• Course details

Assignments & materials

✓ ❖ Shinto comments by Kasulis

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? Most effective when read during this course segment.
• Difficulty: Difficult — 22 pages of moderately difficult prose on unfamiliar concepts that might be tested on the midterm.

✓ ❖ Norito Great Purification at Sixth Month's End

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? Before session begins.
• Difficulty: Pretty easy — 8 pages of simple, but puzzling, poetry.
• Comment: Think about the relationship of "sin" and "pollution".

✓ ❖ Kojiki I.1-6 Creation myth
✓ ❖ Kojiki I.16 Susano-o rages

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? Before session begins.
• Difficulty: Somewhat easy — 10 pages of simple prose.
• Comment: Memorize the names of the two gods involved in the creation of Japan and the brother and sister gods of the second story. For the second story, there is background info in the call-out box next to the chapter title. Remember to read the footnotes that are side-barred.

✓ Kojiki II.81 YamatoTakeru
✓ Kojiki II.106 Ame-no-pi-poko crosses from Korea

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Optional further readings.

✓ Reading the Kojiki
✓ Soto-uchi inner spaces and purity

• Location: bSpace, PPT
• Comment: These PowerPoints are presented in class. They are on bSpace in case you want to review them. Consider reviewing these at a time appropriate to you, to help formulate ideas on how soto-uchi can be used to interpret situations.

✓ Aoki Shigeru and Kojiki

• Location: bSpace, video
• Comment: This is a small file version of the video screened and discussed in class.

Other

Resources relevant to this session's topics

• Steve Jobs and his connection with Japan—explained as his interest in Zen but I see as more directly an interest in Shintō purity. See the section titled "Steve Jobs and Japan" in Jobs, Japan, Zen Buddhism.
• About hare / ke / kegare — search these terms at: Encyclopedia of Shintō.
• Some eBrary books I have selected on aspects of the Nara period: "Books of note: Nara period".

Terms relevant to this session's topics that might have been mentioned in lecture

• hare / ke / kegare
• *dohyō
• *roji
• *Sen Rikyū

Assignments & materials

✓ ❖ Shinto comments by Kasulis

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? Most effective when read during this course segment.
• Difficulty: Difficult — 22 pages of moderately difficult prose on unfamiliar concepts that might be tested on the midterm.
• Comment: This is a repeat mention of last session's assignment. Now the emphasis is on "connectedness."

✓ ❖ Izumi Shikibu Diary - first visit
✓ Murasaki Shikibu Diary - Izumi and Sei
✓ Confessions of Lady Nijo: her ejection from the palace

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• The first two are required. By when? Definitely before the session begins. Confessions is optional, but is an excellent example of the topic at hand, and a worthy text on its own merits.
• Difficulty: Easy — about 17 pages of simple prose.
• Comment: *Izumi shikibu diary covers about a year between the "woman" (the diary is written in third person voice) and a prince (younger brother to a man that the woman also loved, but who died of disease). It chronicles the start of their relationship, one nurtured through the exchange of poem-intense love letters. Izumi ("woman") was known for her skill in poetry. *Murasaki shikibu diary was written by the author of the famous Tale of Genji. She wrote it at the request of the most powerful man of the day, to record the events surrounding the birth of his first male grandchild, a birth the completed his control of the political world. It was to show the personal side of those events. However, Murasaki also included a wide range of comments, some not very nice, about her fellow ladies-in-waiting. We read from that section. Reading question: Note the difference in the estimation of Izumi Shikibu and Sei Shōnagon by the writer of the journal. Why? *Confessions of Lady Nijō was written about 300 years later but is in the same general style. This author was "forced" to serve the ex-emperor as his lady, but was also sleeping with men on the other side of the political divide (including the Ariake of this passage—a code name because this is an autobiographical work and she cannot mention real names). Eventually the ex-emperor is forced by another one of his women to kick her out of the palace. She becomes a nun and travels the country.

✓ ❖ Pillow Book: 91. Once while Her Majesty was staying in the Empress's Office ...

• Location: In McCullough's anthology (purchased for this class) it is "Pillow Book: 91. Once while Her Majesty was staying in the Empress's Office ...". In Meredith McKinney's translation is it Section 82. In Ivan Morris's translation it is section 83.
• Required. By when? Before your discussion section. This is covered in section, not in lecture. Your GSI might have a writing exercise based on it.
• Difficulty level: Easy — about 10 page of simple prose.
• Comment: Interpret this, using the soto-uchi rubric.

✓ Soto-uchi — connectedness

• Location: bSpace, PPT
• Comment: This PowerPoint might be presented in class. It is on bSpace in case it is skipped, presented only partially, and/or for your review.

Comments

In almost all corners of premodern Japan (in terms of era, in terms of social class, in terms of geography) membership in group(s) is essential for identity, if not survival. Removal from one's group is one of the most frightening of prospects. "Suspense" and other areas of narrative tension are often built around the anxiety-producing question: "Am I losing my group status?" Today we explore connectedness (being in groups), ijime ("bullying", the threat of being removed from the group and/or the acutal process of pushing one out of a group), and exile (this is not just being alone—this is being set outside the group to which you had membership).

