A History of Writing in Japan PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download A History of Writing in Japan PDF full book. Access full book title A History of Writing in Japan by Christopher Seeley. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Christopher Seeley
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004644814
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 261
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book deals chronologically with the history of writing in Japan, a subject which spans a period of 2,000 years, beginning with the transmission of writing from China in about the first or second century AD, and concluding with the use of written Japanese with computers. Topics dealt with include the adoption of Chinese writing and its subsequent adaptation in Japan, forms of writing employed in works such as the Kojiki and Man'yoshu, development of the kana syllabaries, evolution of mixed character-kana orthography, historical kana usage, the rise of literacy during the Edo period, and the main changes that have taken place in written Japanese in the modern period (ca. 1868 onwards). This is the first full-length work in a European language to provide the Western reader with an overall account of the subject concerned, based on extensive examination of both primary and secondary materials.
Author:
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231163886
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 314
Get Book Here
Book Description
Written in the early eighth century, the Kojiki is considered JapanÕs first literary and historical work. A compilation of myths, legends, songs, and genealogies, it recounts the birth of JapanÕs islands, reflecting the origins of Japanese civilization and future Shinto practice. The Kojiki provides insight into the lifestyle, religious beliefs, politics, and history of early Japan, and for centuries has shaped the nationÕs view of its past. This innovative rendition conveys the rich appeal of the Kojiki to a general readership by translating the names of characters to clarify their contribution to the narrative while also translating place names to give a vivid sense of the landscape the characters inhabit, as well as an understanding of where such places are today. Gustav HeldtÕs expert organization reflects the textÕs original sentence structure and repetitive rhythms, enhancing the readerÕs appreciation for its sophisticated style of storytelling.
Author: Keith Yatsuhashi
Publisher: Watkins Media Limited
ISBN: 0857666169
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 438
Get Book Here
Book Description
Every civilization has its myths. Only one is true. When eighteen year old Keiko Yamada’s father dies unexpectedly, he leaves behind a one way ticket to Japan, an unintelligible death poem about powerful Japanese spirits and their gigantic, beast-like Guardians, and the cryptic words: “Go to Japan in my place. Find the Gate. My camera will show you the way.” Alone and afraid, Keiko travels to Tokyo, determined to fulfil her father’s dying wish. There, beneath glittering neon signs, her father’s death poem comes to life. Ancient spirits spring from the shadows. Chaos envelops the city, and as Keiko flees its burning streets, her guide, the beautiful Yui Akiko, makes a stunning confession – that she, Yui, is one of a handful of spirits left behind to defend the world against the most powerful among them: a once noble spirit now insane. Keiko must decide if she will honour her father’s heritage and take her rightful place among the gods. File Under: Fantasy
Author: Kazumi Wilds
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462921086
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 27
Get Book Here
Book Description
Take a step back in time to the origins of Japan's creation myth--told here for the very first time in illustrated form. In the beginning there was nothing--a void. Then the heavens and the earth took shape, as the ancient gods of Japan breathed the first sparks of life into these islands. The 1300 year-old Kojiki myth traces the beginnings of the Japanese people, following the rise of the Japanese islands from their humble origins as a lump of clay to a great nation that would one day take its rightful place among the leading nations of the world. Like all creation myths from around the world, the Kojiki story occupies a treasured place in the nation's literature and collective imagination. Kazumi Wilds's striking illustrations capture the drama and intensity of a mythic tale where chaos and demons are unleashed and where darkness is slowly pushed back by the righteous, as good prevails over evil. Kojiki: The Birth of Japan combines the raucous rhythms and startling imagery of today's best graphic novels with a retelling of a classic and timeless Japanese story. This book will be remembered and treasured for years to come by lovers of mythology, folklore and anyone interested in Japanese culture and history. For readers ages 14 & up
Author: Basil Hall Chamberlain
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
ISBN: 1465577165
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 448
Get Book Here
Book Description
Of all the mass of Japanese literature, which lies before us as the result of nearly twelve centuries of book-making, the most important Monument is the work entitled "Ko-ji-ki"1 or "Records of Ancient Matters," which was completed in A. D. 712. It is the most important because it has preserved for us more faithfully than any other book the mythology, the manners, the language, and the traditional history of Ancient Japan. Indeed it is the earliest authentic connected literary product of that large division of the human race which, has been variously denominated Turanian, Scythian and Altaic, and it even precedes by at least a century the most ancient extant literary compositions of non-Aryan India. Soon after the date of its compilation, most of the salient features of distinctive Japanese nationality were buried under a superincumbent mass of Chinese culture, and it is to these "Records" and to a very small number of other ancient works, such as the poems of the "Collection of a Myriad Leaves" and the Shintō Rituals, that the investigator must look, if he would not at every step be misled in attributing originality to modern customs and ideas, which have simply been borrowed wholesale from the neighbouring continent. It is of course not pretended that even these "Records" are untouched by Chinese influence: that influence is patent in the very characters with which the text is written. But the influence is less, and of another kind. If in the traditions preserved and in the customs alluded to we detect the Early Japanese in the act of borrowing from China and perhaps even from India, there is at least on our author's part no ostentatious decking out in Chinese trappings of what he believed to be original matter, after the fashion of the writers who immediately succeeded him. It is true that this abstinence on his part makes his compilation less pleasant to the ordinary native taste than that of subsequent historians, who put fine Chinese phrases into the mouths of emperors and heroes supposed to have lived before the time when .intercourse with China began. But the European student, who reads all such books, not as a pastime but in order to search for facts, will prefer the more genuine composition. It is also accorded the first place by the most learned of the native literati. Of late years this paramount importance of the "Records of Ancient Matters" to investigators of Japanese subjects generally has become well-known