Lotus Other Tales Of Medieval Japan

Author : Takeshi Umehara
Publisher : Tuttle Publishing
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 1996
Category : Fiction
ISBN : UVA:X004107934

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Lotus and Other Tales of Medieval Japan by Takeshi Umehara Pdf

The medieval period in Japan, spanning the years from about 1200 to 1600, was a time of rapid cultural development that saw the emergence and refinement of many new art forms. One of these was the religious folk tale, or setsuwa, many collections of which were compiled during this time. Unlike the rarified court poems and accounts of aristocratic life written during this period, setsuwa were literature for the common man. Like the classic fables and parables of the West, these stories are varied in origin, many of them collected from Indian and Chinese sources and retold and embellished by succeeding generations of authors. In Lotus: and Other Tales of Medieval Japan, the author has carefully chosen eight particularly notable setsuwa for their timeless interest and fascinating plot developments.

Author : Takeshi Umehara
Publisher : Tuttle Publishing
Page : 200 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2011-11-15
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9781462901111

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Lotus & Other Tales of Medieval Japan by Takeshi Umehara Pdf

These classic Japanese short stories are masterfully translated and a joy to read. The medieval period in Japan, spanning the years from about 1200 to 1600, was a time of rapid cultural development that saw the emergence and refinement of many new art forms. One of these was the religious folk tale, or setsuwa, many collections of which were compiled during this time. Like the classic fables and parables of the West, these stories are varied in origin, many of them collected from Indian and Chinese sources and retold and embellished by succeeding generations of authors. In Lotus: and Other Tales of Medieval Japan, the author has carefully chosen eight particularly notable setsuwa for their timeless interest and fascinating plot developments. These brilliantly crafted tales effortlessly lure the reader into another world where ghosts and demons walk the earth alongside kings and priests, and miracles occur. With their direct and often shocking developments, the stories here will surprise and startle as much as they engage and amuse. Japanese tales include: Heads Haseo’s Love The Nun Oyo A Tale of Luck and Riches Lazybones Taro Lotus How the Gods Came to Kumano Sansho Dayu

Author : Marian Ury
Publisher : U of M Center For Japanese Studies
Page : 215 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 1993-01-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780939512614

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Tales of Times Now Past by Marian Ury Pdf

Tales of Times Now Past is a translation of 62 outstanding tales freshly selected from Konjaku monogatari shu, a Japanese anthology dating from the early twelfth century. The original work, unique in world literature, contains more than one thousand systematically arranged tales from India, China, and Japan. It is the most important example of a genre of collections of brief tales which, because of their informality and unpretentious style, were neglected by Japanese critics until recent years but which are now acknowledged to be among the most significant prose literature of premodern Japan. “Konjaku” in particular has aroused the enthusiasm of such leading 20th-century writers as Akutagawa Ryunosuke and Tanizaki Jun’ichiro. The stories, with sources in both traditional lore and contemporary gossip, cover an astonishing range—homiletic, sentimental, terrifying, practical-minded, humorous, ribald. Their topics include the life of the Buddha, descriptions of Heaven and Hell, feats of warriors, craftsmen, and musicians, unsuspected vice, virtue, and ingenuity, and the ways and wiles of bandits, ogres, and proverbially greedy provincial governors, to name just a few. Composed perhaps a century after the refined, allusive, aristocratic Tale of Genji, Konjaku represents a masculine outlook and comparatively plebeian social orientation, standing in piquant contrast to the earlier masterpiece. The unknown compiler was interested less in exploring psychological subtleties than in presenting vivid portraits of human foibles and eccentricities. The stories in the present selection have been chosen to provide an idea of the scope and structure of the book as a whole, and also for their appeal to the modern reader. And the translation is based on the premise that the most faithful rendering is also the liveliest.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 236 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 1993-08-01
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 0824815696

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Tales of Tears and Laughter by Anonim Pdf

The stories in this collection constitute just a small portion of a vast body of some four hundred short narratives known as otogizoshi. They represent a cross section of medieval Japan in its richness and complexity, a panoply of life teeming with all the possibilities and contradictions of the age.

