READ THIS INTRODUCTION
Welcome to Topics in Medieval Japanese History, a textbook designed for use in HIST 480 at Penn State University. Although you may not normally read book introductions, in this case, doing so should be worth your while.
The present series of textbook modules began in 1992 as a hastily-compiled set of visual aids for an introductory course in East Asia at Eastern Washington University. Over the course of eight major revisions at EWU, it gradually developed into its present form: a series of graphically-rich, privately-produced textbooks. Since 1997, the series has been in use at Penn State University. A major inspiration for this project has been a dislike of the available commercial textbooks, which tend to be too long, too bland, too expensive, and just plain tedious. This book is part of an ongoing attempt to make textbooks more useful.
Starting in 2000 and continuing well into 2001, I began the task of recasting these textbooks for the World Wide Web, which is a vastly superior medium to paper. The main difficulty was in re-doing most of the graphics. In the printed version, they were all optimized for photocopier reproduction, which is the worst possible configuration for viewing on the screen. I have stopped producing printed versions and will continue to revise and enhance the web versions of these textbooks as time and energy permit.
Topics in Medieval Japanese History is intended to differ from a typical commercial textbook in several key respects. First, this book is designed to fit perfectly with HIST 480 at PSU. It should reduce the need for taking notes and the usual anxieties about what information is of greater or lesser importance in the course. In terms of its approach to the subject matter, Topics in Medieval Japanese History emphasizes a succession of topics rather than strict adherence to the flow of time. In a general way, the chapters move from earlier periods of time to later periods of time, but their content and organization gives top priority to coverage of topics. These topics, while important and, hopefully, somewhat interesting are but a small subset of the content of Japanese history. Others putting together a book like this might select a significantly different set of topics. While the "mainstream" narrative of politics and institutions is present in these pages, the emphasis is on social and cultural history wherever possible.
More generally, a goal of this book and the course as a whole is to encourage broad, integrative thinking about history and human affairs. Readers are encouraged to compare Japanese history with the histories of other parts of the world and with contemporary problems and issues. Topics in Medieval Japanese History reflects the view that it is better to study a smaller number of things in greater depth than to attempt a quick, superficial survey of a larger number of topics.
This book and its companions do a reasonably good job of solving a practical problem that inevitably occurs in survey history courses. Typically, a majority of the students in the course seek to do the least work possible to get by (whether "getting by" means simply passing or passing with a high grade). On the other hand, there is a smaller group who seek at least some degree of additional study beyond the minimum requirements. This book can be used as a guide to getting by with the bare minimum. It contains almost everything you need to know (i.e., almost everything testable) about Japan in the course. For those who want to go beyond the minimum, the book also contains hints and suggestions for further inquiry. Most obvious are the links. Those enclosed with stars *_______* are essential, and those enclosed with hash marks #_________# or nothing are optional. Also, whenever possible, the text attempts to raise broader issues beyond the scope of this course but which you can pursue further on their own and in other courses. The notes are also a good source for additional inquiry.
Of course, much of what this book is not can be inferred from reading the above paragraphs. Still, a few points should be made explicit. First and foremost, Topics in Medieval Japanese History makes no attempt at broad, comprehensive coverage. In this respect it is quite unlike commercial textbooks that try to include a little of everything. (Here's an insider explaining the situation regarding commercial textbooks: http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i43/43b00501.htm.) Textbooks offering broad coverage are easy to obtain via libraries and new & used bookstores, and you should probably obtain one of these books and read it on your own as we go through the course if you have no prior background in Japanese history. Also, advanced students of Japanese history can often benefit from occasionally reading a broad survey. Asian Studies majors and others who plan to pursue the study of Japan or East Asia more thoroughly are especially encouraged to read further on topics that come up in this textbook or on any related topics of interest.
In terms of content, this book differs from many other textbooks in that it contains relatively less political, institutional and military history and relatively more social and cultural history than is typically the case. This difference in emphasis corresponds with a major goal of the course namely, the acquisition of a rudimentary "cultural literacy" of Japan, at least with respect to its classical culture. Within the cultural history of medieval Japan, Buddhism is of the utmost importance. This book therefore contains an introduction to the origin and major teachings of Buddhism. Subsequent chapters expand on this introduction in the context of Japanese history.