*Nikki (more properly ōchō nikki bungaku 王朝日記文学 — comprised of diaries, journals, memoirs) is a wonderful genre of texts written by aristocratic women in the 10th - 11th centuries (with a few notable texts later than that) and I recommend them as a good area from which to develop a thesis for the term essay. We will not, however, focus on this genre during lectures. We read a few selections here, and will look more closely at the Pillow Book later. These women wrote about their private lives, and their private lives were very much about what groups they did or did not belong to. We read these passages as an introduction to "connectedness & exile".

Other

Possibly presented during the session:

• Nachi no shimenawa ("the shimenawa at Nachi Waterfall" — news clip)
• Dohyo-iri no nawa-uchi (the ceremony of making the nawa for entry into the sumo ring / *dohyō — news clip)
• "Mothers behind ijime culture" Nov 18, 2010 Japan Times Online
• "'Kokukaku' — A school-bullying film as dark as they come" June 11, 2010 Japan Times Online
• Trailer: Dolls (Dolls, 2002)
• Trailer: Confessions (Kokuhaku, 2010)

Comments

"That there is" — The brain is unable to decode all at once all visual stimuli. It decodes portions and leaves the rest as a mental representation "that it is there". In reading narratives, we also get only a slim description of the world; the rest is at the level of "that it is there". When will fill out the unknown information, in the case of sight we can look in that direction; in the case of reading we use our knowledge of the world. One of the skills of accurate interpretation is learning a balance between supplying what you already know and holding back to try to learn alien information about what the "world" looks like and how it works.

Gossamer Journal basics — I presented the basics on Kagerō nikki. This is not on the mini-dictionary at this time. This is your only source of that information.

Omote/ura not as polarity — I warned against over-interpreting soto / uchi and omote / ura as antonyms, as opposites. The relationship is more complicated, as Doi well argues in his article.

Omote as the performance of ura (per Doi's article) — I extended this basic idea into the thin line between omote and ura and the importance of reading the hidden (seeing ura).

Urami and its origins in amae — I defined "amae" loosely as "acting in ways to evoke the desire of another to care for you" or "to depend on someone" and suggested that in Japan there is a high tolerance for this type of relationship and that it is a component of romantic relationships. I gave the etymology of "urami" as "ura o miru" (to see ura). I asserted, following Doi, that urami originates in the denial of amae. In this sense "jealousy" is a misunderstanding of many of the powerful "anger" stories / characters of Japanese prose. In particular, Lady Rokujō is not as much an icon of jealousy as she is an icon of urami: jealousy is when someone or something, as a third party, interferes with your possession of an object or person you desire drawing the attention of the desired object away from you and towards it or him/her. Urami doesn't involved a third party: it is the denial of amae by the person (or institution) from which you believe you deserve the ability to amae.

Helplessness — I argued that "helplessness" is under-noticed in Japanese literature and worth consideration. Helplessness can be in the realm of action or words (although, in truth, speaking is a type of action). The inability to communicate that which one wants to communicate is a running, and important theme, in premodern literature (especially that by women of the Heian period).

Feminine in literature — I did not specifically discuss this, although I gave credit for those who read Keene's article. However, if you consider the examples I used for the day (Gossamer Years / woman narrator, Genji's Rokujō / woman murderess, Asami Yamazaki (Audition) / woman villain) you might notice that I centered the discussion on various manifestations of feminine emotions. This wasn't random. Hayao Kawai (Japanese Jungian psychiatrist) argues that Japanese literature is essentially best understood through the eyes of women, a theory related to the Keene article. Yukio Mishima argued that the history of Japanese literature has been misrepresented, over-emphasizing the feminine and leaving out important masculine moments. So, the debate of the "masculinity" or "femininity" of Japanese literature pops up in a variety of ways, some more convincing than others.

Assignments & materials

✓ ❖ Rimer 1. Interior-exterior

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: Read in full, for the concepts. This is basically OK but has some "old feeling" scholarship such as treating emotions as universal (not bound by culture), calling Genji a "Prince" (he was made a commoner, an important point), using Waley's translation for Genji (nice as literature, weak in accuracy), and the Eurocentric comment "enter the modern world".
• Level of difficulty: Moderately easy — 3 pages of relatively simple prose

✓ Keene Feminine Sensibility in Heian Era

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Optional.
• What to do and other comments: It is true that understanding the strong influence of women on Heian period literature, and thinking about why that might be so, is a very worthwhile topic. Keene is an "old school" scholar, but a veteran (although this article is from his earlier days). This essay is perhaps flawed in places, but it still has provocative value. If you are interested in women in literature or Heian period literature, or just Tale of Genji, this is worth your time and might start an interesting line of thinking. … This indirectly pairs with Rimer 1. Interior-exterior.
• Level of difficulty: Hmm, read word-for-word this would take a while. But the prose is clear and the essay well organized and so it can be skimmed. — 8 pages of somewhat dense prose.

✓ ❖ The Gossamer Journal

• Location: McCullough's Classical Japanese Prose as "The Gossamer Journal" 102-127
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: Read in full, as literature. This is the first major "kana-literature" that is not poetry, one of the first major prose works of the Heian period, and the first major *nikki.
• Level of difficulty: moderate — 25 pages of easy prose.

✓ ❖ Doi Omote and ura

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: Read in full and try to fully understand the concepts. Read the footnotes, too.
• Level of difficulty: Difficult — 12 pages of relatively difficult prose covering difficult topics with an expectation by me that you understand the content well.

