Chap. 6, ‘Zeami’s Buddhism’, on Nô), pp. 26-59, 116-32.
Raj Pandey, ‘Women, Sexuality and Enlightenment: Kankyo no Tomo’, Monumenta Nipponica, vol. 50, no.
3 (Autumn 1995), pp. 325-56 (or other works by her listed next week).
Kurihara Toshie, ‘A History of Women iin Japanese Buddhism: Nichiren’s Perspectives on the
Enlightenment of Women, Journal of Oriental Studies, vol. 13 (2003), pp.94Hosokawa Ryôichi, ‘Medieval Nuns and Nunneries: The Case of Hokkeji’, in Tonomura Hitomi et al (eds),
Women and Class in Japanese History, Ann Arbor, Center for Japanese Studies, The University of
Michigan, 1999, pp. 67–79.
Karen Brazell (trans.), The Confessions of Lady Nijô, Stanford Calif., Stanford University Press, 1973
[autobiography of a court lady who became a nun written about 1300; cf. works by Pandey & the article
on this listed next week]
Diana Paul, Women in Buddhism: Images of the Feminine in Mahâyâna Tradition, University of California
Press, 1985 (not specifically on Japan).
(note that there are a few articles on women and medierval Buddhism in the Journal of Japanese Studies,
volume 10, 1983)
Lori R. Meeks, ‘Reconfiguring Ritual Authenticity: The Ordination Traditions of Aristocratic Women in
Premodern Japan’, Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 33, no. 1 (2006), pp. 52–74
24
ARTS2908 Course Outline
Kuroda Toshio, 'Shintô in the History of Japanese Religion', Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 7, no. 1
(Winter 1981), pp. 1-21.
Helen Hardacre, Shintô and the State, 1868-1988, Princeton University Press, 1989, pp. 3-19.
Helen Hardacre, ‘Creating State Shintô: The Great Promulgation Campaign and the New Religions’,
Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 12, no. 1 (Winter 1986), pp. 29-63.
Susan Tyler, ‘Is there a religion called Shintô?’, in Adriana Boscaro et al (eds), Rethinking Japan, II, New
York, St Martin’s Press, 1990, pp. 261–70.
John Breen and Mark Teeuwen, ‘Introduction: Shinto Past and Present’, in Breen and Teeuwen (eds),
Shinto in History: Ways of the Kami, Surrey, Curzon Press, 2000, pp. 1-12.
Further Reading:
Conventional (i.e., problematic) sources on Shintô:
Japanese Religion: A Survey by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Kodansha International, 1972, pp. 11-27.
Ono Sokyo, Shinto: The Kami Way, Tokyo and Rutland, Vermont, Charles Tuttle, 1962 ( Chap. 1), pp. 119.
Hori Ichirô, Folk Religion in Japan: Continuity and Change, University of Chicago Press, 1968, pp. 1-34.
Tsunoda et al, Sources of Japanese Tradition, I, Columbia University Press, 1958, pp. 34-51, 261-76 [on
so-called early and medieval ‘Shintô’].
Stuart Picken, Essentials of Shintô: An Analytical Guide to Principal Teachings, London, Greenwood
Press, 1994 [and his other book on Shintô as the so-called ‘spiritual roots’ of Japanese religion/culture]/
Daniel C. Holton, The National Faith of Japan: A Study in Modern Shintô, New York, Paragon, 1965.
Anesaki Masaharu, History of Japanese Religion, Tuttle, 1963 (first published 1930), pp. 19-23, 32-47,
307-16.
On folk religion/folklore:
Robert J. Smith, Ancestor Worship in Contemporary Japan, Stanford University Press, 1974 (particularly
Chap. 2, ‘Spirits, Ghosts, and Gods’), pp. 39-68.
R. Dorson (ed.), Studies in Japanese Folklore, Indiana University Press, 1963 (Chap. entitled 'The Concept
of Tamashii in Japan', pp. 181-97).
Fanny Hagin Mayer (trans.), Ancient Tales in Modern Japan: an Anthology of Japanese Folk Tales,
Indiana University Press, 1985.
Yanagita Kunio, Japanese Manners and Customs in the Meiji Era, Tokyo, Ôbunsha, 1957 (Chap. 13 on
folklore).
R.M. Dorson (ed.), Studies in Japanese Folklore, Indiana University Press, 1963 (Chap. entitled 'Menstrual
Taboos Imposed on Women'), pp. 239-50.
General:
K. R. Payne & Taigen Daniel Leighton, Discourse and Ideology in Medieval Japanese Buddhism, London &
New York: Routledge, 2006
Motomochi Nakamura Kyoko (trans.), Miraculous Stories from the Japanese Buddhist Tradition: The Nihon
Ryôiki of the Monk Kyôkai, [early 9th century miraculous tales of karma] Surrey, Curzon Press, 1997
Louis Frederic (trans: Eileen M. Lowe), Daily Life in Japan—at the Time of the Samurai, 1185-1603,
London, Allen and Unwin, 1972 [sections on medieval religion and on women, the family etc].
Thomas Hoover, Thomas, Zen Culture, London, Arkana, 1979, (Chap. 3: 'The Rise of Buddhism'), pp. 2940.
Joseph M. Kitagawa, On Understanding Japanese Religion, Princeton University Press, 1987
Ian Reader et al, Japanese Religions, Past and Present, Kent, Japan Library, 1993
Winston Davis, Japanese Religion and Society, State University of New York Press, 1992
Tsunoda et al, Sources of Japanese Tradition, Volume I, Columbia University Press, 1958.
Royall Tyler, ‘Upper Class Heian Society and Japanese Folk Religion’, in A. Boscaro et al (eds), Rethinking Japan, vol. 2, Japan Library Ltd, New York, St Martin’s Press, 1990, pp. 271-82.
Beatrice Lane Suzuki, Mahayana Buddhism, London, Allen & Unwin, 1981.
Hanayama Shinsho, A History of Japanese Buddhism, 1960.
Japanese Religion: A Survey by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Kodansha International, 1972, pp. 47-70
[+ book of same name by H. Byron Earhart].
25
ARTS2908 Course Outline
Richard H. Robinson & Willard L. Johnson, The Buddhist Religion: A Historical Introduction, Wadsworth
Inc., 1982 [Section on Japan, pp. 198-213].
Robert Bellah, Tokugawa Religion, Free Press, 1957 (Chap. 3, ‘Japanese Religion: A General View’), pp.
59-85.
Ama Toshimarô, 'Japanese Religiosity and Kamakura Buddhism', The Japan Foundation Newsletter, vol.
xviii, no. 3, January 1991, pp. 8-13.
R.E. Morrell, Early Kamakura Buddhism: A Minority Report, Berkeley, Calif., Asian Humanities Press,
1987.
Hori Ichirô, Folk Religion in Japan, University of Chicago Press, 1968 (Chap. 3, 'Nembutsu as Folk
Religion'), pp. 83-139.
Kashiwahara Yusen and Sonoda Koyu, Shapers of Japanese Buddhism, Tokyo, kôsei Publishing Co.,
1994.
Burton Watson (trans.), Selected Writings of Nichiren, New York; Columbia University Press, 1990.
J.C. Dobbins, Jôdo Shinshû: Shin Buddhism in Medieval Japan, Indiana University Press, 1989.
Alfred Bloom, Shinran’s Gospel of Pure Grace, University of Arizona Press, 1965.
Minor and Ann Rogers, Rennyo: The Second Founder of Shin Buddhism, Berkeley, Calif., Asian
Humanities Press, 1991.
[material on Zen mostly listed under week 7]
Suzuki Daisetz, Zen and Japanese Culture, Pantheon, (Chap. 1, 'What is Zen?'), pp. 3-18.
Abe Masao, Zen and Western Thought, University of Hawaii Press, 1985 (Parts 1 & 3).
J. J. Clarke, Oriental Enlightenment: the Encounter between Asian and Western Thought, London and
New York, Routledge, 1997.
[Mid-Semester Break]
Week Six (16 April)
Heian: The Classical World in Women’s Diaries
Themes:
It is not often that we find works by women taking pride of place in a culture’s classical literature, yet, in
Japan, Lady Murasaki’s Tale of Genji, Sei Shônagon’s Pillow Book, and poetic diaries such as Izumi
Shikibu’s are now counted amongst its greatest classics. Interestingly, however, that they achieved this
status has much to do with gender constructs that held that real writing (in Chinese), the language of
scholarship, was the preserve of men; clearly, works in pure Japanese (in the simple phonetic script,
kana: known then as onnade or ‘women’s writing’) were more likely to become Japanese classics.
The picture of Heian society that has been pieced together by historians would be even more hazy than
it currently is, if not for these literary works by women. In this tutorial, therefore, we look particularly at
the diarists, and at what their works suggest about the world in which they lived around a thousand
years ago. Centred on the imperial court in Heian-kyô (Kyôto), this was a world that was not,
comparatively speaking, very large nor populous, yet is notable for its highly developed sense of
aesthetics and general refinement. Needless to say, notions of what constituted an ideal man at this
time and in this (aristocratic) class (eg., Murasaki’s ‘Prince Genji’) differed greatly from gender
constructs in warrior society later. What also differed considerably was the fact that, whilst Heian
society was clearly patriarchal in some respects, aristocratic women at that time had more rights and
more autonomy than upper-class women in later times could claim. One should note in this connection
that Confucianism, which Morris rightly notes was waning in influence by mid-Heian, had clearly had
little impact on marriage, the family system and general status of women. The diaries themselves
illustrate this (though indications of the influence of Buddhism abound).
Questions:
a) Drawing on Heian literature, discuss the aesthetics of personal taste, accomplishments and charm in
Heian aristocratic society.
26
ARTS2908 Course Outline
b) Using sources such as Heian diaries for historical understanding or interpretation is clearly useful in
some respects, but limited in others. Reflect upon their historiographical uses and limits.
c) What do Heian diaries suggest about gendered roles and identities in Heian aristocratic society? [refer
to two or more of the diaries, and bear in mind that ‘gender constructs’ include masculinity/s; if the
focus is on masculinity/s, the Tale of Genji would certainly be useful since he exemplified the ideal
aristocratic male; Morris’ chapter on male-female relations is a lot more useful for this question than
the one in the Kit]
d) Compare the narrative styles of different diaries, including The Tosa Diary written by a man, reflecting
upon the impact of social constructions of gender on Heian literary forms. [on the Tosa diary see
Bowring, Miner’s intro., and/or Miller’s book]
Key Readings
Textbook: Walthall, Ch.2 ‘Heian Japan (794–ca.1180)’, pp. 30–45
*Ivan Morris, The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan, Penguin, 1964 (Chap. 1: ‘The
Heian Period’: old but detailed and good, but for the value judgments about sexual ‘immorality’ etc), pp.