Finally, this book is not intended to be published by a commercial press. Should I ever write a textbook manuscript for publication (and I have no plans to do so in the foreseeable future), it will necessarily take a very different form from the present book.
There are no hard and fast rules about how to use this book, and each reader will find her or his own way. However, I can offer a few suggestions based on experience. Some students like to bring printed pages with them to class and jot down notes in the margins. Doing so can be convenient because class presentations will closely follow the book. There is a major downside, however: students who print out the main text on paper often neglect to study the links, which are just as important as the main text. For those who do want to print the pages, I recommend the following procedure: Edit-->Select All-->Copy. Then paste (Ctrl-v or Edit-->Paste) it into a word processor or text editor and adjust fonts and margins to your liking. "So do I even have to come to class?" you may be thinking. You should, for all practical purposes, consider class attendance as necessary. The material is simply too difficult for most people to master only by reading on their own. Class presentations will feature a wider variety and higher quality of visual aids. Also, verbal and written formats necessarily differ, so class presentations will approach the material in slightly different ways than do the words and images in the book. Another advantage of regular class attendance is the ease of asking questions should something seem confusing or unclear. I want to emphasize that I expect regular class attendance in HIST 480.
This book and its companions are rich in graphical images, but you'll have to click on the links to see them. Some of the images are relatively unimportant (a picture of someone whose name comes up in the text, for example), and these will usually be marked "#____#." But many of them are intended to represent key concepts, organizational structures, or historical developments in visual form. Such images should be studied with the same care as the text. Also, some images are included for the purpose of illustrating aspects of Japanese history and culture through the medium of art, both popular and "high-brow." They, too, are important and worthy of concentrated study. Important images will always be indicated by *________.* One of the benefits of studying the visual images presented here an in class is that you may become better at "reading" them. Visual images entail the same range of complexity as does verbal/textual communication and thus require approximately the same degree of study.1
It is quite likely that you will read some or all of this book more than once. One reason is that some topics are especially difficult and may require several readings to make full sense. Class presentations will focus especially on the more difficult material, and the ideal reading schedule is roughly as follows. Using the syllabus as a guide to classroom topics, stay one or two class days ahead of schedule in your reading. Then, attend class and think along with the instructor's presentation, asking questions about any points that continue to be unclear. Then re-read all the relevant pages starting about a week before each exam (don't try to do it all the day before).
What about the characters 漢字? Am I missing something if I can't read them? If, like most readers, you cannot read the characters, do not worry about it. But if you do read Japanese or want to see it for its exotic effect or for some other reason, be sure to download Japanese reading support into your browser. If there are two green boxes after the word "characters" in the question, then your browser cannot read them. If you are using IE 5 or above, you should be prompted to download the support automatically when encountering a page with characters. Once downloaded, you are set.
The characters are intended to serve several purposes. First, some students taking this course have studied Japanese or East Asian history in Japan or another East Asian country. The characters serve to indicate the native Japanese terminology for key terms, concepts, institutions, et cetera for these students. Also, many readers of this text will be students of Japanese or another East Asian language, and the characters may sometimes help reinforce their study. Finally, for those with no connection to East Asian languages, the characters serve as subtle reminders that our study of Japanese history involves a process of translating material from other times and places into terms intended to make sense to contemporary students at a university in the United States. Indeed, this process of translation applies to the study of almost any historical time or place, but it is, or should be, especially apparent in the case of Medieval Japan/East Asia.
What about the footnotes? Should I pay attention to them? Most readers most of the time will not need to pay attention to the notes. The notes serve three purposes. First, they satisfy the basic requirement of academic protocol to provide exact references for quoted passages. Interested readers may therefore look up the passage in its original context. Second, the notes are places for interesting asides or digressions that are related to material in the main text but go beyond the subject matter of the course. Third, and perhaps most important, the notes serve as recommendations for further reading for those who may be interested in a particular topic. Note 1 in this Introduction, for example, fulfils purposes two and three.