✓ ❖ Michizane Late Winter Visit

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: Read in full (including the last page). Sugawara Michizane (845-903) was a Heian period Japanese scholar of things Chinese. He was later exiled. He remains the patron god of learning for the Japanese (and so many students and their parents will visit his shrine and pray to him before taking exams). I am listing this reading since he is a worthy topic for developing an essay. I am including this as a "male voice", to contrast with the "feminine sensibility" mentioned by Keene and the kana literature we are discussing.
• Level of difficulty: extremely easy — about 1.5 pages of light, enjoyable prose.

✓ Michizane New Calligraphy at Kitano Shrine

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Optional.
• Comments: This is just a picture and one-paragraph news article about how students go to Michizane's shrine to write their first calligraphy of the year.
• Level of difficulty: extremely easy — 1 paragraph + picture

✓ Kakizome (First Calligraphy)

• Location: bSpace, MOV
• Optional.
• What to do and other comments: This is just a 25 second news clip (2013) in Japanese showing students doing their first calligraphy at the Kitano shrine in Kyoto, where Michizane is the patron saint.

✓ Soto-uchi urami

• Location: bSpace, PPT
• Comment: This PowerPoint is presented in class. It is on bSpace in case you want to review it. Consider reviewing these at a time appropriate to you, to help formulate ideas on how soto-uchi can be used to interpret situations.

Other

Details on translations of Kagerō nikki:

• Best full translation: Kagero Diary by Sonja Arntzen
• Other main full translation: Gossamer Years by Edward Seidensticker
• In our McCullough anthology: Gossamer Journal — it is good, but partial

The short folktale read aloud in class is a legend common to all parts of Japan. This version is from Hiroshima prefecture, titled "The Woman Who Eats Nothing" as presented in Hayao Kawai, The Japanese Psyche. It is also on bSpace, together with the PowerPoint that presented some related images.

If you are interested in writing an essay on Japanese ghosts or other such creatures, I have a basic vocabulary as a start point at *spirits.

The very short video clip of a man and a woman in bed, then in the kitchen, if shown, is from The Ravine of Goodbye (Sayonara keikoku, さよなら渓谷, 2013).

The very short video clip of a woman looking back and smiling, with the ocean in front of her, if shown, is from Audition (1999).

The video clip of a puppet, a young woman who then transforms into an angry demon, is from Weekend Japanology, an episode on the bunraku (puppet) theater.

Comments

Main conceptual points:

• Kotoba / kokoro rubric — complex relationships, not surface / superficial / "not true vs deep / "true" but closer to the omote-ura notion of kotoba as the performance of kokoro
• Definition of lyricism (see PowerPoint)
• Importance of lyricism (pervasive)
• Importance of the rule of miyabi (courtly elegance)
• The very central status of poetry as proposed by the preface of the Kokinshū as well as the argument that poetry is the expression of overflowing feelings (a lyrical perspective).

Main informational points:

• About the Man'yōshū:
• mid 8th c.
• its large size
• its diversity of poems in terms of formal type, content, regional origin and socio-economic background of the poets
• poet to know: Hitomaro
• Shintō elements can be noticed in some of the poems
• About poem genre: the main three are waka, renga and haiku
• About the poem genre waka: waka ("Japanese poem") / tanka ("short poem"), 5-7-5-7-7, the primary form for most of the history of Japanese poetry

(Fall 2013): I gave a quick overview of the historical periods and some major breaks in the flow of development. That is now a PDF and can be found as Major poem periods (bSpace, PDF).

Assignments & materials

✓ ❖ Lyricism I - Defining lyricism

• Location: bSpace, PPT
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session or see what I do in lecture first and follow up if necessary.
• What to do and other comments: I will probably cover this in lecture. Some students understand it the first time, others need to cover this once or twice more. It is core to the class.
• Level of difficulty: Easy — Just a few paragraphs of average academic prose.

✓ ❖ Konishi on Kokin style

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: Read if full. Note the yellow highlighted area in particular. (We will cover the Kokinshū next session, so reading about its style now is not a waste of time.)
• Level of difficulty: Easy — Just a few paragraphs of average academic prose.

✓ ❖ Kokinshu kana-preface

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: I cover this in class but it is a core text, so covering it once by yourself first is a good idea. Students who have had 古典文語 can practice their classical language skills if they want.
• Level of difficulty: Easy — Four sentences of easy prose.

✓ ❖ Manyoshu - Introduction by Levy

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: Read this or skim carefully in order to get a good sense of what the Man'yōshū is. However, pay closer attention to the portions on Hitomaro and lyricism. This, together with Manyoshu - Hitomaro and Poetry reader – Manyoshu are the three key readings for this session.
• Level of difficulty: Moderately difficult — 20 pages of academic prose with some unfamiliar terms.

✓ ❖ Poetry reader — Manyoshu

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: Read each poem. Don't rush them. Three areas of focus: 1) Which poems seem the most lyrical? Can you say why? 2) Hitomaro is our main poet for this collection. Watch for his poems and read them with extra care. 3) The Man'yōshū is known for its variety. Try to see the variety in the poems. Can you articulate those differences? The Man'yōshū is one of the core texts of this class (there are about ten) so read with care. However, that does not mean memorizing events, phrases, people or such. Read for poetic content.
• Level of difficulty: Difficult — Reading the words is not hard; appreciating the words is much more difficult. 10 pages but with lots of white space.

