Sukeroku’s Double Identity

Sukeroku’s Double Identity PDF Author: Barbara Thornbury
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472901907
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 113

Get Book Here

Book Description
The aim of this book is to show that seemingly illogical double identity of the townsman, Sukeroku, and the samurai, Soga Goro, in the play Sukeroku is a surviving element of what was once a complex and coherent structure based on a traditional performance calendar. To show how the calendar function and what Sukeroku's double identity signifies, the book is divided into two parts. Part One studies the structure of Edo kabuki. The first chapter, which outlines that structure, is based for the most part on writings of the Tokugawa period. The second chapter then looks at the concepts of sekai, "tradition," and shuko, "innovation." Kabuki was the product of material that had become a familiar part of Japanese culture by repeated use and dramatization over long periods of time, starting before kabuki began, and material that was relatively new and was used to transform the older, set material. The double identity in Sukeroku came about as a result of this interplay between what was received by way of traditional and what was added by way of innovation. Part Two considers the significance of the double identity. The author concludes that Sukeroku's double identity gave Edo audiences a hero who was an idealization of the contemporary Tokugawa townsman and at the same time a transformation of a samurai god-hero of the past. The first chapter of Part Two traces the development of Sukeroku's Soga Goro/samurai identity, from its origins in the early dramatic forms of no, kowaka, and ko-joruri, to the representation of Soga Goro in kabuki by Ichikawa Danjuro I. The seconds then looks at the transformation of Soga Gorointo Sukeroku by discussing the origins of Sukeroku and its introductions to Edo kabuki by Ichikawa Danjuro I and his son, Danjuro II, since their work was the basis of all later developments.

Sukeroku’s Double Identity

Sukeroku’s Double Identity PDF Author: Barbara Thornbury
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472901907
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 113

Get Book Here

Book Description
The aim of this book is to show that seemingly illogical double identity of the townsman, Sukeroku, and the samurai, Soga Goro, in the play Sukeroku is a surviving element of what was once a complex and coherent structure based on a traditional performance calendar. To show how the calendar function and what Sukeroku's double identity signifies, the book is divided into two parts. Part One studies the structure of Edo kabuki. The first chapter, which outlines that structure, is based for the most part on writings of the Tokugawa period. The second chapter then looks at the concepts of sekai, "tradition," and shuko, "innovation." Kabuki was the product of material that had become a familiar part of Japanese culture by repeated use and dramatization over long periods of time, starting before kabuki began, and material that was relatively new and was used to transform the older, set material. The double identity in Sukeroku came about as a result of this interplay between what was received by way of traditional and what was added by way of innovation. Part Two considers the significance of the double identity. The author concludes that Sukeroku's double identity gave Edo audiences a hero who was an idealization of the contemporary Tokugawa townsman and at the same time a transformation of a samurai god-hero of the past. The first chapter of Part Two traces the development of Sukeroku's Soga Goro/samurai identity, from its origins in the early dramatic forms of no, kowaka, and ko-joruri, to the representation of Soga Goro in kabuki by Ichikawa Danjuro I. The seconds then looks at the transformation of Soga Gorointo Sukeroku by discussing the origins of Sukeroku and its introductions to Edo kabuki by Ichikawa Danjuro I and his son, Danjuro II, since their work was the basis of all later developments.

Shaped by Japanese Music

Shaped by Japanese Music PDF Author: Jay Davis Keister
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135879990
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Get Book Here

Book Description
This study situates musical analysis in the context of its creation, demonstrating that traditional Japanese music is an active socio- cultural system that has been reproduced in Japan from the seventeenth century to the present day.

Osaka, the Merchant's Capital of Early Modern Japan

Osaka, the Merchant's Capital of Early Modern Japan PDF Author: James L. McClain
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801436307
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 350

Get Book Here

Book Description
One of the first books to focus on a city other than Edo during the Tokugawa era, this work extends our understanding of Japanese urban life during that period. Portraying Osaka as a regional center of government with vibrant economic life and high and low culture, the book reveals much about the city's distinctiveness and development.

Voices of Early Modern Japan

Voices of Early Modern Japan PDF Author: Constantine Nomikos Vaporis Ph.D.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313392013
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 333

Get Book Here

Book Description
Based on fresh translations of historical documents, this volume offers a revealing look at Japan during the time of the Tokugawa shoguns from 1600–1868, focusing on the day-to-day lives of both the rich and powerful and ordinary citizens. Voices of Early Modern Japan: Contemporary Accounts of Daily Life during the Age of the Shoguns spans an extraordinary period of Japanese history, ranging from the unification of the warring states under Tokugawa Ieyasu in the early 17th century to the overthrow of the shogunate just prior to the mid-19th century opening of Japan by the West. Through close examinations of sources from a time known as "The Great Peace," this fascinating volume offers fresh insights into the Tokugawa era—its political institutions, rigid class hierarchy, artistic and material culture, religious life, and more. Sources come from all levels of Japanese society, everything from government documents and household records to personal correspondence and diaries, all carefully translated and examined in light of the latest scholarship.