What about memorizing things? To what extent should I do so? This question cannot be answered simply. There is an inaccurate stereotype of historical study that claims it is all about memorizing names and dates. Because of an understandable desire to emphasize that history is much more than mere factual memorization, many instructors are uneasy about the whole topic of memorization. But memorization--short-term memorization--is necessary to some extent in any course about anything. The best analogy I can come up with is that of a *personal computer running a program*--a word processing program, let us say. Clicking on the program's icon launches an executable file, which loads and stores key components of the program in the computer's short-term memory (i.e., its RAM). Loading this program code into short-term memory enables all the sophisticated formatting capabilities of which most word processing software is capable. Of course, once the machine is turned off, the short-term memory is erased (as well as any data you neglected to save to disk, so save frequently).
Obviously, we run programs for much more sophisticated ends than simply to load program code into random access memory, but the loading is an essential prerequisite for accomplishing these ends. And so it is with our own RAM-like short-term memories in a history course. Some basic information, including names, time sequences (more so than exact dates), core ideas, et cetera must be remembered so that we can readily use this information as part of a more sophisticated analysis of human affairs. That most students will forget the memorized information soon after it is no longer needed in the course is no problem. It has served its purpose, and the hope is not that you will remember the detailed facts ("factoids" as they now seem to be called) about Japanese or East Asian history for a long time, but that you will remember some of the more complex conclusions of our study in a way that they may enrich your life as a thinking person. Ideally, you will internalize some of the process of historical inquiry presented in this book and in the course as a whole, thereby becoming a more discerning, critical consumer of history. So do not neglect to memorize key factual data (the book will often identify this data for you, especially in the first chapter), but understand that such memorization is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
Overview of Japan & Basic Orientations
Prior to looking at the specifics of Japan's early history, take a quick tour of some basic information about Japan, starting with time periods. The major eras of Japanese history are provided here. The relevant periods for this course are in red, and you should memorize them and their terminal dates. The best approach is first to memorize the order of the relevant periods. Once the names in their proper order are firmly in mind, then fill in the dates. Exact dates are fine, or you might find it easier to round the dates off to the nearest century. Notice that the Muromachi and Tokugawa periods have common alternative names. Incidentally, from the Meiji period to the present, it has been customary in Japan to use the "reign name" (nengō 年号) of the reigning emperor--not the "Western" calendar--as official time periods. A government document dated 1990, for example, would be "Heisei 2."
Major Eras in Japanese History
Jōmon Period 10,000-300 B.C.E.
Yayoi Period 300 B.C.E.-200 C.E.
Tomb Period 250-500
Asuka Period 500-710
(All dates to this point are approximations)
Nara Period 710-784
Heian Period 794-1191
Kamakura Period 1192-1333
Muromachi Period 1334-1573 (A.K.A. Ashikaga Period)
Tokugawa " 1603-1867 (A.K.A. Edo Period)
Meiji Period 1867-1912
Taishō Period 1912-1926
Shōwa Period 1926-1989
Heisei Period 1989-present
Today, Japan consists of four main islands and many smaller ones. Japan's territory occupies roughly the same latitude as the eastern United States from the New England states through central Florida. Most of Japan has a four-season climate, and the surrounding seas moderate the extremes of climate in most regions. The total land area of Japan is about the size of California. The population is around 135 million, about half that of the United States. Japan is, therefore, a crowded place compared with the United States. There are, however, other countries in the world (e.g., Belgium) that have higher population densities. Many Japanese like to think of Japan as a "small" country, and it does indeed seem small when compared with China, Russia, or the United States. On the other hand, we do not usually speak of Britain, France, Germany, or Saudi Arabia as "small" countries, yet Japan is larger than any of these places both in terms of square miles and population. Japan is roughly twice the physical size of Britain, for example, and has four times the population. So the notion that Japan is a "small" country is inaccurate when viewed in a global perspective, because Japan is actually a relatively large country in the world. It is also an economic superpower whose corporations conduct business around the globe. Japan has the highest per capita GNP in the world and the second largest total GNP.