✓ ❖ Comparing major poem anthologies

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? Before the midterm that covers this section of the class.
• What to do and other comments: This is a basic table that compares the three major early poem anthologies. I often draw test questions from it.
• Level of difficulty: Moderately easy — These are read-and-memorize basic points. Little interpretation or analysis is involved. 1 page long.

✓ ❖ Poetic forms overview

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? Before the midterm that covers this section of the class.
• What to do and other comments: This is basic information to learn.
• Level of difficulty: Easy — These are read-and-memorize basic points. 1 page long.

✓ Manyoshu - Nukata

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Optional.
• What to do and other comments: Enjoy.

✓ ❖ Manyoshu - Hitomaro

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: Read with care, not just the poems.
• Level of difficulty: Moderately difficult. — 7 pages of mixed academic prose and long poems. Needs to be read carefully. Try to connect the comments Levy made in Manyoshu – Introduction with these poems.

✓ Lyricism I Ways of writing kokoro

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Optional.
• What to do and other comments: This is for those interested in early scripts, or the etymology of words, or want to think further about the meaning of "kokoro".

✓ Lyricism II
✓ Lyricism II-Basho poems
✓ Lyricism II-Izumi Shikibu tenarai
✓ Lyricism II-Manyo poems
✓ Lyrical poems 9th-20th c

• Location: bSpace, PDF (Lyricism II is PPT)
• Optional.
• What to do and other comments: MAJOR EXTRA CREDIT OPPORTUNITY. Using this material comprehensively and creatively, and doing further research in †credible academic sources, write a short essay (2-3 pages) that has an †analytic thesis. ("Comprehensively" means that your essay shows that you have understood the thrust of the readings, even if you select only one poet to work with. In other words, I want you to read in full, think about what you read, then write an essay that shows knowledge of that. You should not try to prove you have covered it all. Select an area to extend creatively from.) Due 10 days after this session, at 11 PM. No late submissions accepted. Submit to me as an attachment to an email. Use PDF or DOC or DOCX file types. Use the standard subject line with the keyword LYRPPR. See the syllabus for the meaning of "major extra credit". Your submission will need to be quality work to earn extra credit.

Assignments & materials

✓ ❖ Kokin wit and kakekotoba

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? Before reading the Kokin poems, to help decode their style even when in translation.
• What to do and other comments: This is basic information to learn.
• Level of difficulty: Easy — These are read-and-memorize basic points. 1 page long.

✓ ❖ Poetry reader — Kokinshu

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: You can adjust this depending on your personal poetry-reading skills and interests. It is probably better to read just ten poems well, getting a good sense of why they might be poetic (so much is lost in translation that "sense" is about the best we can do) than to finish the full assignment. Bring to class one or two questions about specific poems.
• Level of difficulty: Moderate — 20 pages of poetry, with lots of white space.

✓ ❖ Poetry reader — Shin-Kokinshu

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: As with the Kokin poems, you can adjust this depending on your personal poetry-reading skills and interests. However, different than the Kokin poems, if you are going to reduce the reading, don't skip the first page. Also, focus on these poets: Shikishi, Saigyō, Shunzei and Shunzei's son Teika. Finally, if you can catch how Shin-Kokin poems are sometimes slightly more symbolic than Kokin poems, that's useful
• Level of difficulty: Moderate — 12 pages of poetry, with lots of white space but now you are comparing to Kokin poems, which makes the reading a bit more difficult.

✓ ❖ Comparing major poem anthologies

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? Before the midterm that covers this section of the class.
• What to do and other comments: This is a basic table that compares the three major early poem anthologies. I often draw test questions from it.
• Level of difficulty: Moderately easy — These are read-and-memorize basic points. Little interpretation or analysis is involved. 1 page long.
• This is a repeat listing of the assignment from last time.

✓ Shunzei and Teika compared

• Location: bSpace, PPT
• What to do and other comments: This PowerPoint is presented in class. It is on bSpace in case you want to review it or see the original Japanese that is in the comments box.

Assignments & materials

✓ Kobayashi Issa bio

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? Definitely before reading the *Issa poems in the haiku reader.
• What to do and other comments: Read in full, to get a sense of his difficult life.
• Level of difficulty: Easy — a half page list of events with no need to memorize names.

✓ ❖ Poetry reader — Haiku

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: Read in full. Read *Issa in a "contrary" way. By that I mean that he is known for the charm of his poems but I would like you to look for lyrical content, and to find sadness in some of the simple poems.
Level of difficulty: Moderately difficult — 8 pages of simple poetry but the Issa reading assignment is somewhat difficult.