Author : Royall Tyler
Publisher : Pantheon
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2012-08-22
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780307784063

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Japanese Tales by Royall Tyler Pdf

Two hundred and twenty tales from medieval Japan—tales that welcome us into a fabulous faraway world populated by saints, scoundrels, ghosts, magical healers, and a vast assortment of deities and demons. Stories of miracles, visions of hell, jokes, fables, and legends, these tales reflect the Japanese civilization. They ably balance the lyrical and the dramatic, the ribald and the profound, offering a window into a long-vanished culture. With black-and-white illustrations throughout Part of the Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library

Author : Chingen
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 184 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 1987
Category : Fiction
ISBN : UVA:X030142548

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Miraculous Tales of the Lotus Sutra from Ancient Japan by Chingen Pdf

Author : Keller Kimbrough,Haruo Shirane
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 328 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2018-02-20
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9780231545501

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Monsters, Animals, and Other Worlds by Keller Kimbrough,Haruo Shirane Pdf

Monsters, Animals, and Other Worlds is a collection of twenty-five medieval Japanese tales of border crossings and the fantastic, featuring demons, samurai, talking animals, amorous plants, and journeys to supernatural realms. The most comprehensive compendium of short medieval Japanese fiction in English, Monsters, Animals, and Other Worlds illuminates a rich world of literary, Buddhist, and visual culture largely unknown today outside of Japan. These stories, called otogizōshi, or Muromachi tales (named after the Muromachi period, 1337 to 1573), date from approximately the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries. Often richly illustrated in a painted-scroll format, these vernacular stories frequently express Buddhist beliefs and provide the practical knowledge and moral education required to navigate medieval Japanese society. The otogizōshi represent a major turning point in the history of Japanese literature. They bring together many earlier types of narrative—court tales, military accounts, anecdotes, and stories about the divine origins of shrines and temples––joining book genres with parlor arts and the culture of itinerant storytellers and performers. The works presented here are organized into three thematically overlapping sections titled, “Monsters, Warriors, and Journeys to Other Worlds,” “Buddhist Tales,” and “Interspecies Affairs.” Each translation is prefaced by a short introduction, and the book features images from the original scroll paintings, illustrated manuscripts, and printed books.

Author : Donald Richie
Publisher : Tuttle Publishing
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2011-06-21
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781462900558

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Memoirs of the Warrior Kumagai by Donald Richie Pdf

“A tour de force combining a commanding mastery of historical fact and detail, a comprehensive understanding of the human spirit, and a poetic quality of expression that transforms the hearts of all those it touches.” —The Japan Foundation Newsletter Kumagai Naozane was a Japanese warrior famous for having taken the head of the young and handsome samurai Atsumori. This episode has become one of the best-known and best-loved stories in the Japanese historical classic, The Heiké Story (Heike Monogatari). This book is a fictionalized version of Kumagai’s own attempt to come to terms with his past—that real past which is his and that other past which he hears the monks inventing as they compose the text which will eventually become The Heiké Story. As the warrior remembers his past and compares it to its fictional parallel, he evokes the wonders of the city of Heiankyo (Kyoto); the wars which raised the Taira (Heike) clan to power and later reduced it to ruin at the hands of the Genji clan; the battles at the Uji River; life in the imperial court of the retired emperor Go-Shirakawa; and the celebrated final Taira battle—the naval encounter at Dannoura, where the infant emperor Antoku was delivered to the depths of the sea. Among the many pleasures of this brilliantly colored chronicle is how the common humanity of this honest, hopeless man transcends his time and milieu to speak to us, here and now.

Author : David Jortner,Keiko I. McDonald,Kevin J. Wetmore
Publisher : Lexington Books
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2007
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0739123009

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Modern Japanese Theatre and Performance by David Jortner,Keiko I. McDonald,Kevin J. Wetmore Pdf

Modern Japanese Theatre and Performance is a collection of sixteen essays on Japanese theatre, including historical overviews of twentieth century theatre, analyses of specific productions and individuals, and consideration of the intercultural nature of modern Japanese theatre. Also included is a new translation of a 'Superkyogen' play.