Japan is highly urbanized, and most of its people live in cities. The capital and largest city is Tōkyō, which was known as Edo until 1868. The second largest city is Ōsaka, which is a major commercial center. Ōsaka is located about 45 minutes by train or bus from the former capital of Kyōto. Sapporo is the largest city in the northern island of Hokkaidō and is probably most famous in the U.S. for the beer that bears its name. On the island of Kyūshū, Nagasaki was Japan's major port for trade with China and other foreign countries in premodern times. Kagoshima is the largest city in the south of the island. The Ryūkyū Islands comprised a separate kingdom until 1879, the year Japan annexed it. From 1945 until 1972, most of the Ryūkyū islands were under U.S. military occupation. Even today, they contain a disproportionately large number of Japanese and U.S. military installations. The major city in the Ryūkyū islands is Naha, on the island of Okinawa (#map#). You should memorize the islands shown here. It may also be useful to remember the major cities in Honshū and Kyūshū.
Examine these maps of Japan and refer back to them as needed:
<*Map 1*> <#More Maps#>
The Japanese islands are volcanic in origin, and they remain home to several active volcanoes. Earthquakes go hand-in-hand with volcanoes, and the Japanese islands continue to experience a large number of quakes, some of which have caused massive loss of life and property. Because of Japan's volcanic origins, much of its land is mountainous. The mountains provide excellent scenery, though they limit the space available for agriculture and housing.
You may know that China is home to several different languages, the most widespread of which has privileged political status as "common speech" (putonghua 普通話) and is what today we commonly call "Chinese." The situation in Japan is roughly similar. The variety of Japanese that was once spoken by the well-to-do residents of Edo (Tōkyō) became the country-wide standard in the late 19th century and is today called kokugo 国語 ("national language") in Japan. When we say "Japanese," we usually mean this standard "national language." There are, however, several major varieties of Japanese, some of which are so different from the national language that they constitute separate languages (e.g., Okinawan 沖縄語 or ウチナー口). Mainly for political reasons, even these separate languages are called "dialects" (ben 弁 hōgen 方言) in Japan. Such terminology helps de-emphasize the significant cultural diversity of the Japanese islands. Owing to several generations of nearly universal education and the influence of television and similar media, almost everyone in Japan understands the national language. Also, nearly everyone can speak it, though in their daily or private lives many Japanese still prefer to use their local dialects/languages.
Compared with other major languages of the world, standard Japanese has a relatively small and simple inventory of sounds. With only two or three exceptions, all of the basic sounds of Japanese are found within English. Japanese is also relatively flat in terms of intonation and lacks anything like the tones of Chinese. Native speakers of English can, therefore, learn to pronounce Japanese words with near native accuracy in a short time (provided, of course, that they make the effort to do so). In fact, Japanese pronunciation is easier for a native speaker of English to master than is the pronunciation of most European languages.
a | ka | sa | ta | na | ha | ma | ya | ra | wa |
i | ki | shi | chi | ni | hi | mi |
| ri |
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u | ku | su | tsu | nu | fu | mu | yu | ru |
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e | ke | se | te | ne | he | me |
| re |
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o | ko | so | to | no | ho | mo | yo | ro | wo |
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| n |
Pictured here is a chart of the basic sounds of modern Japanese. Classical Japanese had a few additional sounds such as "wi" and "we." The sounds that differ significantly from anything found in English are in bold type. The "fu" as in "Mt. Fuji" sounds more like "hu" with a strong outward flow of air, permitted by not closing the lips completely as one would do for the English "f" sound. The "r" in Japanese sounds like a cross between an English "l," "d," and "r." It is made by tapping the tip of the tongue against the roof of the mouth and then letting it drop immediately. With a couple of weeks' practice, most native speakers of English can learn to pronounce the Japanese "r" without too much difficulty. For most native speakers of Japanese, however, it is extremely difficult to distinguish between "r"s and "l"s in English, even after several years of study. If a native speaker of Japanese says something to you in English that sounds a little odd (e.g., "I pray the fruit." or "How did you like the outcome of the presidential erection?"), switch "r"s and "l"s around in your mind ("I play the flute." / "How did you like the outcome of the presidential election?").