17-30.
*Richard Bowring, ‘The Female Hand in Heian Japan: A First Reading’, in Domna C Stanton (ed.), The
Female Autograph, University of Chicago Press, 1987, pp. 49-56.
* Edward Seidensticker (trans.), The Gossamer Years–Kagero Nikki: The Diary of Noblewoman of Heian
Japan, Tokyo and Rutland, Tuttle, 1973(Book One), pp. 33-69.
William N. Porter (trans), The Tosa Diary [by Ki no Tsurayuki], London, Frowde, 1912 [another translation
is in Miner’s book above].
Rebecca L. Copeland & Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen (eds), The Father-Daughter Plot: Japanese
Literary Women and the Law of the Father, Honolulu: Univ of Hawaii Press (online access to whole
book through the library catalogue: of the first 4 chapters 3 are on Heian diarists/poets and one on
the Kamakura Confessions of Lady Nijô; the first chapter is on the diary in the Kit)
Ivan Morris, The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan, Penguin, 1964 (Chap. VIII, ‘The
Women of Heian and their Relations with Men’), pp. 211-61.
Further Reading:
Other diaries etc:
‘The Diary of Izumi Shikibu’, in Earl Miner (trans., ed.), Japanese Poetic Diaries, University of California
Press, 1969, pp. 95-153 (excellent!)
Ivan Morris (trans.), The Pillow Book of Sei Shônagon, Penguin Classics, 1967.
Ivan Morris, As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams: Recollections of a Woman in Eleventh-Century Japan,
Penguin Books, 1971.
Jennifer Brewster, Sanuki no Suke Nikki: A Translation of the Emperor Horikawa Diary, Canberra, ANU
Press, 1977.
Richard Bowring (trans.), The Diary of Lady Murasaki, Penguin Books, 1996.
Lady Murasaki [Shikibu], The Tale of Genji, (Arthur Waley, trans.), New York, The Modern Library, 1960.
[there’s also an interesting article on Prince ‘Genji as rapist?’ in the gender in Asian studies e-journal,
Intersections; can’t recall the details but it’d be easy enough to find]
Commentaries:
[intros to each of the above]
Terry Kawashima, Writing Margins: The Textual Construction of Gender in Heian and Kamakura Japan,
Cambridge University Press, 2001
27
ARTS2908 Course Outline
Marilyn Jeanne Miller, The Poetics of Nikki Bungaku: A Comparison of the Traditions, Conventions, and
Structure of Heian Japan’s Literary Diaries with Western Autobiographical Writing, New York &
London, Garland Publishing Inc., 1985.
Rajyashree Pandey, ‘Poetry, Sex and Salvation: The “Courtesan” and the Noblewoman in Medieval
Japanese Narratives’, Japanese Studies (Australia), vol. 24, no. 1 (May 2004), pp. 61-79
Norma Field, The Splendor of Longing in the Tale of Genji, Princeton University Press, 1987.
Shirane Haruo, The Bridge of Dreams: A Poetics of ‘The Tale of Genji’, Stanford University Press, 1987.
R.H. Brower and E. Miner, Japanese Court Poetry, Standford Calif., Stanford University Press, 1961.
Mark Morris, ‘Sei Shônagon’s Poetic Catalogues’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, (June 1980).
H. Mack Horton, ‘Portrait of a Medieval Japanese Marriage…’, Japanese Journal of Language and
Literature, vol. 37, no. 2 (Oct), 2003, pp. 130–54
[Literary collections would also be useful for this week: e.g., Anthology of Japanese Literature.]
On women’s changing status:
[Readings from earlier weeks on early religion and state, and under Bushidô week; also essays in Women
and Class in Japanese History & Recreating Japanese Women)
Wakita Haruko, ‘Marriage and Property in Premodern Japan from the Perspectives of Women's History’,
Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 10, no. 1 (Winter 1984), pp. 73-99 (and her book)
Joyce Ackroyd, ‘Women in Feudal Japan’, Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 3rd Series, vol. 7
(November 1959), pp. 37-68 (old but good; online access from library catalogue)
Tonomura Hitomi, ‘Women and Inheritance in Japan’s Early Warrior Society’, Comparative Studies in
Society and History, vols 32–33 (July 1990), pp. 592–623.
R. Dorson (ed.), Studies in Japanese Folklore, Indiana University Press, 1963 (Chap. entitled ‘Ashiire-kon,
Putting-One's-Feet-in Marriage’).
William H. McCullough, ‘Japanese Marriage Institutions in the Heian Period’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic
Studies, vol. 27, 1967, pp. 103–167
Janet R. Goodwin, ‘Shadows of Transgression: Heian and Kamakura Constructions of Prostitution’,
Monumenta Nipponica, vol. 55, no. 3 (2010), pp. 327–68 (another by her on ‘marriage, leadership, and
political status in village and palace’ in the same journal, vol. 60, no. 4, Winter 2005, pp. 437–79
Week Seven (23 April)
Zen Culture/Warrior Culture
Themes:
The bushi and ‘Bushidô’ (‘the way of the warrior’) have long been romanticized—by scholars, Japanese
militarists and political activists especially of the extreme right; also, of course, by non-Japanese
Eastern mysticism, aesthetics or martial arts enthusiasts, macho types, fans of manga and animé, and
so on. The same goes for Zen, in general and with regard to its strong influence on warrior culture.
Students of history should be wary of popular enthusiasms and myths, however, and subject readings
(such as Suzuki) to critical scrutiny.
Potentially, there are various topics this week for discussion and essays: the transition to shogunal
rule; warrior culture in general, from medieval to Tokugawa Japan; Zen’s influence upon artistic
culture; and the intimate connection between Zen and samurai (the nature and reasons for Zen’s
influence and how the relation affected each). Without a doubt, one effect was a tension between
Buddhist (including, in theory, Zen) pacifism and the warrior’s violent profession, which arguably
resulted in a marked ambivalence toward violence in Zen.
Both Zen and Confucianism had a profound impact on samurai spirituality and ethics, and also political
action and notions of heroism. Warrior codes always combined indigenous warrior traditions with both
Zen spirituality and Confucian ethics, though the Zen influence was predominant before Tokugawa.
This notwithstanding, authors (e.g., Bellah) have long argued that ‘the’ (singular?) samurai code of
28
ARTS2908 Course Outline
action was centred on Confucian notions of duty and loyalty to lord or clan, and therefore self-sacrifice
or denial; and this has led to rather ‘orientalist’ and essentialistic assumptions that it (like Buddhism or,
indeed, Japanese culture in general) was not at all individualistic. Arguably, however, warrior codes of
practice also involved other commitments, loyalties or duties—for example, to oneself or to one’s own
integrity or honour, involving self-cultivation, completion and assertion. Concerning the external
loyalties (say, to lord, clan or family) and ‘grand Causes’ that samurai supposedly always sacrificed
themselves for, the views of the highly influential Zen master, Dôgen (founder of Sôtô Zen) are thoughtprovoking. His views on the oneness of practice and realization (means and end) appear to have
influenced both spiritual and secular action amongst samurai. In samurai and samurai-influenced
heroic traditions, medieval and modern, there has been a strong tendency to glorify action as an end in
itself: the ‘sincerity’ of the act is all-important regardless of the nature of worldly ideals and end-goals
or whether the latter happen to be achieved.
Questions
a) How and why did Zen become so popular with samurai? [start with Suzuki…]
b) The sort of ideas found in Daidôji’s teachings on bushidô were not simply a spontaneous moral code
that all samurai felt they should live up to, but (political) ‘ideology’. Discuss (e.g., whose interests did
such texts serve?)
c) Artistic culture in medieval and later Japan was influenced by Zen to the extent that arts ranging from
Nô theatre and the tea ceremony to poetry, ink painting, architecture and garden design are commonly
called the ‘Zen arts’. What was the nature of this influence?
d) Not surprisingly, given its close historical connection with a warrior class, Zen has long been ambivalent
toward violence. Discuss its contradictory stance, drawing on examples from writings by Zen priests or
practitioners. [e.g., Takuan, Musashi, Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Suzuki Shôsan, Wilson’s translation of
Ideals of the Samurai etc…]
e) What part did individualism (or ‘egoism’) play in warrior ethical codes and secular practice—ie., despite
the doctrinal emphasis in Zen of ‘ego-annihilation’, and selflessness, altruism and loyalty in
Confucianism)? [cf. sources by Ansart, Bowen Raddeker, Dôgen, Huber, Buruma, Morris, Mishima,
etc.]
f)
Compare Japan’s medieval ‘knightly’ culture with roughly contemporaneous ones in Europe. Was
Japan’s period of classic ‘feudalism’ essentially different?
Key Readings
Textbook: Walthall, Ch. 3 ‘Kamakura Japan (1180–1333)’, pp. 46–62 & Ch. 4 ‘Japan’s Middle Ages (1330–
1600), pp. 72–85 (ignore the documents)
*Suzuki Daisetz, Zen and Japanese Culture, Princeton University Press, 1959 (part of Ch.4: ‘Zen and the
Samurai’), pp. 61–78.
* A. L. Sadler (trans.), The Code of the Samurai: A Translation of Daidôji Yûzan’s Budô Shoshinshû,
Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1988, (Excerpts), pp. 15-21, 79-84, 100-105
* Olivier Ansart, ‘Loyalty in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Samurai Discourse’, Japanese Studies,
vol. 27, no. 2 (Sept 2007), pp. 139–54.
Thomas Hoover, Zen Culture, Arkana, 1977 (Chap. 13: ‘The Tea Ceremony’), pp. 171-83.
Abe Masao, Zen and Western Thought, University of Hawaii Press, 1985, pp. 216-22 [essay by Dôgen
referred to above, re ‘original purity’ in Mahayana Budhism].