Comments

I present an image-dense PowerPoint and some video clips exploring these topics:

• FORM AS PERFORMANCE of ura
• REGULARITY—wa 和, harmony-purity, desire for wa, fear of pollution and/or disruptive forces
• YOJŌ 余情—suggestiveness, incompletion (as asymmetry, as casualness-lightness, as IMMEDIACY)
• VIGOR—directness, makoto, masurao, bushidō, Zen + IMMEDIACY
• DELICACY—okashi, playfulness, lightness

I present two different scheme for thinking about basic formative principles (principles that lead to specific forms):

KATŌ Shūichi's 5 cultural points (in his Form & Spirit)

• shigan 此岸 — This actual world, not spiritual / transcendent world
• groupism — "This world means this group"
• perceptual world — World as accessible via the senses rather than via cognitive action
• part-not-whole — Less interested in over-arching principles or structure / More interested in parts
• here-and-now — High valuation of this moment

Donald KEENE's 4 aesthetic principles (with quotes from Essays in Idleness)

• suggestiveness — "And are we to look at the moon and the cherry blossoms with our eyes alone? How much more evocative and pleasing it is to think about the spring without stirring from the house, to dream of the moonlight though we remain in our room!"
• irregularity — "Leaving something incomplete makes it interesting"
• simplicity — "A house, I know, is but a temporary abode, but how delightful it is to find one that has harmonious proportions and a pleasant atmosphere."
• perishability

Assignments & materials

Nothing is required for this session. This material is not tested; however, this material might prove helpful in interpreting texts and/or cultural objects and interpretation by students is, as you know, regularly expected in this course.

The content of the session is relatively abstract. Reading the principles under "Comments" above might help unclutter your mind during the presentation. This session implicitly relies in places on earlier comments about "linking".

✓ Form

• Location: bSpace, PPT
• What to do and other comments: This PPT is presented in class. It is listed here in case you want to review it. Due to copryright law, this PPT is not available beyond bSpace.

Assignments & materials

✓ Sei and Murasaki salons

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• What to do and other comments: This PDF is presented in class. It is listed here in case you want to review it. The important concept to understand is the politics behind why salons developed, what their role was, and that both Sei Shōnagon and Murasaki Shikibu (and Izumi Shikibu) were part of salon life.

✓ Sei and Murasaki salons details

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• What to do and other comments: This PDF might be presented in class. It might help you understand the larger context of relationships around Sei Shōnagon and Murasaki Shikibu and other memoirists.

✓ Sei Shonagon simple bio

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• What to do and other comments: This bio can help understand her life, or clarify information I presented in lecture.

✓ ❖ Pillow Book

• Location: in Classical Japanese Prose (course textbook), or other translations
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: Pillow Book is one of our major texts and so you should read all of the sections available in McCullough's Classical Japanese Prose. However, if that is not possible or if you are reading another edition or translation, these are the core sections to read: 1, 5, 7, 22, 39, 49, 91 (previously assigned), 101, 155. Please note that section numbers almost never match from one edition to the next, so you will have to look at McCullough, then match that English to your own edition. To help in that process, here are the first phrases in English translation and in the original Japanese:
• 1: In spring, the dawn. As the light gradually increases, ... 春は曙、やうやう白くなりゆく ...
• 5: It is sad when parents make a beloved son into a monk. ... おもはん子を法師になしたらんこそは ...
• 7: The Empreror's cat ... うへに侍ふ御猫は、...
• 22: Things That Violate Our Expectations ... すさまじきもの ...
• 39: A preacher ought to be handsome. ... 説經師は顏よき、 ...
• 49: Elegant Things ... あてなるもの ...
• 91: Once while Her Majesty was staying in the Empress's Office, ... 職の御曹司におはしますころ、...
• 101: Things That Make One Uncomfortable ... かたはらいたきもの: 客人などにあひて物いふに、
• 155: Adorable Things ... うつくしきもの: ふりに書きたる兒の顏。...
• Level of difficulty: Difficult — simple prose but 41 pages of it with some puzzling observations by the author.

✓ ❖ Pillow Book further selections

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments:
• 85: Graceful Things: A slim, handsome young nobleman in a Court cloak. ... なまめかしきもの：ほそやかに清げなる公達の直衣すがた。 ...
• 91: Annoying things: One has sent a poem ... ねたきもの：これよりやるも、人のいひたる返しも、書きて遣りつる後、...
• 139-144: Just read these from the PDF provided. They are short.
• Level of difficulty: Moderately easy — 12 pages of simple prose.

Assignments & materials

✓ ❖ aware with some okashi

• Location: bSpace, PPT
• Required. By when? By the next exam, as review, but now, if the concept is not clear once I finish lecturing with it.
• What to do and other comments: This is the PowerPoint presented in class, for your review. There are slides on this PPT marked with the reading icon, to know for quizzes and exams.
• Level of difficulty: Easy - this is covered in class and the required three slides are not challenging.

✓ Pillow Book - Moving Things

• Location: bSpace, PPT
• What to do and other comments: This is the PowerPoint (sometimes) presented in class, for your review. It includes the original Japanese. This portion of the course is intended to help with understanding mono no aware.

✓ Genji basic genealogy by jrw
✓ Genji women chart
✓ Genji women clothes
✓ Genji Rokujo-In
✓ Genji Nijo estate

• Location: bSpace, PDF or JPEG
• What to do and other comments: These are all meant as support material for reading Tale of Genji. Genji builds and moves into his massive Rokujō Estate towards the end of his life (after chapter 23). Before that he had his Nijō Estate (which he keeps) as well as other locations. The size of the Rokujō Estate should be "felt" when reading as part of the fantastic aspect of the narrative—Nijō is the standard size for top-ranked government officials. (Rokujō is the size of four Nijō estates.)