There are some additional sounds in Japanese that derive from those shown in the chart. It is possible to "muddy" (to use Japanese terminology) the sounds so that, for example, "ka, ki, ku, ke, ko" become "ga, gi, gu, ge, go." From the point of view of Japanese, the latter sequence of sounds is but a slight variation on the former sequence, and it is the former sequence that is most basic. Another sound not in the table and not in English is the glottal stop. Notice the spelling of the island Hokkaidō. The two "k"s (or any two consonants in a row) indicate the glottal stop. The resulting sound comes from stopping the "k" sound momentarily in the glottal area of the throat. This glottal stop can be very important. The word "haken" 派遣 for example, means "dispatching" or "sending;" "hakken" 発見 on the other hand, means "discovery." Notice also the small line over the last vowel in Hokkaidō. This line is called a macron, and it indicates that the vowel should be pronounced for an extended length of time, roughly 1.7 times the ordinary length. English does not make distinctions between the length of vowels, but it is very important in Japanese. If, for example, you are explaining to someone in Japanese that you are so-and-so's advisor, be careful about vowel length. "Komon" 顧問 means "advisor," but the default meaning of "kōmon" 肛門 is "anus" (or, in certain contexts, "a disciple of Confucius" 孔門 or "school gate" 校門.)
Although these points may seem difficult to learn all at once, Japanese pronunciation is not very hard for English speakers who make an effort to learn it. English pronunciation, on the other hand, is extremely difficult for native speakers of Japanese because there are so many sounds in English that have no Japanese counterpart. For native speakers of English (or Chinese), it is the grammar of Japanese that presents the greatest challenge. Native speakers of Korean would have a comparative advantage in learning Japanese grammar because the general word order of Japanese and Korean are similar (Japanese and Korean are distantly related languages). Some of the features of Japanese grammar that differ from English include: 1) the main verb or predicate always comes at the end of a Japanese sentence; 2) English relies on prepositions; Japanese relies on postpositions; 3) levels of formality and politeness are built into verb "conjugations" and other aspects of Japanese grammar. For those who want to delve into this topic further, do not hesitate to enroll in a Japanese language class.
One final, interesting point about Japanese pertains to the realm of sociolinguistics, the study of language as a social instrument. In popular publications, some scholarly publications, and in the conversations of ordinary people, one often reads or hears Japanese (and others) describing their language as unusually "difficult." Indeed, for many in Japan this alleged difficulty is a mild source of pride in one's national identity (e.g., "Yes, I speak a very difficult language--how impressive"). According to linguists, however, it does not make any sense to say that a particular language is "difficult" in absolute terms. If that were really the case, then children in some parts of the world would master the stages of language acquisition significantly faster or slower than children in other places. If, for example Japanese is really an unusually "difficult" language in absolute terms, Japanese children would learn to speak at a slower pace than children in places where an "easy" language is spoken. In fact, however, children all around the world acquire language in the same sequence of states, and, on average, at the same speed.
Learning a foreign language is terribly difficult for most people above roughly the age of twelve. It does make sense to speak of degrees of difficulty involved in acquiring a specific language as a second or foreign language. We can, in other words, speak of the relative difficulty of languages for adult learners. For example, a native speaker of English will be able to learn German more quickly than Turkish because German is closely related to English, and Turkish is not related to English at all. Similarly, a native speaker of Korean will generally be able to learn Japanese faster than Chinese, because Japanese is related to Korean and Chinese is not related to Japanese or Korean at all. But it is still an difficult task to learn any foreign language, even those closely related to one's native tongue.
