Japanese Culture

by Varley, H. Paul; Varley, Paul

• ISBN13: 9780824821524
• ISBN10: 0824821521
• Edition: 4th
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-03-01
• Publisher: Univ of Hawaii Pr

Summary

Japanese Culture has been called "a masterpiece of much in little space" (Booklist). For more than two decades it has garnered high praise as an accurate and well-written introduction to Japanese history and culture. This widely used undergraduate text is now available in a new edition. Thoroughly updated, the fourth edition includes expanded sections on numerous topics, among which are samurai values, Zen Buddhism, the tea ceremony, Confucianism in the Tokugawa period, the story of the forty-seven ronin, Mito scholarship in the early nineteenth century, and mass culture and comics in contemporary times.

Author Biography

Paul Varley is professor emeritus at Columbia University and Sen Soshitsu XV Professor of Japanese Cultural History at the University of Hawai'i.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Major Periods and Cultural Epochs of Japanese History	x
Chinese Dynasties Since the Time of Unification Under the Han	xi
Author's Notes	xiii
The Emergence of Japanese Civilization	1	(18)
The Introduction of Buddhism	19	(29)
The Court at Its Zenith	48	(29)
The Advent of a New Age	77	(14)
The Canons of Medieval Taste	91	(49)
The Country Unified	140	(24)
The Flourishing of a Bourgeois Culture	164	(41)
Heterodox Trends	205	(30)
Encounter with the West	235	(36)
The Fruits of Modernity	271	(33)
Culture in the Present Age	304	(49)
Notes	353	(10)
Glossary	363	(4)
Selected Bibliography	367	(6)
Index	373