Assignments & materials

✓ Tale of Genji, chapters 1, 2, 4, 5, (6), 7, 9

• Location (Chapter 6): bSpace, PDF (titled Genji-Suetsumuhana)
• Location (all other chapters): Genji & Heike (course textbook), or other translations
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: Read in full and with care, asking why things happen the way they do, clarifying blood relationships using the genealogy, exploring issues of mono no aware, developing questions to ask in class, and so on. This text is central to this class. Chapter 6 is not in the book you were to purchase (Genji & Heike) and is therefore provided as a separate PDF. Even if you don't use it because you have a different edition, please open the doc and read the note at the beginning of the chapter.
• Level of difficulty: Difficult — this text is difficult to appreciate, or even simply understand what is going on, and it is 120+ pages that are assigned.

Assignments & materials

✓ Tale of Genji, chapters 12, 13, 15*, 35, 40

• Location: Genji & Heike (course textbook), or other translations
• *Location of Chapter 15 (Suetsumuhana 末摘花): Genji Seidensticker Chpt 15 (bSpace, PDF), or other translations
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: Read in full and with care, as before. *Chpt 15 is paired with an in-class presentation on mono no aware. It is very helpful if you read it. I assigned Chpt 6 earlier, to give the background to this Chpt 15. The lady involved is not a major character, but she is a very good example of characters in The Tale of Genji. I have decided to focus on her.
• Level of difficulty: Difficult — this text is difficult to appreciate, or even simply understand what is going on, and it is 120+ pages that are assigned.

Assignments & materials

✓ Middle period names

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Optional.
• Comment: This is just to help sort out the many terms applied to historical eras during the "Middle Period".

✓ ❖ Kamakura Buddhist reformers

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? By the next test (not quiz).
• What to do and other comments: The only testable portion of this information sheet is the jiriki-tariki concept. That is important. The other information is for those interested in the history of Buddhism or specific Buddhist sects.
• Level of difficulty: Easy — just one page, with one core concept to learn.

✓ ❖ Hōjōki　[方丈記]

• Location: McCullough's Classical Japanese Prose as "An Account of My Hermitage" (course textbook), or other translations
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: Read in full. Pay attention to the changing size of his living spaces. Be ready to answer this question: In your opinion, is the author a true Buddhist?
• Level of difficulty: Easy — this 16-page text of simple prose is not complicated.

✓ ❖ Essays in Idleness　[徒然草]

• Location: McCullough's Classical Japanese Prose (course textbook), or other translations
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: Read in full. Note his attitude towards women. Also, be ready to answer this question: What is his definition of beauty, or, what does it seem he considers beautiful?
• Level of difficulty: Easy — this xx-page text of simple prose is not complicated, and often entertaining.

Other

• The following is an interesting contemplation on the origins of the Japanese emphasis on mujō: Steven Heine, "From Rice Cultivation to Mind Contemplation: The Meaning of Impermanence in Japanese Religion" History of Religions, Vol. 30, No. 4 (May, 1991) JSTOR stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1062774
• The Chiteiki is clearly the basis for the Hōjōki. You can read a translation of it here: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2383656

Assignments & Materials

✓ ❖ Tale of Heike, chapters 1-8

• Location: McCullough's Genji & Heike (course textbook), or other translations
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: Read in full. Don't try to memorize names. Watch for Buddhist themes, passages that could be labeled "aware", tragedies, moral values, and the story's color & pageantry ("okashi"). Be ready to give examples of these. Note: The chapter selections from Genji & Heike are incomplete chapter selections.
• Level of difficulty: Difficult — about 107 pages of warfare. The topic is not that difficult, the problem is in deciding how many characters you are supposed to track given the similarity of names and so forth. Consider looking at my chapter summaries where characters are color-coded to put them in various "camps". (Sorry from the clunky nature of the html pages; they are very old.) Go to my top page and find the panel on Heike. Enter from there.

Assignments & Materials

✓ ❖ Tale of Heike, chapters 9-Initiates chapter (end of story)

• Location: McCullough's Genji & Heike (course textbook), or other translations
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: Similar to before — Read in full. Once finished, be able to identify these individuals: Kiyomori, Yoshitsune, Go-Shirakawa, Shunkan, Ariō, Atsumori, Kenreimon-in, Antoku, Hotoke, Nasu no Yōichi. Watch for Buddhist themes, passages that could be labeled "aware", tragedies, moral values, and the story's color & pageantry ("okashi"). Be ready to give examples of these. Remember that the chapter selections from Genji & Heike are chapter excerpts, not full chapters.
• Level of difficulty: Difficult — about 100 pages of warfare. The topic is not that difficult, the problem is in deciding how many characters you are supposed to track given the similarity of names and so forth. Consider looking at my chapter summaries where characters are color-coded to put them in various "camps". (Sorry from the clunky nature of the html pages; they are very old.) Go to my top page and find the panel on Heike. Enter from there.

Assignments & Materials

• Highly recommended: attendance. Much or all of the material for this session is accessible only once, during the time it is presented in class. It is, nevertheless, tested.

Assignments & materials

✓ ❖ Northern and Eastern Hills culture

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? After we cover Eastern Hills culture, as a review. What these two difficult centers of culture contributed to the arts (in term or what arts and what aesthetic principles), and when, are the main points.
• What to do and other comments: Use this as a page to consolidate your understanding of the yūgen and wabi-sabi lectures.
• Level of difficulty: Easy — 1 page of information that is fairly straight-forward.