Much of the talk in Japan about the alleged "difficulty" of Japanese is actually not about the language itself but about the #writing system used to represent the language.# Writing is not language but a system for representing language in a durable medium.2 Unlike the case of languages, which are all about equally "difficult," at least in terms of the speed children acquire mastery of them, there is wide variation in the efficiency of writing systems. As it is written today, Japanese employs a relatively inefficient writing system (as does English, with its inconsistent, often illogical spelling). Although a simple alphabetic script could handle Japanese quite well, owing to the early contact with China, the first Japanese exposure to writing was Chinese characters. Unfortunately, Chinese characters are not well suited for writing Japanese (and they are not even so great for writing Chinese).
Modern Japanese writing employs a mixture of two syllabaries (alphabet-like scripts called kana 仮名) and several thousand Chinese characters, many of which have multiple readings. We will investigate the significance of these syllabaries during our study of Heian-period culture. It is to this complex and inefficient writing system that most Japanese refer when they speak with pride about how "difficult" their "language" is. It was long customary for American and Western European residents in Japan to reinforce stereotypes about the alleged "difficulty" of Japanese by citing it as an excuse for not learning the language of the country in which they resided. During the 1980s, Japan began to experience a significant influx of foreign workers from parts of the world outside of the U.S. and Western Europe, and it is now common to find foreigners in Japan from all over the world who speak Japanese well. Perhaps their living examples will gradually undermine the incorrect notion that Japanese is somehow an unusually difficult language in absolute terms.
(For a useful summary of common misperceptions about language, see #this page# by PSU's Elizabeth J. Pyatt.)
The following material is especially important for the study of modern Japan. Nevertheless, HIST 480 students should at least skim through it. If you pan to take HIST 481, you should study these paragraphs with some care.
There is a strong tendency in the United States and elsewhere to see Japan and its people as a mystery, puzzle, or paradox. Indeed, every television documentary on Japan I have sever seen has taken this approach. So too does as does the recent educational video, The Japanese Version, which was ostensibly intended to get away from tired old stereotypes but ends up reinforcing them (#flash adaptation#--don't click on a dialup connection). This media puzzlement over Japan reflects the legacy of certain modes of Orientalist3 thinking that are still deeply rooted in the general culture of the industrialized "West" (#Orientalism details#). Consider, for example, the following statement about China from a high-ranking official in the Eisenhower administration, made as part of a 1958 survey of American attitudes toward China:
I was brought up to think the Chinese couldn't handle a machine. Now, suddenly, the Chinese are flying jets! The American idea was that Asiatics are nonmechanical, except the Japanese, and the Japanese were freaks, not really mechanical, just copied what others did. In practically everything one ever read . . . the Asiatic is always plowing with his fingernails and the European is handling the machine. Now the Chinese is flying a jet! Disturbing, especially since you have several hundred million of them teamed up with the USSR. I always thought the Yellow Peril business was nonsense . . . Now I can visualize that Asiatics teamed up with the Slavs could indeed conquer the world!4
This passage reflects a number of influences, including, most obviously, Cold War hysteria. What is of interest for our purposes here is this official's view of "Asiatics" in general as "nonmechanical" and "the Japanese" as "freaks" who copied but did not "really" understand the principles behind the "mechanical" world of Europeans. Although we would probably like to think that we are more sophisticated now than back in the ancient days of 1958, the basic idea that the large-scale mastery of high technology and other aspects of "modern" life by "Asiatics" is somehow unusual, or even vaguely unnatural and thus improper, remains well entrenched in today's world.
Because Japan industrialized earlier than the other countries in Asia (and many countries in Europe for that matter) and since the 1960s has been a major economic competitor with the United States, Americans have long been concerned with explaining an alleged "paradox" of Japanese society: the coexistence of "tradition" and "modernity." To put this concern in some perspective, reflect for a moment on England. Does anyone regard the existence of the ruins at Stonehenge, ancient castles, old cathedrals, and the performance of traditional ceremonies such as the changing of the guard to be a "paradox" because England also has factories, automobiles, cellular phones and the other accouterments of a modern lifestyle? Of course not. All modern societies contain traditional elements, yet for some reason many people have seen this phenomenon in Japan as a puzzle in need of explanation.
