Tales of Days Gone By:A Selection from Konjaku Monogatari‐shu

Tales of Days Gone By:A Selection from Konjaku Monogatari‐shu PDF Author: Naoko Matsubara
Publisher: Western Publications Distirbution Agency
ISBN: 9784900362000
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 62

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Book Description
Tales of Days Gone by is a selection of 17 stories from Konjaku monogatari-shu, a 12th century collection of more than 1000 tales. The stories in this selection are divided into three categories: tales of women, tales of wonder and tales of Buddhism. They were chosen and visualized in dynamic woodcuts by Naoko Matsubara.

Tales of Days Gone By:A Selection from Konjaku Monogatari‐shu

Tales of Days Gone By:A Selection from Konjaku Monogatari‐shu PDF Author: Naoko Matsubara
Publisher: Western Publications Distirbution Agency
ISBN: 9784900362000
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 62

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Book Description
Tales of Days Gone by is a selection of 17 stories from Konjaku monogatari-shu, a 12th century collection of more than 1000 tales. The stories in this selection are divided into three categories: tales of women, tales of wonder and tales of Buddhism. They were chosen and visualized in dynamic woodcuts by Naoko Matsubara.

Japanese Tales of Fantasy and Folklore

Japanese Tales of Fantasy and Folklore PDF Author:
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462924972
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
Supernatural tales from the most famous anthology in all of Japanese literature! The Konjaku Monogatari Shu is a collection of tales from Buddhist and popular Japanese folklore that was compiled in the twelfth century. The stories in this book tell of fearsome demons, tengu goblins, kitsune fox spirits, flying hermits and gods who suddenly appear out of nowhere to rescue foolish humans. There are tales of vengeful animals, robbers, bandits and murderers, as well as ordinary people from all walks of life. This volume contains the largest collection of Konjaku Monogatari stories ever translated into English. It presents the low and the high, the humble and the devout, and the flirting, farting and fornicating of everyday men and women. The ninety tales in this book include: A Clerk from Higo Province Escapes from a Demon's Scheme — A man riding his horse to work loses his way. A woman invites him to rest in her house, promising to help him, but the man soon realizes she is a demon, and flees. He hides in a cave, while the demon woman eats his horse. From deep in the cave comes the voice of another demon, and the man prays to Kannon, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, to save him. His prayers are heard, the demons release him, and he devouts himself to a life of piety. Empress Somedono Is Abused by a Tengu Goblin — A beautiful empress is plagued by an evil spirit, but an exorcism by a mystical high priest banishes the spirit. Delighted, her father asks the priest to live with them in the palace, but the priest ends up falling in love with the empress. The only way he can live with himself is by taking the form of a tengu goblin and casting a spell over the empress so that she will give in to his demands. A Fox Whose Ball is Returned Repays a Man's Kindness — A sorceress called to exorcise a haunted house discovers the spirit is a kitsune fox. A beautiful white ball materializes, belonging to the kitsune. A samurai, watching the exorcism, takes it. Desperate, the kitsune begs for its ball back, promising to protect the samurai, who reluctantly, agrees. One night, lost in the dark, the samurai calls on the kitsune for help and is guided safely home.

Tales of Times Now Past

Tales of Times Now Past PDF Author: Marian Ury
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520038646
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description


Japanese Tales from Times Past

Japanese Tales from Times Past PDF Author:
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462917216
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
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

Mandarins

Mandarins PDF Author: Ryunosuke Akutagawa
Publisher: Archipelago
ISBN: 1935744127
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Prefiguring the vital modernist voices of the Western literary canon, Akutagawa writes with a trenchant psychological precision that exposes the shifting traditions and ironies of early twentieth-century Japan and reveals his own strained connection to it. These stories are moving glimpses into a cast of characters at odds with the society around them, singular portraits that soar effortlessly toward the universal. "What good is intelligence if you cannot discover a useful melancholy?" Akutagawa once mused. Both piercing intelligence and "useful melancholy" buoy this remarkable collection. Mandarins contains three stories published in English for the first time: "An Evening Conversation," "An Enlightened Husband," and "Winter."

Japan

Japan PDF Author: David John Lu
Publisher: M.E. Sharpe
ISBN: 9781563249068
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 702

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Book Description
Covering the full spectrum of political, economic, diplomatic as well as cultural and intellectual history, this classroom resource offers insight not only into the past but also into Japan's contemporary civilisation. This is a combination of volumes one and two.

ME: A Novel

ME: A Novel PDF Author: Tomoyuki Hoshino
Publisher: Akashic Books
ISBN: 1617755567
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 159