29
ARTS2908 Course Outline
Mukoh Takao (trans.), The Hagakure: A Code to the Way of the Samurai [by Yamamoto Tsunetomo,
c.1716], Hokuseido Press, 1980 (known as the classic of Tokugawa bushidô, written by a former
samurai Zen priest)
Hélène Bowen Raddeker, Treacherous Women of Imperial Japan: Patriarchal Fictions, Patricidal
Fantasies, London and New York, Routledge, 1997 [Chapter 6, esp. section entitled ‘Heroism, Noble
and Nihirisuto’].
Further Readings
On shogunal rule, daimyô etc:
Peter Duus, Feudalism in Japan, New York, Alfred Knopf, 1976, 2nd edition (part of Chap. 3: ‘From Civil
Monarchy to Warrior Rule’), pp. 51-59.
Conrad Totman, Japan Before Perry, University of California Press, 1981 (part of Chap. 3: ‘Medieval
Japan: An Age of Political Fluidity’), 117-32.
John W. Hall, Medieval Japan, Yale University Press, 1974.
Jeffrey P. Mass, Warrior Government in Early Medieval Japan: a Study of the Kamakura Bakufu, Shugo
and Jito, Yale University Press, 1974.
Jeffrey P. Mass & William B. Hauser, The Bakufu in Japanese History, Stanford University Press, 1985.
J. P. Mass, Antiquity and Anachronism in Japanese History, Stanford University Press, 1992.
Peter Judd Arnesen, The Medieval Japanese Daimyô, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1979.
Delmer Myers Brown, Money Economy in Medieval Japan: a Case Study in the Use of Coins, Yale
University, 1951.
On Zen & Zen arts/culture:
(works by Brian Victoria on Zen and militarism, modern and predmodern: eg., Zen at War)
Thomas Hoover, Zen Culture, London, Arkana, 1979 (Chap. 5: ‘Zen Archery and Swordsmanship’), pp.
57-67.
Winston L. King, Zen and the Way of the Sword: Arming the Samurai Psyche, Oxford University Press,
1993
Winston L. King, Death Was His Kôan: The Samurai-Zen of Suzuki Shôsan, Berkeley, Calif., Asian
Humanities Press, 1986.
Suzuki Daisetz, [same as above, 2 chaps on Zen and Swordsmanship].
H. Dumoulin, A History of Zen Buddhism, New York, Pantheon, 1963.
T. Legget, Zen and the Ways, London, Routledge, 1978.
Kashiwahara Yusen and Sonoda Koyu, Shapers of Japanese Buddhism, Tokyo, kôsei Publishing Co.,
1994.
Louis Fréderic, Daily Life in Japan at the Time of the Samurai, 1185—1603, London, Allen & Unwin, 1972
(Chap. IX is on the Arts)
George Elison & Bardwell L. Smith (eds), Warlords, Artists, and Commoners: Japan in the Sixteenth
Century, University Press of Hawaii, 1981 (contains various essays on the culture of tea, the performing
arts, poetry, etc)
Thomas Hoover, Zen Culture, London, Arkana, 1979
Conrad Totman, Japan Before Perry, University of California Press, 1981 (parts of Chap. 3: ‘Medieval
Japan: An Age of Political Fluidity’ on arts & letters).
Mark Spittle, Medieval Japanese Gardens of the 13th to the 16th Centuries, 1989.
James Araki, The Ballad-Drama of Medieval Japan, Vermont, Tuttle, 1978.
Noma Seiroku, The Arts of Japan, Ancient and Medieval, Tokyo, Kodansha International, 1966.
H. Paul Varley, Japanese Culture: A Short History, London, Faber and Faber, 1973.
Michael Dunn, Traditional Japanese Design: Five Tastes, New York and London, Harry N. Abrams, 2001.
On the samurai, their lives, moral codes, constructs of heroism etc:
Takuan Sôhô, ‘Annals of the Sword Taia’, in William Scott Wilson (trans.), The Unfettered Mind: Writings
of the Zen Master to the Sword Master, Tokyo, Kodansha International, 1986, pp. 79-92 [written in early
17thC].
Robert Bellah, Tokugawa Religion, Free Press, 1957, pp. 90-1, 94-8 [section on Bushidô].
30
ARTS2908 Course Outline
Paul H. Varley, Warriors of Japan as Portrayed in the War Tales, University of Hawaii Press, 1994.
Louis Fréderic, Daily Life in Japan at the Time of the Samurai, 1185—1603, London, Allen & Unwin, 1972
(Chap. 7: ‘War and Warriors’), pp. 155-93.
S. R. Turnbull, The Samurai, A Military History, Osprey Publishing, 1977 [and his other books, The Book of
the Samurai and Ninja.]
Catharina Blomberg, The Heart of the Warrior: Origins and Religious Background of the Samurai System
in Feudal Japan, Kent, Japan Library, 1994 [also essay on Bushidô in Rethinking Japan, II].
Ihara Saikaku, Tales of Samurai Honor [Buke Giri Monogatari], (trans, Caryl Ann Callahan), Tokyo,
Monumenta Nipponica, 1981
Ian Buruma, A Japanese Mirror: Heroes and Villains of Japanese Culture, Penguin, 1984 (Chaps 9 & 10,
‘The Loyal Retainers’ and ‘Yakuza and Nihilist’), pp. 150-66, 167-95.
Ivan Morris, The Nobility of Failure: Tragic Heroes in the History of Japan, Penguin, 1975 (particularly
Intro. and Chap. 8, ‘Ôshio Heihachirô: ‘Save the People!’’), xxi-xxiii, pp. 180-216.
Thomas Huber, ‘‘Men of High Purpose’ and the Politics of Direct Action, 1862-4’ in Najita and Koschmann
(eds), Conflict in Modern Japanese History, 1982, pp. 107-27.
Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings [Gorin no sho], Fontana Paperbacks, 1974 (written 1645).
William Scott Wilson (trans.), Ideals of the Samurai: Writings of Japanese Warriors, 1982 (also The Lone
Samurai: The Life of Miyamoto Musashi, Kodansha International, 2004; and Life-Giving Sword:
Secret Teachings from the House of the Shogun. The Classic Text on Zen and the No-Sword by
Musashi’s Great Rival, Muneyori Hagyu, Kodansha, 2003; and other texts on samurai, Zen etc)
Sugawara Makoto, Lives of Master Swordsmen, Tokyo, East Publications, 1999.
Richard Storry, The Way of the Samurai, London, Orbis, 1978.
John Newman, Bushidô: The Way of the Warrior, London, Bison Books, 1989.
Karl F. Friday, ‘Bushidô or Bull? A Medieval Historian’s Perspective on the Imperial Army and the
Japanese Warrior Tradition’, The History Teacher, vol. 27, no. 3 (May 1994), pp. 339-49.
John P. Keenan, ‘The Mystique of Martial Arts’, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, vol. 17, no. 4
(December 1990), pp. 421-32.
Donald Keene (trans.), Chûshingura [‘The Treasury of Loyal Retainers’, the famous Bunraku/Kabuki play
about the 47 rônin], Columbia University Press, 1971 (Brandon, ed.).
Brian Powell, ‘The Samurai Ethic in Mayama Seika’s Genroku Chûshingura’, Modern Asian Studies, vol.
18, no 4 (1984), pp. 725-45 [on a modern, 1930s version of Chushingura].
Kathryn Sparling (trans.),Yukio Mishima on Hagakure: The Samurai Ethic and Modern Japan, Penguin,
1977, pp. 14-5, 44-94.
W.R. LaFleur, ‘Japan’, in Frederick Holck (ed.), Death in Eastern Thought, Nashville & New York,
Abingdon Press, 1974, pp. 236-56.
Louis Frederic, Daily Life in Japan—at the Time of the Samurai, 1185-1603, London, Allen & Unwin, 1972.
On debates/theory (re’feudalism’ & ‘groupism’):
E. Herbert Norman, ‘People Under Feudalism’, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, vol. 9, no. 2 (1977),
pp. 56-61 [and/or his monograph on Shôeki listed in the ideology wk].
John Whitney Hall, ‘E.H. Norman on Tokugawa Japan’, Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 3, no. 2 (Summer
1977), pp. 365-74.
Hall, ‘Feudalism in Japan: A Reassessment’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, volume 5
(1962), pp. 15-51.
J.P. Mass, Antiquity and Anachronism in Japanese History, Stanford University Press, 1992 (chapter on
Hall’s scholarship).
[ John Dower’s introduction to Norman’s collected essays, Origins of the Modern Japanese State, would be
a helpful historiographical source for Q.c this week or in other weeks]
Edwin O. Reischauer, The Japanese, 1977 (Chaps. 13-16 for a conventional treatment of Japan’s
‘groupism’, lack of individualistic traditions etc.), pp. 127-66.
Ross Mouer and Sugimoto Yoshio, Images of Japanese Society: A Study in the Social Construction of
Reality, 1986 (Chap. 8, ‘The Autonomous Individual’, a critique of the East/West binarisms and
essentialism that inhere in theories of Japan’s lack of individualism etc), pp. 191-210.
[2nd Quiz in Wk8 tute]
31
ARTS2908 Course Outline
Week Eight (30 Apr)
16th -Century Revolution & the ‘Christian Century’
Themes:
Revolution & ‘3 heroes’: Part one of this week’s topic is about the [re-]unification of the land toward the end
of the sixteenth century and the legitimation of the new Tokugawa order after their victory in 1600.
Possible topics for discussion include the sixteenth century ‘revolution’; representations of the three
‘great heroes’ (unifers of Japan: Nobunaga, Hideyoshi & Tokugawa Ieyasu); the nature of the new
state (methods of social control); and also the ‘closed country’ myth.
Firstly, there has long been a tendency in histories of Japan to treat these three generals as either
great heroes or arch-villains, which amounts to much the same thing: the ‘great man’ as single-handed
mover of history. Some scholars (such as McMullin), however, have pointed to significant structural
(broader socio-economic and military) factors that led to this ‘revolution’—factors with more explanatory
power than the personal brilliance or supposedly unique abilities of a few leaders.