At some deep level, there is a desire for Japan to be quaint, traditional, and exotic, like a proper "Asiatic" country. Yet Japan has led the world in high-tech electronics and many other realms of "modern" life for so long that its modernity can not longer be written off as freakish imitation in the manner of the Eisenhower administration official quoted above. Instead of simply regarding Japan as the same as England, France, the United States, Canada, Singapore, Taiwan, and the many other industrialized countries of the world, however, the fascination about its allegedly "unique" or "paradoxical" status as both traditional and modern continues.
To be sure, this fascination in not completely a product of an American (or "Western") imagination. For reasons we will explore later, modern Japanese have had a tendency to mystify their society as well, often speaking about it in the same terms as American documentary makers ("unique," "puzzling," "paradoxical," et cetera). In any event, for these reasons and others, the typical U.S. presentation of Japan in the popular media flashes back and forth between images of quaint or exotic antiquity and images of modern urban life. *Examine these images.* Viewers of TV documentaries are invited to puzzle over the "paradox" of the old coexisting with the new in Japan, even though such a coexistence is evident throughout most of the rest of the world. The introductory portion of the typical documentary teases the viewer, building up the sense of paradox or puzzle and implying that it will all be explained by the end of the hour. It never is, in large part because there is nothing particularly unusual about traditional elements coexisting with modern ones. If such a coexistence is indeed paradoxical, then the United States, England, Italy, Australia, and many other places would be Japan's equal in inscrutability. "But Japan is different!" many an American and many a Japanese might still think. Of course, each country is different in some way from any other, but there is nothing radically different about Japan that sets it off from the rest of the world. This fact, however, does not stop many of us from projecting Orientalist imaginings onto Japan. Think about these matters the next time you see a program on Japan or any other part of Asia.
(For a more thorough examination of these themes, #click here.#)
We now turn to an examination of Japan's medieval history, with an emphasis on cultural history. Owing in part to the previous paragraphs here, you might be wondering about the extent to which such a study relevant to understanding today's Japan? A thorough answer to this question is very difficult because it raises the fundamental aesthetic issue historians grapple with in crafting narratives of the past: continuity versus change. There is no precise formula for balancing these two elements, and excessive emphasis on one or the other leads to excessive simplicity and stereotyping (too much continuity) or a sense of confusion and randomness (too much change). Let me answer simply by saying that recent and contemporary cultural forms in Japan, both "highbrow" and popular, often assume a basic knowledge of classical culture on the part of its consumers. Symbols, ideas, metaphors, and references to the classical past occur frequently in today's Japan--as is the case in most parts of the modern world. On the other hand, the culture of modern Japan is significantly different from that of medieval Japan, and even when modern Japanese draw on the classical cultural legacy, their concerns and purposes may have little or nothing to do with those of their medieval ancestors. Like history itself, culture constantly repeats and re-creates itself, but never exactly in the same way.
1. Incidentally, there is a long history of hostility to and fear of visual images in Western culture (broadly defined), owing in large part to anxiety over the sense of sight and its alleged ability to create idols and fetishes. Therefore, "pure" text has long been considered the most appropriate vehicle for true intellectual discourse, while visual images have been regarded as, at best, didactic tools for the unlettered masses. While I agree that visual images can be excellent aids in learning, I do not hold the view that they are a lesser means of communication than are words. Indeed, I do not think it is even reasonable to make a sharp separation between the two. There is a large literature on this interesting topic, and two of the best books are David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); and W. J. T. Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).
2. While almost all linguists agree that writing is not language, scholars in other disciplines often vigorously disagree, especially since the 1980s when the "logocentrism" of Jaques Derrida became fashionable. Obviously, I side with the linguists on this issue. To sample a typical example of the fireworks that can erupt over this issue, see the exchange between J. Marshall Unger and Chad Hansen in The Journal of Asian Studies, 52.4: 949-957.
3. "Oreintalism" refers to European perceptions of the place that today we call the Middle East. Many of these perceptions gradually extended to the "far" East (East Asia) and remain with us today. See Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1978).
4. Quoted in Harold R. Isaacs, Scratches on Our Minds: American Views of China and India (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1980 [originally published 1958]), pp. 226-227.