Edo Kabuki in Transition

Edo Kabuki in Transition PDF Author: Satoko Shimazaki
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231540523
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 389

Get Book Here

Book Description
Satoko Shimazaki revisits three centuries of kabuki theater, reframing it as a key player in the formation of an early modern urban identity in Edo Japan and exploring the process that resulted in its re-creation in Tokyo as a national theatrical tradition. Challenging the prevailing understanding of early modern kabuki as a subversive entertainment and a threat to shogunal authority, Shimazaki argues that kabuki instilled a sense of shared history in the inhabitants of Edo (present-day Tokyo) by invoking "worlds," or sekai, derived from earlier military tales, and overlaying them onto the present. She then analyzes the profound changes that took place in Edo kabuki toward the end of the early modern period, which witnessed the rise of a new type of character: the vengeful female ghost. Shimazaki's bold reinterpretation of the history of kabuki centers on the popular ghost play Tokaido Yotsuya kaidan (The Eastern Seaboard Highway Ghost Stories at Yotsuya, 1825) by Tsuruya Nanboku IV. Drawing not only on kabuki scripts but also on a wide range of other sources, from theatrical ephemera and popular fiction to medical and religious texts, she sheds light on the development of the ubiquitous trope of the vengeful female ghost and its illumination of new themes at a time when the samurai world was losing its relevance. She explores in detail the process by which nineteenth-century playwrights began dismantling the Edo tradition of "presenting the past" by abandoning their long-standing reliance on the sekai. She then reveals how, in the 1920s, a new generation of kabuki playwrights, critics, and scholars reinvented the form again, "textualizing" kabuki so that it could be pressed into service as a guarantor of national identity.

Creating Kabuki Plays

Creating Kabuki Plays PDF Author: Katherine Saltzman-Li
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004193200
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume makes available for the first time a complete translation in English of a key text for our understanding of Kabuki, viz. Kezairoku, Sakusha Shikihô (Valuable Notes on Playwriting, A Playwrights’ Methodology, written 1801), being the only extant treatise fully devoted to the subject of Kabuki playwriting. At the hand of this vital text, the author addresses the history, methodology, and practitioners of Kabuki playwriting of the Edo Period (1603-1867.) The reader will find a critical examination of Kezairoku, and discussions regarding the connections between the Kabuki and literary worlds of Edo Japan, and between playwriting and the oral arts. The availability of the entire Kezairoku in English, together with a full contextualization of its teachings and meanings, offers a volume of great significance to both Japan and theatre scholars.

Revenge Drama in European Renaissance and Japanese Theatre

Revenge Drama in European Renaissance and Japanese Theatre PDF Author: K. Wetmore
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230611281
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 286

Get Book Here

Book Description
Revenge Drama in European Renaissance and Japanese Theatre is a collection of essays that both explores the tradition of revenge drama in Japan and compares that tradition with that in European Renaissance drama. Why are the two great plays of each tradition, plays regarded as defining their nations and eras, Kanadehon Chushingura and Hamlet, both revenge plays? What do the revenge dramas of Europe and Japan tell us about the periods that produced them and how have they been modernized to speak to contemporary audiences? By interrogating the manifestation of evil women, ghosts, satire, parody, and censorship, contributors such as Leonard Pronko, J. Thomas Rimer, Carol Sorgenfrei, Laurence Kominz explore these issues.

Samurai with Telephones

Samurai with Telephones PDF Author: Christopher Smith
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472904515
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 243

Get Book Here

Book Description
What is going on when a graphic novel has a twelfth-century samurai pick up a telephone to make a call, or a play has an ancient aristocrat teaching in a present-day schoolroom? Rather than regarding such anachronisms as errors, Samurai with Telephones develops a theory of how texts can use different types of anachronisms to challenge or rewrite history, play with history, or open history up to new possibilities. By applying this theoretical framework of anachronism to several Japanese literary and cultural works, author Christopher Smith demonstrates how different texts can use anachronism to open up history for a wide variety of different textual projects. From the modern period, this volume examines literature by Mori Ōgai and Ōe Kenzaburō, manga by Tezuka Osamu, art by Murakami Takashi, and a variety of other pop cultural works. Turning to the Early Modern period (Edo period, 1600–1868), which produced a literature rich with playful anachronism, he also examines several Kabuki and Bunraku plays, kibyōshi comic books, and gōkan illustrated novels. In analyzing these works, he draws a distinction between anachronisms that attempt to hide their work on history and convincingly rewrite it and those conspicuous anachronisms that highlight and disrupt the construction of historical narratives.

Voices of Early Modern Japan

Voices of Early Modern Japan PDF Author: Constantine N. Vaporis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000280918
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this newly revised and updated 2nd edition of Voices of Early Modern Japan, Constantine Nomikos Vaporis offers an accessible collection of annotated historical documents of an extraordinary period in Japanese history, ranging from the unification of warring states under Tokugawa Ieyasu in the early seventeenth century to the overthrow of the shogunate just after the opening of Japan by the West in the mid- nineteenth century. Through close examination of primary sources from "The Great Peace," this fascinating textbook offers fresh insights into the Tokugawa era: its political institutions, rigid class hierarchy, artistic and material culture, religious life, and more, demonstrating what historians can uncover from the words of ordinary people. New features include: • An expanded section on religion, morality and ethics; • A new selection of maps and visual documents; • Sources from government documents and household records to diaries and personal correspondence, translated and examined in light of the latest scholarship; • Updated references for student projects and research assignments. The first edition of Voices of Early Modern Japan was the winner of the 2013 Franklin R. Buchanan Prize for Curricular Materials. This fully revised textbook will prove a comprehensive resource for teachers and students of East Asian Studies, history, culture, and anthropology.

Avatars of Vengeance

Avatars of Vengeance PDF Author: Laurence Richard Kominz
Publisher: U of M Center for Japanese Studies
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book Here

Book Description
An exploration of the timeless appeal that the Soga story has exerted and the processes that took the brothers through successive incarnations in literature