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Author: Oleg Benesch
Publisher: Past and Present Book
ISBN: 0198706626
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
This volume examines the development of the 'way of the samurai' (bushidō), which is popularly viewed as a defining element of the Japanese national character and even the 'soul of Japan' - to provide an overview of modern Japanese social, cultural, and political history.
Author: Oleg Benesch
Publisher: Past and Present Book
ISBN: 0198706626
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
This volume examines the development of the 'way of the samurai' (bushidō), which is popularly viewed as a defining element of the Japanese national character and even the 'soul of Japan' - to provide an overview of modern Japanese social, cultural, and political history.
Author: Inazo Nitobe
Publisher: Arcturus Publishing
ISBN: 1398806072
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 145
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Book Description
"Chivalry is a flower no less indigenous to the soil of Japan than its emblem, the cherry blossom; nor is it a dried-up specimen of an antique virtue preserved in the herbarium of our history. It is still a living object of power and beauty among us" To many people, the word samurai conjures images of menacing masks, long blades and elaborate armour. However, this classic text by Inazo Nitobe reveals the greater depths to samurai culture - they were not simply warriors but an aristocratic class who practiced literary and military arts in equal measure. Essential to this way of life was the samurai's moral code and the quality of bushido, roughly translated as chivalry. The Way of the Samurai provides an intriguing exploration of bushido and other valued qualities such as rectitude or justice, courage, politeness, veracity, honour, loyalty and self-control. It also explores the Samurai's more violent traditions, such as the chilling act of hara-kiri or self-immolation. This mixture of chivalric principles with brutal warfare is fascinating. While many aspects of Samurai culture have disappeared, its principles still have resonance in modern Japanese society and around the globe.
Author: Paul Varley
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824816018
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308
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Book Description
A leading cultural historian of premodern Japan draws a rich portrait of the emerging samurai culture as it is portrayed in gunki-mono, or war tales, examining eight major works spanning the mid-tenth to late fourteenth centuries. Although many of the major war tales have been translated into English, Warriors of Japan is the first book-length study of the tales and their place in Japanese history. The war tales are one of the most important sources of knowledge about Japan's premodern warriors, revealing much about the medieval psyche and the evolving perceptions of warriors, warfare, and warrior customs.
Author: Karl F. Friday
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134330235
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
Karl Friday, an internationally recognised authority on Japanese warriors, provides the first comprehensive study of the topic to be published in English. This work incorporates nearly twenty years of on-going research and draws on both new readings of primary sources and the most recent secondary scholarship. It overturns many of the stereotypes that have dominated views of the period. Friday analyzes Heian -, Kamakura- and Nambokucho-period warfare from five thematic angles. He examines the principles that justified armed conflict, the mechanisms used to raise and deploy armed forces, the weapons available to early medieval warriors, the means by which they obtained them, and the techniques and customs of battle. A thorough, accessible and informative review, this study highlights the complex casual relationships among the structures and sources of early medieval political power, technology, and the conduct of war.
Author: Michael Wert
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190932945
Category : HISTORY
Languages : en
Pages : 129
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Book Description
About the samurai from their origins to their disappearance. The idea of the sword-wielding samurai, beholden to a strict ethical code and trained in deadly martial arts, dominates popular conceptions of the samurai. As early as the late seventeenth century, they were heavily featured in literature, art, theater, and even comedy. This book describes samurai life, work, philosophy, and warfare as it changed over time from the eighth to the nineteenth century and dispels myths about the samurai one might encounter in popular culture
Author: Ian Buruma
Publisher: Modern Library
ISBN: 1588362825
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 208
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Book Description
In a single short book as elegant as it is wise, Ian Buruma makes sense of the most fateful span of Japan’s history, the period that saw as dramatic a transformation as any country has ever known. In the course of little more than a hundred years from the day Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in his black ships, this insular, preindustrial realm mutated into an expansive military dictatorship that essentially supplanted the British, French, Dutch, and American empires in Asia before plunging to utter ruin, eventually emerging under American tutelage as a pseudo-Western-style democracy and economic dynamo. What explains the seismic changes that thrust this small island nation so violently onto the world stage? In part, Ian Buruma argues, the story is one of a newly united nation that felt it must play catch-up to the established Western powers, just as Germany and Italy did, a process that involved, in addition to outward colonial expansion, internal cultural consolidation and the manufacturing of a shared heritage. But Japan has always been both particularly open to the importation of good ideas and particularly prickly about keeping their influence quarantined, a bipolar disorder that would have dramatic consequences and that continues to this day. If one book is to be read in order to understand why the Japanese seem so impossibly strange to many Americans, Inventing Japan is surely it.