Author : Chingen
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 180 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 1987-01-01
Category : Buddhist legends
ISBN : 0608005304

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Miraculous Tales of the Lotus Sutra from Ancient Japan by Chingen Pdf

Author : Takeuchi Yoshinori
Publisher : Motilal Banarsidass Publishe
Page : 578 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2003
Category : Buddhism
ISBN : 8120819446

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Buddhist Spirituality by Takeuchi Yoshinori Pdf

Of all the great religions, it is Buddhism that has focused most intensively on that aspects of religion that we call spirituality. No religion has ste a higher value on states of spiritual insight and liberation, and none has set forth so methodologically and with such a wealth of reflection the various paths and with such a wealth of reflection the various paths and disciplines by which such states are reached. The aim of the volumes on Buddhism is to survey the entire tradition both chronologically and geographically in the varieties of its historical forms and in the great diversity of its teachings.

Author : Edward R. Drott
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 249 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2016-04-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9780824851507

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Buddhism and the Transformation of Old Age in Medieval Japan by Edward R. Drott Pdf

Scholars have long remarked on the frequency with which Japanese myths portrayed gods (kami) as old men or okina. Many of these “sacred elders” came to be featured in premodern theater, most prominently in Noh. In the closing decades of the twentieth-century, as the number of Japan’s senior citizens climbed steadily, the sacred elder of premodern myth became a subject of renewed interest and was seen by some as evidence that the elderly in Japan had once been accorded a level of respect unknown in recent times. In Buddhism and the Transformation of Old Age in Medieval Japan, Edward Drott charts the shifting sets of meanings ascribed to old age in medieval Japan, tracing the processes by which the aged body was transformed into a symbol of otherworldly power and the cultural, political, and religious circumstances that inspired its reimagination. Drott examines how the aged body was used to conceptualize forms of difference and to convey religious meanings in a variety of texts: official chronicles, literary works, Buddhist legends and didactic tales. In early Japan, old age was most commonly seen as a mark of negative distinction, one that represented the ugliness, barrenness, and pollution against which the imperial court sought to define itself. From the late-Heian period, however, certain Buddhist authors seized upon the aged body as a symbolic medium though which to challenge traditional dichotomies between center and margin, high and low, and purity and defilement, crafting narratives that associated aged saints and avatars with the cults, lineages, sacred sites, or religious practices these authors sought to promote. Contributing to a burgeoning literature on religion and the body, Buddhism and the Transformation of Old Age in Medieval Japan applies approaches developed in gender studies to “denaturalize” old age as a matter of representation, identity, and performance. By tracking the ideological uses of old age in premodern Japan, this work breaks new ground, revealing the role of religion in the construction of generational categories and the ways in which religious ideas and practices can serve not only to naturalize, but also challenge “common sense” about the body.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Tuttle Publishing
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2015-08-04
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9781462917211

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Japanese Tales from Times Past by Anonim Pdf

This collection of translated tales is from the most famous work in all of Japanese classical literature—the Konjaku Monogatari Shu. This collection of traditional Japanese folklore is akin to the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer or Dante's Inferno—powerfully entertaining tales that reveal striking aspects of the cultural psychology, fantasy, and creativity of medieval Japan—tales that still resonate with modern Japanese readers today. The ninety stories in this book are filled with keen psychological insights, wry sarcasm, and scarcely veiled criticisms of the clergy, nobles, and peasants alike—suggesting that there are, among all classes and peoples, similar failings of pride, vanity, superstition and greed—as well as aspirations toward higher moral goals. This is the largest collection in English of the Konjaku Monogatari Shu tales ever published in one volume. It presents the low life and the high life, the humble and the devout, the profane flirting, farting and fornicating of everyday men and women, as well as their yearning for the wisdom, transcendence and compassion that are all part and parcel of our shared humanity. Stories Include: The Grave of Chopsticks Robbers Come to a Temple and Steal Its Bell The Woman Fish Peddler at the Guardhouse Fish are Turned into the Lotus Sutra A Dragon is Caught by a Tengu Goblin The Monk Tojo Predicts the Fall of Shujaku Gate Wasps Attack a Spider in Revenge

Author : Marian Ury
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 1979
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 0520038649

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Tales of Times Now Past by Marian Ury Pdf

Author : Margaret Helen Childs
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 1991
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : UOM:39015019857062

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Rethinking Sorrow by Margaret Helen Childs Pdf