✓ Zeami and Yugen Tsubaki 1971

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: Read in full, with care but not for the historic details but towards this one question: Can you write a good, solid single paragraph that conveys with some clarity what yūgen is? Yūgen is too difficult a concept for me to successfully convey it in lecture without outside foundational reading. This is that reading.
• Level of difficulty: Moderately difficult — 13 pages of academic prose with lots of detailed information and multiple concepts.

✓ ❖ Yugen

• Location: bSpace, PPT
• Required. By when? By the next exam.
• What to do and other comments: I will cover this in class but there is more text than can be presented in class so if it isn't read ahead of time, my comments might be difficult to follow. Read this by class time or wait until after class and cover it on your own. In either case the goal is the most clarity you can have on the topic. I might quiz yūgen with some general questions at the end of the session, so from that perspective, reading it ahead of time helps. Yūgen is a core topic for the course.
• Level of difficulty: moderately difficult — there are multiple definitions of yugen, but the term remains elusive perhaps.

✓ Yoen

• Location: bSpace, PPT
• Optional.
• Comments: Sometimes I use this PowerPoint when presenting the Shin-Kokinshū and Teika's poetic vision. Yōen is not exactly a precursor to yūgen, but it is closely related and knowing about it might help understand yūgen.

✓ Yugen by Hisamatsu
✓ Yugen by Michael Marra

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Optional.
• What to do and other comments: These are other articles on yūgen. They might help if you are still not clear on the topic. Marra isn't the most cogent of essays. Hisamatsu is older scholarship, but solid.

Assignments & materials

✓ ❖ jo-ha-kyu

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: Like "association" presented when discussing the poem anthologies, "jo-ha-kyū" is a way of giving structure to a narrative. In the West, at least since Greek theater, "standard" narratives have a beginning, middle and end often formulated around a conflict (establishing the conflict, the dramatic peak of the conflict, the resolution of conflict — which can be good or bad). We want our stories to have suspense (the building towards action / conflict exposure) and closure (the resolution of the conflict). We track where we are on this trajectory when reading or watching narratives play out. However, there is a huge assumption behind this model: that conflict has an end and, as such, conflict-resolution is a "natural" way to see the world, similar to "cause-and-effect". However, Daoism gives the deepest structures of the cosmos not as a tension or competition between good and evil but rather the mutual coexistence of the two in perpetual change. According to this model "closure" feels temporary and false and the vanquishing of one side or the other (good or evil prevailing) also feels temporary and short-sighted. "Jo-ha-kyū" is linear (jo leads to ha leads to kyū, that order is preserved) but is not terminal. It is, instead, cyclical (jo leads to ha leads to kyū leads to jo leads to ha leads to kyū, and so on). It creates suspense in that we feel an impending change of pace (something is about to happen) but not necessarily a triumphant moment—it is just a change. Tracking where we are in Tale of Genji and a Nō play has less to do with the question "How far are we from the resolution and will it be a good or bad one?" as it is "What sort of transformation will there be mid-way through the play?" Plays do have an ending (Buddhist truth sometimes heals, sometimes doesn't heal) but the ending is not the final, satisfying "punch line"—the process of the play itself is where the audience satisfaction occurs. Knowing about "jo-ha-kyū" is knowing, in part, how Japanese readers track the unfolding of plots and, perhaps in some way, the unfolding of events in their lives since, in my opinion, we order (make sense of) the chaotic events around us by giving them narrative structure and we do that based on the narrative structures closest to our hearts, the ones that feel most nature. Read this handout and try to get a good sense of what "jo-ha-kyū" is.
• Level of difficulty: Easy — 1 page of information that is not that difficult to understand.

✓ ❖ Atsumori

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: One way to get a sense of the spirit of Nō drama is to see the perspective it applies to events. Nō drew heavily on Tale of Genji and even more heavily on Tale of Heike for material. Notice in this play how the perspective has shifted from the drama of the action and the mono no aware of the situation, as recounted in Tale of Heike (Chapter 9, Section 16), to a focus on Buddhist salvation. Be ready to articulate that.
• Level of difficulty: Moderately easy — 12 pages of prose-poem, with a lot of imagery that is sometimes a bit difficult to follow but students already know the story from Tale of Heike.

✓ ❖ Tales of Ise [伊勢物語], nos. 1, 2, 4, 17, 23, 24

• Location: McCullough's Classical Japanese Prose (course textbook), or other translations
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session and before reading The Well-Cradle.
• What to do and other comments: Read the below paragraph before doing the reading.
• Tales of Ise is an early Heian text that is a pre-Genji example of the "perfect" irogonomi man. Although not stated explicitly, many of the episodes are assumed to be about Ariwara no Narihira. Nos. 1, 2 and 4 describe Narihira's love of a woman who became an imperial consort (and so he could no longer visit her). It is a famous love affair. The playwright assumes that Narihira is the protagonist in nos. 17, 23 and 24, so, for now anyway, read them as if he is. In so doing, his 3-year absence from his wife is not just about making money for them but about his chasing women in the Capital. Makes a difference, and makes for a better understanding of the bitterness of the woman in The Well-Cradle: they began with an innocent, pure love, and married, but in the end he wasn't faithful to her. Now she both loves and hates him. Please read these with some care, as they are the basis for the play and the basis for understanding the yūgen of the play. When watching the woman in the play, try to remember her life.
• Ise section numbers tend to be the same from version to version (except the numbers up in the one hundreds), so it isn't that difficult to find matching translations. You should, though, confirm that the sections are the correct ones.
• Level of difficulty: Easy — 5 pages of simple prose.