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Book Description
"In Hoshino's dystopia, identities are fluid and any one is as good as another. . .Hoshino's ambitious novel is pleasingly uncomfortable." --Publishers Weekly "Hoshino's latest-in-translation (rendered by De Wolf) begins as black comedy and devolves into an antisolipsistic treatise on the impossibility of individual identity." --Booklist Online "Part existential fable, part 'Night of the Living Dead,' Mr. Hoshino's inventive novel, accessibly translated by Charles De Wolf, paints a nightmare vision of Japan's rootless millennials, who work grinding dead-end jobs that leave them little time for family or individual passions...At first Hitoshi and his fellow MEs are happy to band together against an uncaring world. But the camaraderie doesn't last, since every time one reveals a character flaw the others take it as an indictment of themselves. As the MEs' failures and weaknesses become intolerably magnified onto the 'living but useless rabble' they're gripped by a suicidal impulse that unleashes a crazed murder spree. The frenetic, knife-wielding finale reaches its climax in--a McDonald's, of course. None of them can think of any place else to eat." --Wall Street Journal, included in Best New Fiction column "A Kafkaesque journey of a lonely narrator being absorbed by an impersonal system." --Los Angeles Review of Books "The imaginative story of a rather unimaginative camera salesman, ME features Hitoshi Nagano; his troubles begin with his impulsive theft of a cell phone from another customer at a McDonalds. They end with a post-apocalyptic future for everyone in Japan." --New York Journal of Books "[Some passages] surpass even Kobo Abe. . .The author has leaped to a higher level." --Kenzaburo Oe, Nobel Prize-winning author of The Silent Cry, from the afterword With an afterword by Kenzaburō Ōe. Translated from Japanese by Charles De Wolf. This novel centers on the "It's me" telephone scam--often targeting the elderly--that has escalated in Japan in recent years. Typically, the caller identifies himself only by saying, "Hey, it's me," and goes on to claim in great distress that he's been in an accident or lost some money with which he was entrusted at work, etc., and needs funds wired to his account right away. ME's narrator is a nondescript young Tokyoite named Hitoshi Nagano who, on a whim, takes home a cell phone that a young man named Daiki Hiyama accidentally put on Hitoshi's tray at McDonald's. Hitoshi uses the phone to call Daiki's mother, pretending he is Daiki, and convinces her to wire him 900,000 yen. Three days later, Hitoshi returns home from work to discover Daiki's mother there in his apartment, and she seems to truly believe Hitoshi is her son. Even more bizarre, Hitoshi discovers his own parents now treat him as a stranger; they, too, have a "me" living with them as Hitoshi. At a loss for what else to do, Hitoshi begins living as Daiki, and no one seems to bat an eye. In a brilliant probing of identity, and employing a highly original style that subverts standard narrative forms, Tomoyuki Hoshino elevates what might have been a commonplace crime story to an occasion for philosophical reflection. In the process, he offers profound insights into the state of contemporary Japanese society. Charles De Wolf, PhD, professor emeritus, Keio University, is a linguist by training, though his first love was literature. Multilingual, he has spent most of his life in East Asia and is a citizen of Japan. His translations include Mandarins, a selection of short stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa (Archipelago Books) and collections of folktales from Konjaku Monogatari-shu. He has written extensively about The Tale of Genji; and is currently working on his own translation of the work.

The Buddhist Poetry of the Great Kamo Priestess

The Buddhist Poetry of the Great Kamo Priestess PDF Author: Edward Kamens
Publisher: U of M Center For Japanese Studies
ISBN: 0472038311
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
Senshi was born in 964 and died in 1035, in the Heian period of Japanese history (794–1185). Most of the poems discussed here are what may loosely be called Buddhist poems, since they deal with Buddhist scriptures, practices, and ideas. For this reason, most of them have been treated as examples of a category or subgenre of waka called Shakkyoka, “Buddhist poems.” Yet many Shakkyoka are more like other poems in the waka canon than they are unlike them. In the case of Senshi’s “Buddhist poems,” their language links them to the traditions of secular verse. Moreover, the poems use the essentially secular public literary language of waka to address and express serious and relatively private religious concerns and aspirations. In reading Senshi’s poems, it is as important to think about their relationship to the traditions and conventions of waka and to other waka texts as it is to think about their relationship to Buddhist thoughts, practices, and texts. The Buddhist Poetry of the Great Kamo Priestess creates a context for the reading of Senshi’s poems by presenting what is known and what has been thought about her and them. As such, it is a vital source for any reader of Senshi and other literature of the Heian period.

The Cambridge History of Japanese Literature

The Cambridge History of Japanese Literature PDF Author: Haruo Shirane
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316368289
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
The Cambridge History of Japanese Literature provides, for the first time, a history of Japanese literature with comprehensive coverage of the premodern and modern eras in a single volume. The book is arranged topically in a series of short, accessible chapters for easy access and reference, giving insight into both canonical texts and many lesser known, popular genres, from centuries-old folk literature to the detective fiction of modern times. The various period introductions provide an overview of recurrent issues that span many decades, if not centuries. The book also places Japanese literature in a wider East Asian tradition of Sinitic writing and provides comprehensive coverage of women's literature as well as new popular literary forms, including manga (comic books). An extensive bibliography of works in English enables readers to continue to explore this rich tradition through translations and secondary reading.

The Teeth and Claws of the Buddha

The Teeth and Claws of the Buddha PDF Author: Mikael S. Adolphson
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824831233
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
Japan’s monastic warriors have fared poorly in comparison to the samurai, both in terms of historical reputation and representations in popular culture. Often maligned and criticized for their involvement in politics and other secular matters, they have been seen as figures separate from the larger military class. However, as Mikael Adolphson reveals in his comprehensive and authoritative examination of the social origins of the monastic forces, political conditions, and warfare practices of the Heian (794–1185) and Kamakura (1185–1333) eras, these "monk-warriors"(sôhei) were in reality inseparable from the warrior class. Their negative image, Adolphson argues, is a construct that grew out of artistic sources critical of the established temples from the fourteenth century on. In deconstructing the sôhei image and looking for clues as to the characteristics, role, and meaning of the monastic forces, The Teeth and Claws of the Buddha highlights the importance of historical circumstances; it also points to the fallacies of allowing later, especially modern, notions of religion to exert undue influence on interpretations of the past. It further suggests that, rather than constituting a separate category of violence, religious violence needs to be understood in its political, social, military, and ideological contexts.