Secondly, the Tokugawa system was both new in some respects and not in others. This can be seen
when we consider the practical (ie., excluding ideological) measures taken to ensure continued
Tokugawa supremacy amongst daimyô (lords); and to control the lower levels of society (both
ordinary samurai and the lower classes). The topic of social control raises broader issues, moreover:
for example, the question of whether the eurocentric notion of ‘oriental despotism’ is applicable to
Tokugawa Japan. It is not if we reject views of the bakuhan system as entirely repressive, autocratic,
or even absolutist. This assumption is tied to once-conventional, Eurocentric views of the era as static
or rigid because it involved little historical ‘progress’. As Hall notes, the Tokugawa system had been
seen to be counter-revolutionary, thus retrogressive. Hence, he seeks to counter views of Tokugawa
Japan as still essentially feudal (even ‘re-feudalized’), as if its ‘natural’ progress to modernism had
been held back by rulers with absolutist power. Hall would have done better, however, to distinguish
between theory and practice, or ruler’s intentions versus actual results since there is no doubt that they
tried in various ways to turn back the clock, seeking to control increasing social mobility, for example
(the further development of capitalism and economic power of an emerging middle class) and to
strengthen distinctions between the status groups in order to strengthen social control.
Finally, another important historiographical issue concerns the challenge mounted by Toby and
Wakabayashi to the conventional assumption that Japan was deliberately ‘closed to the outside world’
and thus ‘isolated’ throughout Tokugawa. The (teleological) myth of ‘sakoku’ (closed country)
contributed to earlier Eurocentric views of the period as static since there was little contact with
‘progressive’ (i.e., Western) influences. Like ‘Shintô’, ‘sakoku’ is an enduring myth in works of
Japanese history, however.
‘Southern Barbarians’ & the ‘Evil Religion’ (Christianity): The so-called 'Christian Century' was between the
mid-sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries. This topic concerns a first contact and ensuing cultural
and/or political conflict. Of particular interest is how Europeans and Japanese perceived each other:
How did 'southern barbarians' (especially Catholic, mainly Jesuit missionaries) see Japan and the
Japanese, and why did Christianity come to be known amongst Japanese antagonists as the 'evil
religion'? One central question we will be considering is whether the ultimate proscription and violent
suppression of Christianity by the Tokugawa authorities was due more to ‘cultural’ or to political
differences. Undeniably, both were factors. Just one notable cultural difference was the acceptance in
Japan of male same-sex relations. Homosexuality, the so-called ‘deadly sin’ (amongst priests and
warriors), was something that the missionaries frequently referred to in a scandalized manner (see
Cooper’s ‘anthology of European reports…’, chapter on Buddhism, for example; and Pflugfelder’s
book).
32
ARTS2908 Course Outline
Questions
a) Assess the relative contributions of the three ‘great unifiers’ to the establishment of a new sociopolitical order by 1600 with reference to the debate about which was the greatest innovator (or,
indeed, whether any one of the three was all that original). [cf. Totman, McMullin, Wakita etc]
b) How would you characterize the period of unification from Momoyama to early Tokugawa: was it
entirely progressive or ‘revolutionary’, as Hall indicates, or was it partly retrogressive? [cf.,McMullin;
Hall reading on the new status system; and something on peasants, e.g. Befu Harumi and/or Herb
Bix]
c) Discuss the practical ways in which the new Tokugawa bakufu sought to control potential critics,
rebels or enemies at the various status levels, including the ‘politics of compromise’ effected with
other lords and the lower social classes (see Befu on the degree of autonomy permitted peasants,
for example).
d) The term ‘sakoku’ (closed country) is still commonly used by historians to describe Bakufu foreign
th
policy from the mid- 17 century, which is why Tokugawa Japan is said to have been ‘isolated’.
Assess the empirical accuracy of such terms [cf. Toby, Wakabayashi etc].
e) Discuss the various ways in which there was a culture clash between the missionaries and the
Japanese, including attitudes to sexual morality.
f)
Why did many Japanese, especially rulers and the ideologues who served them, come to see
Christianity as a threat?
g) What does a close textual reading of the three anti-Christian documents—one each by the
apostates, Fucan and Ferreira, and the third anonymous—suggest about the nature of Japanese
critiques of Christianity OR political pressures on the authors (orchestration)
h) If 'orientalism' is a view of the 'Other' as fundamentally different, strange and inferior, to what degree
and in what ways did this manifest itself in what the first Europeans in Japan had to say about
Japan and the Japanese?
Key Readings
*John Whitney Hall, 'Japan's Sixteenth Century Revolution', in George Elison & B.L. Smith (eds.),
Warlords, Artists and Commoners, University of Hawaii Press, 1981, pp. 7-21
*George B. Sansom, The Western World and Japan, London, Cresset Press, 1950 (Chap. VI: ‘Christianity
in Japan, 1549–1614’), pp. 120–40.
Primary Sources:
*Michael Cooper (ed.), They Came to Japan: An Anthology of European Reports on Japan, 1543-1640,
University of California Press, 1965, pp. 311-29.
*Michael Cooper (ed.), This Island of Japon: Joao Rodriques' Account of 16th Century Japan, Tokyo and
New York, Kodansha International, 1973, pp.60-2.
Textbook: Walthall, Ch. 5 ‘Edo Japan (1603–1800)’, pp. 95–103
33
ARTS2908 Course Outline
Further Reading
On Christianity
Primary Sources:
George Elison, Deus Destroyed: The Image of Christianity in Early Modern Japan, Harvard University
Press, 1973 (translated anti-Christian treatise by Japanese apostate, Fucan), pp. 257-84.
Elison, Deus Destroyed (the Portuguese Jesuit, Ferreira’s anti-Christian treatise, ‘Deceit Disclosed’, and an
anonymous popular tract, ‘Kirishitan Monogatari’ [‘A Tale of Christianity’]), pp. 302-13, 319-348.
Richard Tames, Servant of the Shogun: Being the True Story of William Adams, Pilot and Samurai, the
First Englishman [in Japan?], Kent, Paul Norbury, 1981.
Michael Cooper (ed.), The Southern Barbarians: the First Europeans in Japan, Tokyo, Kodansha, 1971
Secondary Sources:
Charles R. Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 1549-1650 (Chap. 2, ‘Japan Through Jesuit
Spectacles’), University of California Press, 1981, pp. 41-90.
Elison, ‘The Cross and the Sword: Patterns of Momoyama History’, in G. Elison & B.L. Smith (eds.),
Warlords, Artists and Commoners , University of Hawaii Press, 1981, pp. 55-86.
George Elison, Deus Destroyed: The Image of Christianity in Early Modern Japan, Harvard University
Press, 1973 (Intro. and Concl.), pp. 1-10, 248-54.
C.R. Boxer, 'When the Twain First Met: European Conceptions and Misconceptions of Japan, SixteenthEighteenth Centuries', Modern Asian Studies, vol. 18 (October 1984).
J. F. Moran, The Japanese and the Jesuits: Alessandro Valignano in Sixteenth-Century Japan, London
and New York, Routledge, 1993
Peter Nosco, ‘Ideology and Christianity in Japan, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, vol. 36, no. 2
R. P. Toby, ‘The ‘Indianness’ of Iberia and changing Japanese Iconographies of Other’, in Stuart B.
Schwartz (ed.), Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting, and Reflecting on the Encounters
between Europeans and other Peoples in the Early Modern Era, Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp.
323–51.
C.R. Boxer, ‘The Clandestine Church in Feudal Japan, 1614–1640’, History Today, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 53–
61.
Otis Cary, A History of Christianity in Japan, Tuttle, 1976/94 (first published 1906).
Michael Cooper, Rodrigues the Interpreter: an Early Jesuit in Japan and China, New York, Weatherhill,
1974
Donald Lach, Japan in the Eyes of Europe, University of Chicago Press, 1965, pp. 651-729.
C. R. Boxer, The Christian Century (Chap. 4, 'Jesuits and Friars'), pp. 137-87 [his other books too].
C.R. Boxer, Jan Compagnie in Japan, 1600–1817, Tokyo, Oxford University Press, 1968.
K. M. Panikkar, Asia and Western Dominance: A Survey of the Vasco da Gama Epoch of Asian History,
1498–1945, London, Allen and Unwin, 1961 [and similar books by Boxer].
th
th
Derek Massarella, A World Elsewhere: Europe’s Encounter with Japan in the 16 and 17 Centuries,
Yale University Press, 1990.
S.R. Turnbull, The Kakure Kirishitan of Japan: a Study of their Development, Belief and Rituals to the
Present Day, Surrey, Japan Library, 1998.
Endô Shûsaku, Silence, Quartet Books, 1969 (or his historical play, The Golden Century).
Ivan Morris, The Nobility of Failure: Tragic Heroes in the History of Japan, Penguin, 1975 (Chap. 7 on
Amakusa Shirô, peasant rebel and 'Japanese Messiah'), pp. 143-79.
On the ‘3 heroes’/Unification:
Neil McMullin, Buddhism and the State in Sixteenth Century Japan, Princeton University Press, 1985, pp.
236-63.
Wakita Osamu, 'The Emergence of the State in Sixteenth-Century Japan: From Oda to Tokugawa,
Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 8, no. 2 (1982), pp. 343-67.
Conrad Totman, Politics in the Tokugawa Bakufu, 1600-1853 , Harvard University Press, 1967, pp. 1-31.
34
ARTS2908 Course Outline
Tsunoda et al, Sources of Japanese Tradition , Columbia University Press, 1958 (Chap. xv, 'Heroes and
Hero Worship'), pp. 298-334.
R.P. Toby, State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan: Asia in the Development of the Tokugawa
Bakufu, Princeton University Press, 1983.
Mary Berry, Hideyoshi, Harvard University Press, 1982.
W. J. Boot, ‘The Religious Background of the Deification of Tokugawa Ieyasu’, inAdriana Boscaro et al
(eds), Rethinking Japan, II, New York, St Martin’s Press, 1990, pp. 331–37.
Conrad Totman, Tokugawa Ieyasu: Shôgun, Heian International, 1983
A. L. Sadler, The Maker of Modern Japan: The Life of Tokugawa Ieyasu, London, Allen and Unwin, 1977.
Totman, Japan Before Perry, University of California Press, 1981, pp. 133-64 (or his new textbook).
John .W. Hall, Nagahara Keiji & Yamamura Kozo (eds), Japan Before Tokugawa: Political Consolidation
and Economic Growth, 1500-1650, Princeton University Press, 1981.
