Evanescence and Form An Introduction to Japanese Culture

by Inouye, Charles Shiro

• ISBN13: 9781403967053
• ISBN10: 1403967059
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-09-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This book contemplates the notion of hakanasa, the evanescence of all things, as understood by the Japanese. Their responses to this idea of impermanence have been diverse: from asceticism, fatalism, and conformism to hedonism, materialism, and careerism. This book illuminates the ties between an epistemology of constant change and Japan's formal emphasis on etiquette and visuality. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Charles Shiro Inouye is a Professor of Japanese and former Dean of the Colleges for Undergraduate Education at Tufts University. He is the author of Similitude of Blossoms, A Critical Biography of Izumi Kyoka (Harvard, 1998), and Japanese Gothic Tales by Izumi Kyoka, Volumes One and Two (Hawaii, 1994 and 2004). He received the 2003 U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission Prize, for the best English translation of a work of Japanese literature.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Historical Periods	p. xiii
The Order of Here-and-Now: Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern Japan (to 1868)	p. 1
In Spring the Cherry Blossoms	p. 1
Change and Nature	p. 5
Japanese Poetics and a First Consideration of Animism	p. 10
Utsusemi, the Cicada's Shell	p. 17
Hakanasa and mujo	p. 26
Anitya in a World of Spontaneity	p. 31
Life as It Seems, Nagarjuna's Emptiness	p. 36
Shukke: Leaving the World	p. 39
Success and Failure	p. 45
The Transcendental Order / the Order of Here-and-Now	p. 51
Zen, kata, and the Noh Theater	p. 65
Hedonism	p. 69
Matsuo Basho, Permanence and Change	p. 74
Mono no aware: The Sadness of Things	p. 80
Protocol and Loyal Retainers	p. 86
Inner and Outer, and the Expanding Context of Modernity	p. 90
Monstrosity	p. 95
Change under the Transcendental Order: Late Modern Japan (1868-1970)	p. 103
The Colonial Context: Adapt or Die	p. 103
Explaining Japan: Linking Here-and-Now with the New World Order	p. 110
Japan as Bushido	p. 113
Japan as Tea-Ism	p. 118
Japan as Erotic Style	p. 122
In the Margins of Empire-the Rape of Nanking	p. 129
Other Horrors of Life on the Margins	p. 134
Kamikaze	p. 137
The A-Bomb, and a New Kind of Nothing	p. 142
Occupation: Radical Change as Salvation	p. 151
Decadence, Moving Away from Form	p. 154
To Live!	p. 161
Nihil versus Nothingness	p. 166
Higashiyama Kaii: Embracing Passivity	p. 170
Return to Evanescence: Contemporary Japan (1970 to the Present)	p. 175
Fashion, and the Joy of Evanescence	p. 175
Postmodernism and a Cherry Blossom Refrain	p. 185
The End of the World	p. 191
Nausicaa and the Cicada-Shell World	p. 195
Seeking but Never Finding	p. 197
Anima, Anime, and Animism	p. 205
Conclusion	p. 213
Glossary of Important Terms	p. 225
Notes	p. 231
Works Cited	p. 247
Index	p. 253
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