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Essay about japanese literature
Literature in medieval times in Japan
Essay about japanese literature
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Japanese Literature
Japan has provided the world with some of the greatest novelists, poets and essayists ever known. Starting with the writings of the Nara period during the mid-eighth century and continuing until today, great writers have blossomed from the islands of this small eastern nation. Although influenced heavily by China, where the Japanese are believed to have migrated from approximately 3000 years ago, Japanese writers have come to develop a truly unique style (Albert 504).
Otomo Yakamochi is credited with compiling the finest collection of poems ever in Japan. The Manyoshu, which was composed in the late eighth century, is translated into English as Collection of 10,000 Leaves. The most famous poet who contributed to this work was Kakinomoto Hitomaro (Japan 793). According to the Encyclopedia Americana, "his finest elegies have a sweep and power that few if any later poets equaled" (794). He used a longer form of poetry that was rare in his time; yet he did it successfully (Japan 794). Hitmaro was peerless when straying from the crowd could be tremendously harmful and while doing so gained eternal prestige.
Approximately 990 another writer came onto the scene in Japan. This time it was a female named Sei Shonagon. The Pillow Book, the work that made her famous, was not even meant to be public. In actuality it was her private journal. This work is so great because of its vivid sketches and the image it presents of Shonagon's personality (Albert 590). In this writing she expresses her longing for privacy, and she even goes into the details of how she hides the journal. Ironically it was found and published (Albert 579).
Kawabata Yasunari is considered most successful short story writer to the Japanese. Even though he wrote novels, including Snow Country and A Thousand Cranes, he considered them to merely be series' of short stories (Kato 244). A Japanese writer had never won the Nobel Prize for Literature until he did for The Old Capitol in 1968 (Keene 786). Kawabata found prosperity by bounding the scope of his writing mainly to females, and the feminine qualities of everything (Kato 243). On April 16, 1972 he committed suicide by inhaling gas for unknown reasons. Even though he wrote several notable works, his most prestigious distinction may not be the winning of the Noble Prize.
-Nara’s Buddhist temples were another result of cultural diffusion, Buddhist began in India in 500s B.C.E. about 1,000 years later, it came to Japan from China by way of Korea.
Imagine about four-hundred years ago, in present day Europe, a civilization arose. It was split into many chunks of land, called kingdoms, which contained even smaller communities inside them, called manors. In this manor many men, called knights, had just returned from war covered in poop, mud, blood, and many other disgusting things. This mess was cleaned up by a squire, aspiring to be a knight himself one day, that had to go through rigorous and dirty training to achieve his goal. Halfway across the world another civilization, in present day Japan, somewhat like Europe, doesn’t have children do their work for them. Instead, adult workers clean the clothes of their warriors, called samurai. Although weren’t as similar as you thought, in fact,
Christopher Benfey’s work The Great Wave is a narrative driven by a collection of accounts, stories and curious coincidences tying together The Gilded Age of New England in particular with interactions and connections to the Japan of old and new. In the context of The Great Wave, Benfey's own personal journey to Japan at the age of sixteen should be understood. Embarking on this voyage to learn traditional writing, language and Judo, his story can also be seen as a not only a historical continuation, but also a personal precursor to the vignettes he discovers and presents to the reader.
With the graceful starkness of traditional Japanese haiku, Kawabata reveals a twisted set of love affairs between four people that ultimately lead to their downfalls. Haiku depicts a meditational view of the world where nothing is meaningless; in Beauty and Sadness all of the relations represent aspects of new and old Japan, mirroring the rise and fall of Japanese culture in their movements. Among these relationships, perhaps the most traditional is found between Oki and Otoko– although it is tragic and somewhat leacherous, the bond between a young woman (or girl) and an older man is an acceptable affair in traditional Japanese culture. They represent the oldest parts of Japanese custom, and adhere to that measure throughout the novel. Oki’s wish to hear the temple bells with Otoko reflects this long established pattern of old man and young girl, as ...
“Until the seventeenth century, Japanese Literature was privileged property. …The diffusion of literacy …(and) the printed word… created for the first time in Japan the conditions necessary for that peculiarly modern phenomenon, celebrity” (Robert Lyons Danly, editor of The Narrow Road of the Interior written by Matsuo Basho; found in the Norton Anthology of World Literature, Second Edition, Volume D). Celebrity is a loose term at times; it connotes fortune, flattery, and fleeting fame. The term, in this modern era especially, possesses an aura of inevitable transience and glamorized superficiality. Ironically, Matsuo Basho, (while writing in a period of his own newfound celebrity as a poet) places an obvious emphasis on the transience of life within his travel journal The Narrow Road of the Interior. This journal is wholly the recounting of expedition and ethos spanning a fifteen hundred mile feat, expressed in the form of a poetic memoir. It has been said that Basho’s emphasis on the Transient is directly related to his and much of his culture’s worldview of Zen Buddhism, which is renowned for its acknowledgement of the Transient as a tool for a more accurate picture of life and a higher achievement of enlightenment. Of course, in the realization that Basho does not appear to be unwaveringly religious, perhaps this reflection is not only correlative to Zen Buddhism, but also to his perspective on his newfound celebrity. Either way, Matsuo Basho is a profound lyricist who eloquently seeks to objectify and relay the concept of transience even in his own name.
The indigenous Japanese culture, arts and literature have flourished in the Heian period of Japan. One can tell that exchanging short poems and messages between each other was the most prominent device of communication for both men and women at the time. Composing and exchanging love poems and messages were mostly us...