Author: Inazō Nitobe
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bushido
Languages : en
Pages : 188
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Book Description
Author: Adam Baker
Publisher: Canelo
ISBN: 1910859826
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 506
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Book Description
As regional warlords divide Japan, one rogue Samurai will sacrifice everything—apart from his honor—in this thrilling sixth-century epic. Japan, 1532. In the Age of the Warring States, nothing is as it appears. The young Emperor, Go-Nara, has been reduced to ceremonial irrelevance. After a failed assassination attempt on the royal figurehead, an anonymous samurai is coerced into a suicide mission that will test his skills to the limit. He must face this challenge for the sake of his young charge, a girl who is the last remainder of his duty. The samurai and the girl must journey to a far and impregnable mountain fortress, fighting off threats and dangers on the way. The girl, knowing no other life, hopes to learn all she can of the ways of the warrior. But they do not travel alone. The hunters are also the hunted.
Author: Eiko Ikegami
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067425466X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 454
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Book Description
Modern Japan offers us a view of a highly developed society with its own internal logic. Eiko Ikegami makes this logic accessible to us through a sweeping investigation into the roots of Japanese organizational structures. She accomplishes this by focusing on the diverse roles that the samurai have played in Japanese history. From their rise in ancient Japan, through their dominance as warrior lords in the medieval period, and their subsequent transformation to quasi-bureaucrats at the beginning of the Tokugawa era, the samurai held center stage in Japan until their abolishment after the opening up of Japan in the mid-nineteenth century. This book demonstrates how Japan’s so-called harmonious collective culture is paradoxically connected with a history of conflict. Ikegami contends that contemporary Japanese culture is based upon two remarkably complementary ingredients, honorable competition and honorable collaboration. The historical roots of this situation can be found in the process of state formation, along very different lines from that seen in Europe at around the same time. The solution that emerged out of the turbulent beginnings of the Tokugawa state was a transformation of the samurai into a hereditary class of vassal-bureaucrats, a solution that would have many unexpected ramifications for subsequent centuries. Ikegami’s approach, while sociological, draws on anthropological and historical methods to provide an answer to the question of how the Japanese managed to achieve modernity without traveling the route taken by Western countries. The result is a work of enormous depth and sensitivity that will facilitate a better understanding of, and appreciation for, Japanese society.
Author: Alexander Bennett
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462921221
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 197
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Book Description
This seminal work by historian Alexander Bennett presents a broad overview of the Japanese "Way of the Warrior" as it is expressed in scores of classical Japanese texts written by famous Samurai themselves. Bennett's analysis of these writings shows that the essential meaning of Bushido, the Samurai's code of conduct and ethics, evolved significantly over time--from the 12th century when the warrior class was elevated to become an elite group, to the 19th century when the Samurai class was suddenly disbanded. Bushido Explained takes a visual approach to presenting important concepts and terminology, helping readers easily navigate the complex world of the Samurai. The text is written in a highly accessible style, with sidebars presenting interesting concepts, facts and important Samurai figures who were central to Bushido's evolution. The different types of Bushido--which vary by region, time period and Samurai rank--are presented with over 300 informative diagrams and illustrations. No other book offers such a wide-ranging, yet clear analysis of Bushido--debunking myths and misconceptions about who the Samurai truly were. Bushido Explained presents a precise overview of Samurai ideals and culture in a logical, chronological order. Author Alexander Bennett--a professor of Japanese history, martial arts and Budo theory at Kansai university in Japan--uses this information and teaching methods in his Japanese Studies: Introduction to Bushido class. Now, readers all over the world can sit in on the unique lesson.