Richard Tames, Servant of the Shôgun: being the true story of William Adams, pilot and samurai, the first
Englishman in Japan, Kent, Paul Norbury, 1981.
On the Tokugawa State, political system & social control:
John Whitney Hall, ‘Rule by Status in Tokugawa Japan’, Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 1, no. 1 (1974),
pp. 39-49.
Kenneth G. Henshall, A History of Japan: From Stone Age to Superpower, Macmillan, 1999 (Part Three:
‘The Closed Country: the Tokugawa Period [1600-1868]’, section one), pp. 48-56
Tsukahira Toshio, Feudal Control in Tokugawa Japan: The Sankin Kôtai System, Harvard East Asian
Monographs, 1966 (Chap. 3), pp. 51-80.
Marius B. Jansen & Gilbert Rozman, Japan in Transition: From Tokugawa to Meiji, Princeton University
Press, 1986 (parts one and two)
James L. McClain, ‘Castle Towns and Daimyo Authority: Kanazawa in the Years 1853-1630’, Journal of
Japanese Studies, vol. 6, no. 2 (1980), pp. 267-99.
McClain (ed.), Edo and Paris: Urban Life and the State in the Early Modern Era, Ithaca, Cornell University
Press, 1994.
Befu Harumi, ‘Village Autonomy and Articulation with the State’, in John Hall and Marius Jansen (eds),
Studies in the Institutional History of Early Modern Japan, Princeton University Press, 1968, pp. 30114.
Gary P. Leupp, Servants, Shophands, and Laborers in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan, Princeton University
Press, 1992 (Chap. 2, ‘Labor and the Pax Tokugawa’), pp. 7-28.
Kenneth B. Pyle, The Making of Modern Japan, Lexington, Mas. and Toronto, D.C. Heath and Company,
Second Edition 1996, (Chap. 2, ‘Establishment of the Tokugawa System’), pp. 11–28.
Conrad Totman, Politics in the Tokugawa Bakufu, 1600-1853 , Harvard University Press, 1967, pp. 1-31.
Constantine Vaporis, ‘To Edo and Back: Alternate Attendance and Japanese Culture in the Early Modern
Period’, Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 23, no. 1 (Winter 1997).
T.C. Smith, ‘‘Merit’ as Ideology in the Tokugawa Period’, in R.P. Dore (ed.), Aspects of Social Change in
Modern Japan, Princeton University Press, 1967, pp. 71-90.
Ronald Dore, ‘Talent and the Social Order in Tokugawa Japan’, in Hall and Jansen (eds.), Studies in the
Institutional History of Early Modern Japan, pp. 349-61.
Dore, Education in Tokugawa Japan, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965.
D.C. Sheldon, The Rise of the Merchant Class in Tokugawa Japan, 1600-1868, New York, Russell &
Russell, 1973.
Yamamura Kozo, A Study of Samurai Income and Entrepreneurship, Harvard University Press, 1974.
On (the myth of) ‘sakoku’/closed country:
Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, Anti-foreignism and Western Learning in Early Modern Japan, Harvard
University Press, 1986, pp. 58-68.
R.P. Toby, 'Reopening the Question of Sakoku: Diplomacy in the Legitimation of the Tokugawa Bakufu',
Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 3, no. 2 (1977), pp. 323-63 [and/or his book].
Kazui Tashiro and Susan Downing Videen, ‘Foreign Relations during the Edo Period: Sakoku Reexamined’, Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 8, no. 2 (Summer 1982), pp. 283–306
(Marius Jansen’s China in the Tokugawa World and the Cambridge history/s should also be useful)
35
ARTS2908 Course Outline
[Research essay due on the Monday of Wk10: 13 May]
Week Nine (7 May)
(Tokugawa) Bushidô, Masculinities, Women
Themes:
‘Gender Studies’ is often misunderstood to mean simply ‘women’s studies’ when it is has always
been concerned with analysis of social constructions of femininity and masculinity— i.e., what
different cultures at different times take to be an ideal woman or man, the ‘proper’ social roles for
men and women prescribed by societies, the supposedly ‘natural’ identities they ascribe to males
and females, and so on. Thus, the topic for this week focuses partly on samurai women’s changing
role, status and situation; but also on gender constructs of femininity and (continuing from the first
week on warrior culture and the week on Heian) also masculinity, and the way in which gender
constructs vary depending upon class (and era).
Notable in connection with changing masculinities is one particular samurai ideal that was popular
in Tokugawa, termed ‘Shûdô’, literally, the ‘way of adolescent/younger men’. Adherents (such as
Yamamoto Tsunetomo, the author of Hagakure, thought that ‘pure’ love (emotional and physical)
could only occur between men. Historically, in patriarchal warrior cultures this has not been an
unusual notion (cf. ancient Greece), one clearly based both on an idealization of the
warrior/masculinity and denigration of women/the feminine (as well as, of course, simple same-sex
desire). Hence, a commonly expressed idea was that wives only had one purpose, to provide male
heirs. In Japan, what also contributed to this samurai ideal of comradeship and love was a
Buddhist understanding of ‘celibacy’ that, for some priests and bushi, apparently only ruled out sex
with women. In Buddhism, too (as elsewhere in the world), women were commonly seen to be
essentially sexual, thus spiritually inferior creatures in line with typical gender binarisms that
associated mind, soul/spiritual purity, ‘heaven’ etc with maleness, and body, earth, sexual>spiritual
pollution etc with femaleness.
Through Tokugawa, Japan’s gender constructs came to be more strongly influenced by
Confucianism. We see a classic example of that in Onna Daigaku, a famous early Tokugawa text
that came to be a basic teaching text, particularly for samurai women. In the 19th century, however,
the more privileged women amongst merchants and peasants were also likely to be familiar with it.
It contains classic Confucian views of woman’s ‘nature’ and a long list of rules for ‘proper’ feminine
deportment.
Questions
a) How would you explain the obvious deterioration in the status and treatment of samurai women over
the centuries in Japan? Clearly, there was much more at work here than merely imported familial
models and moral philosophy (i.e., Confucianism).
b) What constituted true (samurai) masculinity or the ideal man in Tokugawa? [Primary sources from the
Zen/warrior week and by Tokugawa authors such as Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Saikaku and others would
be useful. This is a broad question, so it could refer to Shûdô, as well as merely to Zen/Confucianinfluenced notions of a good samurai. Note that the refinements once expected only of higher ranking
bushi came to be demanded of lesser ones in Tokugawa’s more educated, ‘bureaucratic’ samurai
culture.]
c) In Hagakure, the Tokugawa work that (problematically) has come to be treated in modern times as the
classic Bushidô text, the author, Yamamoto Tsunetomo (a samurai retainer then Zen priest) expresses
36
ARTS2908 Course Outline
very definite views on the proper place, morality and behaviour of samurai men and women. What
were they, and what sorts of social changes and other factors would have influenced his views?
d) To what degree was samurai culture misogynistic? [Discuss the question with reference to
philosophical and other influences upon samurai social practice with respect to women and to
representations of gender roles and masculine/feminine nature.]
Key Readings
*Tonomura Hitomi, ‘Sexual Violence Against Women: Legal and Extralegal Treatment in Premodern
Warrior Societies’, in Tonomura et al (eds), Women and Class in Japanese History, University of
Michigan, 1999, pp. 135–52.
*Kaibara Ekken, 'Onna Daigaku' [the Tokugawa Confucian classic: 'Great Learning for Women'], in Basil
Hall Chamberlain, Things Japanese, London, John Murray, 1905, pp. 502-8.
* Winston L. King, Zen and the Way of the Sword: Arming the Samurai Psyche, Oxford University Press,
1993, pp. 144-8 [section entitled ‘Sexual Mores’ in chapter on Bushidô].
*Ihara Saikaku, Comrade Loves of the Samurai [Nanshoku Ôkagami Buke Giri Monogatari], 1972 [satire
written in 1687], pp. 48-52.
Further Reading
On women, gender, sexuality etc:
Essays in Recreating Japanese Women… & Essays in Japanese Women: New Feminist Perspectives on
the Past, Present, and Future…
Tonomura Hitomi, ‘Women and Inheritance in Japan’s Early Warrior Society’, Comparative Studies in
Society and History, vols 32–33 (July 1990), pp. 592–623.
Joyce Ackroyd, 'Women in Feudal Japan', Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, Third Series, vol. 7
(November 1959), pp. 37-68 (online access from library).
Mukoh Takao (trans.), The Hagakure: A Code to the Way of the Samurai [by Yamamoto Tsunetomo,
c.1716], Hokuseido Press, 1980 [bits on women/wives, and Shûdô/comrade loves]
J. A. Sawada, ‘Sexual Relations as Religious Practice in the Late Tokugawa Period’, Journal of Japanese
Studies, vol. 32, no. 2 (Summer 2006), pp. 341–66
Louis Frederic, Daily Life in Japan at the Time of the Samurai, 1885-1603, London, Allen & Unwin, 1972
(part of Chap. II: ‘Medieval Man’ and the chapter on war and warriors)
Gregory M. Pflugfelder, Cartographies of Desire: Male-Male Sexuality in Japanese Discourse, 1600-1950,
University of California Press, 1999.
Gary Leupp, Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan, University of California
Press, 1997
Tonomura et al (eds), Women and Class in Japanese History, University of Michigan, 1999
A.D. Stanley, ‘Adultery, Punishment, and Reconciliation in Tokugawa Japan’, Journal of Japanese Studies,
vol. 33, no. 2 (Summer 2007), pp. 309–35.
Wakita Haruko, ‘Marriage and Property in Premodern Japan from the Perspectives of Women's History’,
Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 10, no. 1 (Winter 1984), pp. 73-99
Dorothy Robins-Mowry, The Hidden Sun: Women of Modern Japan, Boulder,
Colorado, Westview Press, 1983 [early chapters on pre- and early modern
Women].
Nitobe Inazo, Bushido: The Soul of Japan, New York and London, Knickerbocker Press, 1907 (Chap. XIV,
‘The Training and Position of Woman’), pp. 138-57.
Inagaki Sugimoto Etsu, Daughter of the Samurai, London, 1933.
Yamakawa Kikue, Women of the Mito Domain: Recollections of Samurai Family Life, Tokyo, University of
Tokyo, 1992 [by 1920 or so, Yamakawa was a well-known Marxist-feminist].