to European scholars; and even versions of a few passages are to be found scattered through the pages of their writings. Thus Mr. Aston has given us, in the Chrestomathy appended to his "Grammar of the Japanese Written Language," a couple of interesting extracts; Mr. Satow has illustrated by occasional extracts his elaborate papers on the Shintō Rituals printed in these "Transactions," and a remarkable essay by Mr. Kempermann published in the Fourth Number of the "Mittheilungen der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Natur und Völkerkunde Ostasiens," though containing no actual translations, bases on the account given in the "Records" some conjectures regarding the origines of Japanese civilization which are fully substantiated by more minute research. All that has yet appeared in any European language does not, however, amount to one-twentieth part of the whole, and the most erroneous views of the style and scope of the book and its contents have found their way into popular works on Japan. It is hoped that the true nature of the book, and also the true nature of the traditions, customs, and ideas of the Early Japanese, will be made clearer by the present translation the object of which is to give the entire work in a continuous English version, and thus to furnish the European student with a text to quote from, or at least to use as a guide in consulting the original. The only object aimed at has been a rigid and literal conformity with the Japanese text. Fortunately for this endeavour (though less fortunately for the student), one of the difficulties which often beset the translator of an Oriental classic is absent in the present case. There is no beauty of style, to preserve some trace of which he may be tempted to sacrifice a certain amount of accuracy. The "Records" sound queer and bald in Japanese, as will be noticed further on, and it is therefore right, even from a stylistic point of view, that they should sound bald and queer in English. The only portions of the text which, from obvious reasons, refuse to lend themselves to translation into English after this fashion are the indecent portions. But it has been thought that there could be no objection to rendering them into Latin,—Latin as rigidly literal as is the English of the greater part.
Author: Christopher Seeley
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004644814
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 261
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book deals chronologically with the history of writing in Japan, a subject which spans a period of 2,000 years, beginning with the transmission of writing from China in about the first or second century AD, and concluding with the use of written Japanese with computers. Topics dealt with include the adoption of Chinese writing and its subsequent adaptation in Japan, forms of writing employed in works such as the Kojiki and Man'yoshu, development of the kana syllabaries, evolution of mixed character-kana orthography, historical kana usage, the rise of literacy during the Edo period, and the main changes that have taken place in written Japanese in the modern period (ca. 1868 onwards). This is the first full-length work in a European language to provide the Western reader with an overall account of the subject concerned, based on extensive examination of both primary and secondary materials.
Author: Jin'ichi Konishi
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400886333
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 497
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book, which covers the period from preliterate times to the beginning of the tenth century, is the first of five proposed volumes that will give an account of Japanese literature from its beginnings to the death of the modern novelist Mishima. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Author: Susan L Burns
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822384906
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 295
Get Book Here
Book Description
Exploring the emergence and evolution of theories of nationhood that continue to be evoked in present-day Japan, Susan L. Burns provides a close examination of the late-eighteenth-century intellectual movement kokugaku, which means "the study of our country.” Departing from earlier studies of kokugaku that focused on intellectuals whose work has been valorized by modern scholars, Burns seeks to recover the multiple ways "Japan" as social and cultural identity began to be imagined before modernity. Central to Burns's analysis is Motoori Norinaga’s Kojikiden, arguably the most important intellectual work of Japan's early modern period. Burns situates the Kojikiden as one in a series of attempts to analyze and interpret the mythohistories dating from the early eighth century, the Kojiki and Nihon shoki. Norinaga saw these texts as keys to an original, authentic, and idyllic Japan that existed before being tainted by "flawed" foreign influences, notably Confucianism and Buddhism. Hailed in the nineteenth century as the begetter of a new national consciousness, Norinaga's Kojikiden was later condemned by some as a source of Japan's twentieth-century descent into militarism, war, and defeat. Burns looks in depth at three kokugaku writers—Ueda Akinari, Fujitani Mitsue, and Tachibana Moribe—who contested Norinaga's interpretations and produced competing readings of the mythohistories that offered new theories of community as the basis for Japanese social and cultural identity. Though relegated to the footnotes by a later generation of scholars, these writers were quite influential in their day, and by recovering their arguments, Burns reveals kokugaku as a complex debate—involving history, language, and subjectivity—with repercussions extending well into the modern era.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Japan
Languages : en
Pages : 888
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Delmer Brown
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520336895
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496
Get Book Here
Book Description
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1978.
Author: Kanaya Shunichiro
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462923801
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Get Book Here
Book Description
The entire fascinating story of Japan told in one exciting manga-style volume! A History of Japan in Manga tells the action-packed saga of Japan from its misty origins up to the present day. Epic battles, noble Samurai and duplicitous leaders are all portrayed in modern manga fashion! The lively stories in this book include: The Dawn of Japan: The Birth of Buddhism and the transition from hunters—gatherers to agricultural societies of ancient times The Genpei Wars: Davage battles between the Taira and Minamoto clans that led to the powerful warlord Minamoto no Yoritomo naming himself Japan's first Shogun The Onin Wars: A decade-long struggle for domination of Japan in which thousands of Samurai fought and tragically lost their lives The 47 Ronin: Loyal Samurai who vowed to avenge the death of their master, choosing honor over surrender and being forced to commit mass ritual suicide as a result The Satsuma Rebellion: A dramatic last stand by Samurai loyal to the Shogun who revolted against the new Meiji government and its plans to finally modernize Japan And many more! This ebook edition is a larger file size than most as it is full of dozens of indelible portraits, manga stories, maps and info-sidebars bring the full sweep of Japanese history to life in one easy-to-read book!
