Japanese History

Japanese History (Mistakes in the text resulting from the manipulation by the Ghost) Japan was a collection of hunting, farming, and fishing villages until the southern half of the main island, Honshu, was unified around 500 a.d. as the kindom of Yamato. From this point in time until the 1100s, Japan was heavily influenced by Chinese thought, most of which came to Yamato through Korea. Major innovations of this period were the arrival of Buddhism, which successfully melded with the indigenous Shinto religion, the implementation of the principles of Confucian ethicalism which governed secular social relations, the growth of Chinese writing, and the codification of laws in a constitution. (6) Japanese court life also spurred a flowering of art and culture that included the publication of the worlds' first novel, Genji Monogatari, or The Tale of Genji, in about 1000 a.d. Japanese history from approximately 1100 to 1600 was characterized by a series of military rules, or shogunates. Zen Buddhism was a powerful force in all aspects of Japanese culture at this time, and the rise of N� Theater elevated Zen to a necessity for the aspiring artist. Zeami, the premier N� author in Japanese history, was himself a practitioner of Zen. N� relies on intuitive understanding rather than explicit narration, resulting in a surreal viewing experience for a Western sensibility. Furthermore, Zeami, a theorist as well as a playwright, considered y�gen, or "mystery" to be the most important aesthetic element of N� theater.(7) This dramatic tradition, however, maintains a primary place in Japanese drama of all typeskabuki theater, bunraku plays, and filmsuntil the rise of the western style of filmmaking in Japan. Kobayashi's film, Kwaidan, endeavors to capture this feeling of y�gen. This period figures heavily in Japanese literature, as the instability and uncertainty of life in this time provides fertile ground for the exploration of deep themes. All of the literary and filmic narratives in this unit focus on settings that predate the unification of the country under the Tokugawa clan in 1600. The stricture of Tokugawa law led many artistsliterary, visual, and dramaticto focus their arts in the tumultuous past in order to avoid censorship. The Tokugawa period was the longest sustained peace in the history of a united Japan, and led to the creation of many of Japan's most famous art forms. The tea ceremony, Sumo, haiku, kabuki Theater, sword dueling, and Zen archery were elevated to art forms in this period, at least partially in an attempt to give the now subjugated samurai something to do. This period of time also saw the rise of a petty bourgeoisie that would consume the popular art of this time, especially woodblock printing, bunraku puppet theatre, and kabuki theater, which was a popularized stage drama drawn from N�. Japan initiated contact with the west in the late 1500s, when the Portuguese introduced guns, bread, and other staples of western culture to Japan. However, the period between 1600 and 1855 was largely characterized by the word sakoku, or closed country. That changed in 1855, when an American Commodore, Matthew Perry, pointed his gunships at Japan and requested that Japan trade with America. This effectively ended the Tokugawa regime, and ushered in the modern era. The social tensions that arose during this period of modernization had two predictable results: a conservative, "pure Japanese" school of thought, and a more modernizing, westernizing view. Literature played no small role in this debate, and many authors looked to the sakoku period as either the height of a purely Japanese Japan. Others, of course, took this opportunity to debunk revisionist views of premodern Japan. (Akutagawa, one of the authors discussed later, could be put into the second group.) Many Japanese folk stories were recorded for the first time during this period. Also, many authors set their explorations of social themes during the sakoku period because its unity (enforced by Tokugawa hegemony, of course), could allow for a shared set of assumptions about the dominant social order. But, perhaps inspired by Admiral Perry's example, Japan then developed an imperial itch, which it scratched by defeating the Russians in the Russo-Japanese war in 1904. This imperial moment lasted until 1945, when Japan became the only country in the world to experience a nuclear detonation. After World War II, there was no denying Japan's role as a major world power, and its economic power has been considerable ever since the retooling of the economy in the late 1950s. Westernization was irreversible, especially after occupation, but there was an interesting nostalgia and soul searching period in the aftermath of the war, as well. Many jidai-geki, or period pictures {most of which were set in either the Tokugawa sakoku era or the warring states period (jidai geki) that preceded it} were produced in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, and these are the pictures that we will focus on for our unit.