The Tale of Murasaki, by Liza Dalby, is about Murasaki, a young woman who lived in the Heian period (794-1185) of Japan. She writes a story called The Tale of Genji, and earns so much recognition for it that she is invited to court to attend the empress. Not only was she known for her writing, but she drew attention by learning Chinese. In the story, a Chinese education is essential for a man hoping to be a high-ranked member of society. Because the Japanese considered Chinese culture as superior, waka, a popular form of Japanese poetry, carries less cultural value in the novel. Therefore, both high-class women and men have to learn about wakas and use them daily. A woman who can compose good wakas and is beautiful would have the best chances of going to court, which is the best way to guarantee a comfortable life. Liza Dalby’s The Tale of Murasaki accurately portrays the abilities of each sex, the importance of Chinese learning, and the role of Japanese poetry in the Heian period of Japan.
Most American citizens remember December 7, 1941 and the significance that the incidents of that day had. The attack on Pearl Harbor was a shock to the United States of America and it engaged our country in the Second World War of that century (Pearl, 2009). Unfortunately, due to that incident, many Americans harbor many negative feelings and attitudes towards the country of Japan. While this is an understandable sentiment, it is unnecessary, because Japan is an influence on not on the United States but the entire world. Throughout this paper, we will look at the country of Japan as many have never viewed them before. Their actions of the past are just that, the past. Japan is a thriving and successful country within our environment and it is in our best interest to understand that country better. Japan, as a culture, is the
The Meiji Revolution was a pivotal time period in Japanese history, a period during which Japan was rapidly industrialized and transformed through the efforts of a newly centralized, imperial government. As Western goods and technology permeated the nation, so did Western perspectives on morality and ethics enter the public view. However, such perspectives were not necessarily easily accepted; through the inspection of various primary sources, it becomes clear that, despite Japan’s rapid acceptance and adoption of Western technology and culture, there remained clear resistance toward Western views on social order.
Suzuki, Tomi. Narrating the Self: Fictions of Japanese Modernity. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1996.
In his preface of the Kokinshū poet Ki no Tsurayaki wrote that poetry conveyed the “true heart” of people. And because poetry declares the true heart of people, poetry in the minds of the poets of the past believed that it also moved the hearts of the gods. It can be seen that in the ancient past that poetry had a great importance to the people of the time or at least to the poets of the past. In this paper I will describe two of some of the most important works in Japanese poetry the anthologies of the Man’yōshū and the Kokinshū. Both equally important as said by some scholars of Japanese literature, and both works contributing greatly to the culture of those who live in the land of the rising sun.
Asian American Literature Asian Americans seem to be fighting an unwinnable battle when it comes to the content of their writing. Writers are criticized by whites for speaking out against discrimination, and by their fellow Asian Americans for contributing to the stereotypes through their silence. I believe that Asian Americans should include politics in their writing as they so choose, but should not feel obligated to do so, as Frank Chin suggests. For those Asian Americans who make known their discontent with the injustice and discrimination that they feel, in the white culture, this translates to attacking American superiority and initiating insecurities. For Mura, a writer who dared to question why an Asian American was not allowed to audition for an Asian American role, his punishment was “the ostracism and demonization that ensued”.
Throughout its history, Japan has striven to define its national identity not by its own means, but by those predefined by foreign, and most recently, Western powers. Despite legends of the island archipelago being created by the sun goddess Amaterasu, Japan seems to have consistently maintained a indecisive self-image with respect to its neighbors. In the past, China had represented the pinnacle of culture and technology and had tremendously influenced other surrounding countries in Asia and in the world. Indeed, Japan owes its written language to imported and adapted Chinese characters. Without question, China remained for a long time the most influential force upon Japan. However, island nation maintained a rather precarious self-identity: How could a country like Japan, which was supposedly created by the gods and therefore a divine nation, consider itself the apex of the world, given China’s tremendous influence and power? Could Japan truly consider itself the greatest land in the world if China, or Chugoku in Japanese, literally meant “the central country?” For this reason, Japan never truly accepted a position of “belonging” to Asia. That is, despite a considerable amount of imported culture, Japan was still somehow inherently different from other Asian countries.
The Manyoshu (meaning the "collection to be handed down throughout ten thousand eras" or the "collection of ten thousand leaves") is known as the oldest existing collection of Japanese poetry and was compiled during the Nara period. This anthology is highly revered in Japan because of this and contains some 4,500 poems spread among 20 volumes. The collection contains 265 choka (long poems), 4,207 tanka (short poems), one tanrenga (short connecting poem), one bussokusekika (poems on the Buddha's footprints at Yakushi-ji in Nara), four kanshi (Chinese poems), and 22 Chinese prose passages(Man'yōshū). Of particular note is that unlike later anthologies, the Manyoshu does not have a preface and included poems from common people as well as nobles and royalty. Of the 400 identified authors Otomo no Yakamochi stands out as the last great poet that not only added many of his own poems to the collection but also edited and compiled them as well.
Japan is a large island off to the east of China it is a great country that has a rich culture. The Japanese religion is based off of two main beliefs, the belief in Shinto and Buddhism many Japanese people believe consider themselves both. The Japanese people were known to be around as early as 4,500 B.C. They have constructed their government style to a constitutional monarchy where they do in fact have an emperor, but he has limited power within the country. The main power of the country is held by the Prime Minister of Japan. Japan is made up of many islands that extend along the Pacific coast of Asia. The land area is made up of a lot of forest and mountainous area that cannot be used for agricultural, industrial or residential use. Japan also has one of the largest and growing economies in the world. They are growing every day and it is all because the people of Japan work very hard in order for their economy to flourish as it has.