[On differences between the lives, roles and status of samurai, peasant and chônin women, see
Lehmann’s The Roots of Modern Japan, pp. 88–100, mostly good but for dubious material on prostitution.]
37
ARTS2908 Course Outline
Week Ten (14 May)
Urban Popular Culture: The ‘Pleasure’ Quarters?
Themes:
This week we look at the popular culture of the chônin ( ‘townspeople’/urban commoners such as
merchants, servants etc) through the eyes of famous authors: the satirical novelists, Ihara Saikaku
and Ejima Kiseki; the author of tales of the supernatural, Ueda Akinari; and the famous Bunraku and
Kabuki playwright, Chikamatsu Monzaemon (all Genroku era, late 17thC, except for Akinari, 18thC).
The general topic for discussion is the ‘floating world’ culture of the new Tokugawa middle classes in
the towns, a topic that again raises the issue of whether Tokugawa Japan was as ‘despotic’ or
‘absolutist’ as often represented.
Thus, we also consider the various forms that social/political resistance can take, including humour or
satire. Some attention will also be paid to gender construction and roles in the various classes, to
commoner sexuality, and to the growing ‘mercantile’ industry of prostitution.
Clearly, the standard name given to the centres of urban popular culture in the Edo era is rather
phallocentric since it overlooks the question of how much ‘pleasure’ was to be had by the women
involved—i.e., it has little to do with the realities of Tokugawa prostitution. Whilst Saikaku might at
times suggest that one of his heroines was in the profession mainly because of an addiction to sex,
both he and Chikamatsu were capable of expressing sympathy for prostitutes, most of whom were sold
into contracts and treated like prisoners by their ‘owners’. (And the authorities helped out by outlawing
prostitution outside of the quarters and returning runaways.) The common romanticization of the tayû
(highest-ranking courtesans) aside, Saikaku’s famous work, ‘The Woman Who Spent Her Life in Love’,
highlights the downward spiral that was inevitably suffered eventually even by women who began their
careers as high-ranking courtesans. Few, after all, were ‘lucky’ enough to have their contracts bought
out by admiring clients intent on buying a famous wife; and, unlike geisha, only high-ranking
courtesans might receive enough training in the arts (music, dance, etc) to serve them in good stead for
a post-contract career.
Questions
a) New eras and socio-economic systems tend to bring with them new cultural and artistic forms. Discuss
the changing nature and social role of theatre in the Edo era.
b) With regard to authorship, audience and narrative content, what do these stories and plays (by Saikaku,
Kiseki and/or Chikamatsu) reveal about the social values of chônin in early Tokugawa?
c) What patterns of gender construction (of femininity and masculinity) can you identify in Chikamatsu’s
(and/or Saikaku’s and Kiseki’s) portraits of fictional heroes and villains?
d) In what ways does Saikaku seem cynical about the early Tokugawa (socio-political) status quo and
conventional morality? [For this question you should also read other works by Saikaku and
commentaries on them.]
e) In relation to Chikamatsu’s and Saikaku’s characterisation of prostitutes (‘amorous’ women who ‘spent
their lives in love’), reflect upon questions of power, agency and victimization—both in such texts and
in the everyday world of Tokugawa prostitution.
Key Readings
*Teruoka Yasutaka, ‘The Pleasure Quarters and Tokugawa Culture’, in C. Andrew Gerstle (ed.), 18th
Century Japan, Allen & Unwin, 1989, pp. 3-27.
38
ARTS2908 Course Outline
*Ihara Saikaku, Tales of Samurai Honor (trans, Caryl Ann Callahan), Tokyo, Monumenta Nipponica, 1981
(“The Woman Wore a Cap and Lived by Deceit’), pp. 105-08
*Ejima Kiseki, ‘Characters of Worldly Young Men’, in Howard Hibbett, The Floating World in Fiction, Tuttle,
1959 (‘A Spendthrift’), pp. 117-24.
*Ueda Akinari, Ugetsu Monogatari [Tales of Moonlight and Rain], (trans. Zolbrod),London,
Allen & Unwin, 1974, ‘The Blue Hood’, pp. 185-194 and endnotes, pp. 253–54
Ihara Saikaku, Excerpts from ‘The Woman Who Spent Her Life in Love’, in Howard Hibbet (ed., trans), The
Floating World in Japanese Fiction, Tuttle, 1975, pp. 154-217 (this is fabulous!).
Ihara Saikaku, 'The Life of an Amorous Woman [Kôshoku ichidai onna]’ and Other Stories, (trans. Ivan
Morris), Connecticut, New Directions Books, 1963.
Ihara Saikaku, Tales of Japanese Justice [Honchô ôin hiji], (trans. Kondo and Marks), University of Hawaii
Press, 1980.
Ejima Kiseki, ‘Characters of Worldly Young Women’ (also in Hibbett)
Donald Keene (trans.), Four Major Plays of Chikamatsu , Columbia University Press, 1961 [or other
kabuki/bunraku plays in translation; Chikamatsu plays often featured prostitutes as heroines].
Further Reading
General:
Donald Keene, World Within Walls: Japanese Literature of the Pre-Modern Era, 1600-1867, (Chaps. on
Saikaku, Chikamatsu and Akinari), New York, Grove Press, 1976.
Howard Hibbett, The Floating World in Japanese Fiction, (Part One, ‘The Ukiyo-zôshi and the Floating
World’), Tuttle, 1959, pp. 3 ff.
I.I. Morris, ‘Economic Realism in the Later Works of Ihara Saikaku’, Transactions of the Asiatic Society of
Japan, 3rd Series, vol. 7 (November 1959), pp. 1-30.
J. Roberts, Mitsui: Three Centuries of Japanese Business, New York, Wetherhill, 1989 [also on merchant
culture see relevant sections in textbooks such as Lehmann’s The Roots of Modern Japan].
M. Ramseyer, ‘Thrift and Diligence: House Codes of Tokugawa Merchant Families’, Monumenta
Nipponica, vol. 34, no. 2 (1979), pp. 209-30.
Wakita Haruko, ‘The Japanese Woman in the Premodern Merchant Household’, Women’s History Review,
vol. 19, no. 2 (March 2010), pp. 259–82
Edward Seidensticker, Low City, High City: Tokyo from Edo to the Earthquake, New York, Knopf, 1983.
André Sorensen, The Making of Urban Japan: Cities and Planning from Edo to the 21st Century, New
York, Routledge, 2002.
Noel Novet, The Shogun’s City: a History of Tokyo, Folkestone, Norbury, 1990.
Gail Lee Bernstein, Recreating Japanese Women, 1600–1945, University of California Press, 1991 [Chap.
5, ‘…The Life of Poet-Painter Ema Saikô’; & Chap. 6, ‘Women in an All-Male Industry…Sake
Brewer…’].
Liza C. Dalby, Geisha, University of California Press, 1983/98 [Chap. 4].
Timon Screech, The Shogun’s Painted Culture: Fear and Creativity in the Japanese States, 1760-1829,
London, Reaktion, 2000
Lawrence Smith (ed.), Ukiyoe: Images of Unknown Japan, London, British Museum Publications, 1988.
Diana E. Wright, ‘Female Crime and State Punishment in Early Modern Japan’, Journal of Women’s
History, vol. 16, no. 3 (2004), pp. 120–29
On Sex, Prostitution & Erotica:
Sone Hiromi, ‘Prostitution and Public Authority in Early Modern Japan’, in Tonomura Hitomi et al (eds),
Women and Class in Japanese History, University of Michigan, 1999, pp. 169–186.
Cecilia Segawa Seigle, Yoshiwara: The Glittering World of the Japanese Courtesan, University of Hawaii
Press, 1993.
J. E. de Becker, The Nightless City or The History of the Yoshiwara Yûkwaku, Rutland, Vermont and
Tokyo, Charles E. Tuttle, 1971 [on prostitution, a ‘classic’, first published 1899: see lecturer].
Timon Screech, Sex and the Floating World: Erotic Images in Japan, 1700-1820, London, Reaktion, 1999.
Gary Hickey, Beauty and Desire in Edo Period Japan, Canberra, National Gallery, 1998.
39
ARTS2908 Course Outline
Hayakawa Monta, The Shunga of Suzuki Harunobu: Mitate-e and Sexuality in Edo, Kyoto, International
Research Center for Japanese Studies, 2001.
Marco Fagioli, Shunga: the Erotic Art of Japan, New York, Universe Publishing, 1998.
Timon Screech essay in Martha Feldman and Bonnie Gordon, eds, The Courtesan’s Arts: Cross-Cultural
Perspectives, OUP, 2006
(also the essay above on earlier prostitution by Janet Goodwin)
On Theatre:
Andrew C. Gerstle, 18th Century Japan: Culture and Society, (other chaps), Allen & Unwin, 1989 (Chap. 2
on onnagata)
D.H. Shively, ‘Bakufu versus Kabuki’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol. 18 (1955), pp. 326-56.
Benito Ortolani, The Japanese Theatre from Shamanistic Ritual to Contemporary Pluralism, Netherlands,
E.J. Brill, 1990.
Kimi Coaldrake, Women’s Gidayu and the Japanese Theatre Tradition, London, Routledge, 1997.
Barbara C. Adachi, Backstage at Bunraku: a Behind-the-Scenes Look at Japan’s Tradition Puppet
Theatre, New York, Weatherhill, 1985.
Jacob Raz, Audience and Actors: a Study of their Interaction in the Japanese Traditional Theatre, Leiden,
Brill, 1983.
Barbara E. Thornbury, The Folk Performing Arts: Traditional Culture in Contemporary Japan, Albany,
State University of New York, 1997.
Takakawa Yoko, ‘Performing Marginality: the Place of the Player and of “Woman” in Early Modern Japan’,
New Literary History, vol. 27 (1996), pp. 213–25
[3rd Quiz in Wk11 tute]
Week Eleven (21 May)
Riotous Pilgrimages & Peasant Protest
Themes:
This week covers both Tokugawa peasant protest and the periodic mass frenzy of (‘religious’?)
pilgrimages to Ise involving millions of people, not only peasants but mainly commoners: what the two
phenomena had in common and how they differed. Some have suggested that these riotous
pilgrimages, despite their partly religious or mystical nature, represented a ritual negation of the political
and economic order.
Otherwise, re peasants, peasant tales of peasant heroism (such as the one included in the Kit) reveals
how political resistance can take many forms, since the very act of narrating such tales, handing them
down to future generations, and having them put into writing was itself a form of resistance. Such tales
are often complex, however, since they are multi-authored and intertextual, drawing among other things
upon samurai literary/heroic traditions, but for peasants’ own uses. The tale in the Kit features two
heroes who are girls (unusually) and the story is quite revealing about various things: sex, courtship
and marriage in peasant society (and how that differed from samurai society), the ways in which
feminine heroism was gendered, partly through being sexualized, and so on.
We also consider works on the Tokugawa peasants by Walthall in particular, the translator of the
peasant tale/s—how her historiographical approach (‘new cultural history’) differs from that of other
historians, even other radical historians (e.g., more Marxist-style ones such as Bix and Vlastos).
Questions:
a) How applicable to Tokugawa Japan is Marx's metaphor of religion as ‘the opiate of the masses’? Did it
not (as Davis argues) ‘energize the masses for both toil [and obedience] and revolt’?
40
ARTS2908 Course Outline
b) Did ‘class consciousness’ play an important part in peasant protest in Tokugawa? [Be careful to
consider ‘class’ consciousness and conflict with the ruling class of samurai as well as within the
villages—between peasants of different types.
c) Do a reading of gender construction in peasant tales (both femininity and masculinity) by comparing the
one in the Kit with one or more of the others in Walthall’s book.
d) Compare Anne Walthall’s approach to peasant culture and protest with other works on the Tokugawa
peasantry, for eg. by Scheiner, Bix, Vlastos, and Kelly. [Review articles by Bowen, Moore, Burton etc
would be helpful for this question; and Walthall’s earlier book important, too.]
Key Readings
*Winston Davis, 'Pilgrimage and World Renewal: A Study of Religion and Social Values in Tokugawa
Japan', History of Religions, vol. 23, no. 2 (November 1983), (Part One) pp. 97-116.
* Anne Walthall (ed., trans.), Peasant Uprisings in Japan: An Anthology of Peasant Tales, University of
Chicago Press, 1991 (Chap. 6: ‘A Tale Told in a Dream of a Eulogy to Filial Piety’, 1860s), pp. 193–
215.
Walthall (trans., ed.), Peasant Uprisings in Japan (Chap. One: ‘The Sakura Sôgorô Story’), pp. 35-75
(Sakura was the most famous of peasant heroes in Tokugawa)
[Part Two of the article by Davis, in vol. 23, no. 3 (February 1984), pp. 197-221, is also interesting, and
contains some different material, for e.g. on fake miracles; otherwise see his book].
Anne Walthall, Social Conflict and Popular Culture in Eighteenth-Century Japan, University of Arizona
Press, 1986.
Further Reading
On Pilgrimages/millenarianism:
Carmen Blacker, ‘Millenarian Aspects of the New Religions in Japan’, in Donald Shively (ed.), Tradition and
Modernization in Japanese Culture, Princeton University Press, 1971, pp. 563-600.
Najita Tetsuo and J.V. Koschmann (eds), Conflict in Modern Japanese History: The Neglected Tradition,
Princeton University Press, 1982 [articles on millenarianism and yonaoshi by Wilson and Vlastos; also
Hashimoto one on peasant uprisings]
Carmen Blacker, ‘The Religious Traveller in the Edo Period’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 18, no. 4 (1984),
pp. 593-608.
On Peasant Society & Protest:
Anne Walthall, 'Narratives of Peasant Uprisings in Japan', Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 42, no. 3 (May
1983), pp. 571-87.
Anne Walthall, ‘Devoted Wives/Unruly Women: Invisible Presence in the History of Japanese Social
Protest’, Signs, vol. 20, no. 1 (Autumn 1994), pp. 106-31 [on peasant women, cf. sections in Lehmann
and also Frederic].
Anne Walthall, ‘The Life Cycle of Farm Women in Tokugawa Japan’, in Gail Lee Bernstein (ed.),
Recreating Japanese Women, 1600–1945, University of California Press, 1991, pp. 42–70.
Irwin Scheiner, ‘Benevolent Lords and Honorable Peasants: Rebellion and Peasant Consciousness in
Tokugawa Japan’, in Najita Tetsuo and Irwin Scheiner (eds),Japanese Thought in the Tokugawa
Period, 1600-1868, University of Chicago Press, 1978, pp. 39-62.
Stephen Vlastos, Peasant Protests and Uprisings in Tokugawa Japan, University of California Press,
1986, pp. 1-20, 35-72.
Herbert P. Bix, Peasant Protest in Feudal Japan, 1590-1884, Yale University Press, 1986, xiii-xxxviii, 21528 [classic Mxt approach].
41
ARTS2908 Course Outline
Roger Bowen, ‘Japanese Peasants: Moral? Rational? Revolutionary? Duped?—A Review Article’,
Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 47, no. 4 (November 1988), pp. 821-32.
Barrington Moore Jr, ‘Japanese Peasant Protests and Revolts in Comparative Historical Perspective’
(review essay on works by Bix, Kelly, Vlastos & Walthall; copy available from lecturer)
James W. White, ‘State Growth and Popular Protest in Tokugawa Japan’, Journal of Japanese Studies,
vol. 14, no. 1 (Winter 1988), pp. 1-25.
Donald W. Burton, ‘Peasant Struggle in Japan, 1590-1760’, Journal of Peasant Studies, vol. 5, no. 2
(1978), pp. 135-71 [and essay, ‘Rethinking the Purposes of Japanese Peasant Studies’, in Rethinking
Japan, II].
William Kelly, Deference and Defiance in Nineteenth-Century Japan, Princeton University Press, 1985.
Befu Harumi, ‘Village Autonomy and Articulation with the State’, in John Hall and Marius Jansen (eds),
Studies in the Institutional History of Early Modern Japan, Princeton University Press, 1968, pp. 30114 (old but useful for a detailed picture of the villages).
Thomas C. Smith, The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan, Stanford University Press, 1959 [a classic—in
the conservative modernization theory mould]
H. D. Harootunian, ‘Figuring the Folk: History, Poetics, and Representation’, in Stephen Vlastos (ed.),
Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern Japan, Berkeley L.A. and London, University of
California Press, 1998
Week Twelve (28 May)
Tokugawa Ideology: Toward Restoration
Themes
To maintain social control, rulers and scholars loyal to them developed and disseminated thought
supportive of Tokugawa hegemony and the social status quo (‘ideology’). Bushidô’s partial function as
ideology, which was tied to the wider political use of [neo-] Confucianism in Tokugawa, was discussed
in an earlier week.
Against scholars such as Earl and Maruyama, Herman Ooms has critiqued the conventional view of
(Shushigaku) neo-Confucianism as the exclusive hegemonic or State ideology throughout the period.
Ooms argues that while there is no doubt that the Bakufu always viewed it positively, it was only by the
end of the seventeenth century that this school of neo-Confucianism had gained in influence relative to
other schools of thought, for example Buddhism, imperial Shintô and standard Confucianism. It gained
what amounted to official Bakufu sanction, moreover, only at the end of the eighteenth century.
Tokugawa thought, Ooms would say, was much more differentiated than has often been suggested.
Thus, here we look at the various streams of philosophical-political thought in Tokugawa, including
some marginal schools such as Yômeigaku, Rangaku, Mitogaku and Kokugaku that were, or ultimately
came to be, viewed by the Bakufu with suspicion. With hindsight we can see that this was for good
reason as all contributed to the fall of the Tokugawa and Bakufu system, and its replacement by a
‘restored’ imperial state in 1868.
Also of interest are the ideas of one very radical samurai thinker, Ando Shôeki who, had his ideas been
known to late eighteenth-century rulers, would doubtless have been executed. He might be referred to
as Japan’s own ‘Marx’ or, better, ‘Kropotkin’ because of his anarchistic belief in village self-government,
strong sympathy for the peasants, and outright rejection of all existing schools of thought as ‘mere
ideology’ (‘excuses to rob the people’).
Kogaku
—‘ancient/classical [ie., Chinese Confucian] studies’ (e.g., Ogyû Sorai)
42
ARTS2908 Course Outline
Shushigaku
Yômeigaku
Mitogaku
Kokugaku
Rangaku
—a school of neo-Confucianism (Chinese founder, Chu Hsi;
Japanese founder, Hayashi Razan)
—a more radical, less hierarchical school of neo-Confucianism (Chinese founder,
Wang Yang Ming)
—school of learning from Mito han, mostly a mix of Shushigaku and
imperial Shintô (it and Kokugaku influential in Meiji Restoration)
—‘national learning/nativism’; classical Japanese studies (hence
Close ties with imperial Shintô; like Mitogaku, thinkers such as
Motoori Norinaga and Hirata Atsutane were increasingly nationalistic)
—‘Dutch [i.e., Western] learning’, permitted by Bakufu but
always with caution (some Rangaku scholars repressed)
Questions:
a) Discuss the ways in which various schools of thought—particularly Mitogaku, (imperial-centred)
‘Shintô’ and Kokugaku, but also others like Rangaku—helped pave the way to the Meiji Restoration
of 1868.
b) Discuss the historical significance of one school of thought in Tokugawa (e.g., Rangaku, Mitogaku
or Kokugaku) or one general trend (e.g., restorationism).
c) Compare/contrast the degree to which Ishida Baigan (Shingaku) and Andô Shôeki each contested
the existing political system and orthodox ideologies.
d) Evaluate Ooms’ ground-breaking critique of the view that neo-Confucianism was Tokugawa
ideological orthodoxy throughout the period, comparing his historiographical approach with that of
more conventional authors such as Earl, Maruyama, Bellah etc.
Key Readings
Textbook: Walthall, pp. 103–10, 120–34
* Jean-Pierre Lehmann, The Roots of Modern Japan, London: Macmillan, 1982 (from two chapters,
sections on Religion & Morality, Education, Western Studies, and Genesis of a National Ideology), pp.
110-35
*Maruyama Masao, Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan, Princeton University Press,
1974, pp. 249-64 [on Andô Shôeki].
Herman Ooms, Tokugawa Ideology: Early Constructs, 1570-1680, Princeton University Press, 1985
(Conclusion), pp. 287–96.
David M. Earl, Emperor and Nation in Japan: Political Thinkers of the Tokugawa Period, University of
Washington Press, 1964.
Robert Bellah, Tokugawa Religion: the Values of Pre-Industrial Japan, Free Press, 1957 (Chap.VI,
‘Shingaku and its Founder, Ishida Baigan’), pp. 133-77 (and on Shingaku women, article by Jennifer
Robertson in Recreating Japanese Women, 1991)
Najita Tetsuo, Japan: The Intellectual Foundations of Modern Japanese Politics, University of Chicago
Press, 1974 (Chap. 3: ‘Restorationism in Late Tokugawa’), pp. 43–68
Andrew Gordon, A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present, Oxford University
Press, 2003 (Chap. 3: ‘The Intellectual World of Late Tokugawa’)
Further Reading
43
ARTS2908 Course Outline
E. H. Norman, ‘Andô Shôeki and the Anatomy of Japanese Feudalism’, Transactions of the Asiatic Society
of Japan, Third Series, vol. 2 (December 1949), pp. 1-304 (book-length).
Najita Tetsuo and Irwin Scheiner, Japanese Thought in the Tokugawa Period: Methods and Metaphors,
University of Chicago Press, 1978.
Confucianism:
Kate Wildman Nakai, ‘The Naturalization of Confucianism in Tokugawa Japan: the Problem of
Sinocentrism’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol. 40, no. 1 (June 1980), pp. 157-99.
Peter Nosco (ed.), Confucianism and Tokugawa Culture, Princeton University Press, 1984 [also
‘Rethinking Tokugawa Thought’, in Rethinking Japan, II].
B. M. Bodart-Bailey, ‘The Persecution of Confucianism in Tokugawa Japan’, Monumenta Nipponica, vol.
48, no. 3 (Autumn 1993), pp. 293-314.
Restorationism:
J.V. Koschmann, The Mito Ideology: Discourse, Reform, and Insurrection in Late Tokugawa Japan, 17901864, University of California Press, 1987.
H.D. Harootunian, Things Seen and Unseen: Discourse and Ideology in Tokugawa Nativism, University of
Chicago Press, 1988.
Harootunian, Toward Restoration: The Growth of Political Consciousness in Tokugawa Japan, University
of California Press, 1970.
Herschel Webb, The Japanese Imperial Institution in the Tokugawa Period, Columbia University Press,
1968.
Rangaku:
Grant K. Goodman, Japan: The Dutch Experience, London, Athlone Press, 1986 (esp. Chap. XIV,
‘Rangaku and Tokugawa intellectual ferment’), pp. 190–222.
Marius Jansen, ‘Rangaku and Westernization’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 18 (October 1984), pp. 541-53.
Donald Keene, The Japanese Discovery of Europe, Stanford University Press, 1969.
Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, Anti-foreignism and Western Learning in Early Modern Japan [on Rangaku],
Harvard University Press, 1986.
Buddhism:
Hur, Nam-Lin, Prayer and Play in Late Tokugawa Japan, Harvard University Press, 2000 (also Popular
Buddhist Culture in the Edo Period).
James Edward Ketelaar, Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism and its Persecution, Princeton
University Press, 1990 (Chap. 1 on anti-Buddhist thought in Tokugawa).
Notto Thelle [book on Buddhism & Christianity, early chapter/s]
Neil McMullin, Buddhism and the State in Sixteenth Century Japan, Princeton University Press, 1985.
Week Thirteen (4 June)
The Meiji Restoration/Revolution
Themes
One Japan historian, Beasley, used a phrase traditionally used in China to refer to the sort of context
in which ruling (in China’s case, imperial) dynasties were overthrown. The phrase was: ‘troubles at
home, danger from abroad’. This pretty much sums up the situation in Bakumatsu (literally, ‘end’ or
closing years of, ‘the Bakufu’) between 1853 when the American Commodore Perry demanded that
the Bakufu open Japan up to trade and 1868, the year of the (supposed) restoration of emperors to
power. Of course, by the 1850s the Tokugawa shogunate was under pressure not only from external
threats, since it had faced substantial socio-economic and political problems and dissatisfaction even
amongst samurai was rife.
44
ARTS2908 Course Outline
We will spend this week discussing these general developments, and thinking about the context in
which an event such as the Restoration could occur. In addition, the actual nature of the event is at
issue. Japan historians have mainly agreed that the imperial restoration of 1868 represented
‘revolution’. What they haven’t agreed on is what sort of revolution it was. Smith saw it as an
‘aristocratic’ revolution, for example—which reveals little more than the truism that it was the ruling
class of samurai who did most to bring it about—while Beasley regarded it as a ‘nationalist’ one, which
accords the event a central cause. My own view is similar to Crump’s in that I see too much attention
being paid to causes and, by extension, to the apparent motives or intentions of historical actors. With
regard to the question of whether it was a revolution and what sort of revolution it is, what is more to
the point is effects; for it is only when we look beyond the 1860s to the 1870s to 90s that we just how
dramatic and far-reaching the effects of the Restoration were. Moreover, what is most telling is that
most of the participants in the Restoration struggles did not plan (intend) such change; it was hardly
the case, for example, that they were intent on abolishing the samurai as a class or status group.
Conservative historians (adherents of modernization theory) were long keen to discredit E. H.
Norman’s thesis that the Restoration was mainly brought about by ‘lower samurai’ with merchant
backing (the ‘lower samurai-merchant alliance’ thesis). Mainly, they quibbled about just how ‘lower’ in
rank they were, and whether there were quite so many ‘rônin’ (roaming lordless samurai) involved as
Norman suggested. One cannot deny, however, that most were lower to lower-middle in rank, far from
being amongst the samurai elite and far from being well off. In short, most had much to gain materially
from opposing the Tokugawa and (ultimately) seeking a new (imperial) system. Huber (in his 1981
book cited below) did detailed research on the material circumstances of participants, which puts the
question of motives in a different light. It was hardly the case that the spirit of only ‘sonnô jôi’ (expel
the barbarian, revere the emperor) or only ‘nationalism’ and imperial loyalty were at work here.
Motives were doubtless more varied and complex than many historians have suggested…..
Questions
a) ‘Troubles at home, danger from abroad’? Was the western menace the only important factor in
creating the conditions for major change in late Tokugawa?
b)
Picture yourself as a fighter in the Restoration struggles. Describe yourself (your life, situation and
work to date), and reflect on the (probably multiple) factors that motivated you to take up arms.
OR to put the question a slightly different way: ‘Men of high purpose’? Do you think that the motives
of ‘shishi’ were always so noble or altruistic?
Key Readings
*Andrew Gordon, A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present, Oxford University
Press, 2003 (Chapter 4: ‘The Overthrow of the Tokugawa’), pp. 46–59.
* Thomas M. Huber, ‘”Men of High Purpose” and the Politics of Direct Action, 1862–1864’, in Najita Tetsuo
and J. Victor Koschmann (eds), Conflict in Modern Japanese History: The Neglected Tradition,
Princeton University Press, pp. 107–127.
On motivation & constructs of heroism:
George M. Wilson, Patriots and Redeemers in Japan: Motives in the Meiji Restoration, Chicago, University
of Chicago Press, 1992 OR
George Wilson, ‘Pursuing the Millenium in the Meiji Restoration’, in Najita Tetsuo and J. V. Koschmann
(eds), Conflict in Modern Japanese History: The Neglected Tradition, Princeton University Press, 1982,
pp. 177-94.
45
ARTS2908 Course Outline
Hélène Bowen Raddeker, Treacherous Women of Imperial Japan: Patriarchal Fictions, Patricidal
Fantasies, London and New York: Routledge, 1997, pp. 117-30 (for the second question, part of the
chapter on heroism, ‘noble and nihirisuto’ would be useful; also Morris and Buruma)
Ian Buruma, A Japanese Mirror: Heroes and Villains of Japanese Culture, Penguin, 1984 (Chaps 9 & 10,
‘The Loyal Retainers’ and ‘Yakuza and Nihilist’), pp. 150-66, 167-95.
Ivan Morris, The Nobility of Failure: Tragic Heroes in the History of Japan, Penguin, 1975
On the Meiji Restoration/Revolution debate:
M. B. Jansen, ‘The Meiji Restoration’ [Chap. 5], in The Cambridge History of Japan, V, The Nineteenth
Century, C.U.P., 1989, pp. 308-66 [particularly last 6 pp. on ‘The Restoration in History and
Historiography’]
E. H. Norman, ‘The Restoration’, in John Dower (ed.), Origins of the Modern Japanese State: Selected
Writings of E.H. Norman, New York, Pantheon, 1975, pp. 156-92
T. C. Smith, ‘Japan’s Aristocratic Revolution’, in Japan Reader, Volume One. Imperial Japan: 1800-1945,
Penguin, 1973, pp. 91-101.
W. G. Beasley, The Meiji Restoration, Stanford University Press, 1972 [on ‘nationalist’ revolution], pp. 40524.
Marlene Mayo, ‘Nationalist Revolution in Japan’ [review of Beasley], Monumenta Nipponica, vol. xxix, no. 1
(1972/3?), pp. 83-91.
John Crump, The Origins of Socialist Thought in Japan, London & Canberra, Croom Helm, 1983 [on ‘state
capitalist’ revolution], pp. 3-13.
Other sources related to the Restoration/Revolution:
Anne Walthall, The Weak Body of a Useless Woman: Matsuo Taseko and the Meiji Restoration, University
of Chicago Press, 1998
Thomas Huber, The Revolutionary Origins of Modern Japan, Stanford University Press, 1981, pp. 209-22.
Beasley, The Modern History of Japan, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973 [Chaps. 4-5 for an overview
of political developments 1853-68], pp. 57-97.
Jean Pierre Lehmann, The Roots of Modern Japan, London, Macmillan, 1982, pp. 178-89, 240-53.
Paul Akamatsu, Meiji 1868: Revolution and Counter-revolution in Japan, London, Allen & Unwin, 1972, pp.
115-232.
Nagai Michio & Miguel Urrutia (eds), Meiji Ishin: Restoration and Revolution, Tokyo, U.N. University, 1985.
Charles L. Yates, Saigô Takamori: The Man Behind the Myth, London and New York, Kegan Paul
International, 1995.
46