✓ ❖ The Well-Cradle (Izutsu)

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: Read in full, maybe twice. We will screen this play in full and knowing the story well (which means not the plot but thinking about the import of the various passages and poems) will free you to watch the performance of the actors. Try to make a connection between this and the Tales of Ise passages.
• Level of difficulty: Moderately difficult — As a text it is an easy 13 pages of prose-poem. However, to think about its symbolism, to try to get a feel for the yūgen of it, and to know it well makes for a greater challenge.

Assignments & materials

I will screen the full Nō play, "The Well-Cradle" (Izutsu 井筒).

Screening begins three minutes before the regular start of class, in order to finish on time.

Most people have only seen excerpts from Nō plays because the pace is indeed truly slow. You might find the pace too slow to bear. Or, you might find the music migraine-inducing. For this reason, I'm not requiring attendance. However, I am strongly recommending attendance and will be delighted to note your presence in the room. You will have had an excellent foundation for watching the play, both in terms of the play and yūgen, and this play is known in particular for its yūgen. Although it is not live, I do think, when fully absorbed in viewing, that you can get a strong sense from the excellence of the performer, at various moments. It is unlikely you will have this sort of opportunity again for a long time, if ever, so consider setting aside 1.5 hours, draw on your patience, and have the unique experience.

• If you arrive late, come in quietly and don't disrupt the mood, please.
• If you feel you want to see some of the play but that you simply must check your phone or your tablet or your laptop, most definitely sit on the back row — I do not want the glare of the screens, or the multitasking, to be seen by others.
• Do not type.
• Do not talk.

Assignments & materials

✓ ❖ Sabi-wabi definitions

✓ ❖ Sabi-wabi explorations

✓ ❖ Sabi-wabi graphic

Assignments & materials

✓ ❖ Poetic forms overview

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: This is a previously covered summary sheet. Review this for the haiku portion, to situation that development in time.
• Level of difficulty: Easy — These are read-and-memorize basic points. 1 page long. This is a repeat of an earlier assignment.

✓ ❖ Genroku Masters

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? By the next exam.
• What to do and other comments: This is covered in class. Refer to this later, when you need to review.
• Level of difficulty: Easy — 1 page of basic information.

✓ Attendance

• Required. Since it is likely that most of the content for this session is presented in class only, I recommend attendance.

Assignments & materials

✓ Narrow Road - Analysis of Ichifuri section

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? Definitely before reading Narrow Road to the Deep North.
• What to do and other comments: Narrow Road to the Deep North is one of Japan's greatest premodern prose works. However, when read in translation, it seems hardly that at all. While we cannot discuss its beauty at the level of language, we can see how carefully constructed it is. Reading the support material for just a few of its paragraphs will give you a sense of how carefully textured, indeed, brilliant, this text is. Read this support material with care. While it is only for a few paragraphs, and they are late in the text itself, it might sharpen you awareness of the rest of the text. Thus reading it before the text seems like the best idea to me. This reading refers to the Ichifuri section and the passage just ahead of it. The time is Tanabata. Here is the start and end of the passage, as translated in McCullough's work, and the original:
• "After several days of reluctant farewells to friends in Sakata, we set out under the clouds of the Northern Land Road, …" [酒田の余波日をかさねて、北陸道の雲に望む。] (p 544) through "I recited those lines to Sora, who wrote them down." (p 545) [曾良にかたれば書きとゞめ侍る。]
• Level of difficulty: Difficult — 38 pages of academic prose with difficult concepts, mostly.

Narrow Road to the Deep North
✓ ❖ Introduction
✓ ❖ The haibun itself

• Location: McCullough's Classical Japanese Prose as "The Narrow Road of the Interior". The "Introduction" is slightly ahead of the text itself, on pages 510-512.
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: Read in full and with care.
• Level of difficulty: Moderate — 30 pages of easy prose but getting beneath the text is very difficult.

Assignments & materials

✓ ❖ Bushido values via Nitobe (bSpace, PDF)

✓ ❖ Iki and sui (bSpace, PPT)

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: Look over this chart and compare it to your understanding of Confucianism. Are the priorities different? How so?
• Level of difficulty: Easy — 1 page with some thinking involved.

✓ ❖ Floating World Hibbett

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: Read or skim for the main points, to get a sense for the time period. This is the context for the next two areas of the class (Saikaku and Chikamatsu).
• Level of difficulty: Moderately easy — 14 pages of academic prose, with pictures.

✓ ❖ Genroku Masters

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: This is a review, to situate the author.
• Level of difficulty: Easy — 1 page of basic information.

✓ Saikaku Diamond Crest

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: This selection is from Great Mirror of Male Love and is about homosexual love. … If you have reading time, read this first, then Life of an Amorous Woman (selection). Otherwise, go directly to Amorous Woman. Is there humor in this story? Is there mono no aware in this story? Is there okashi in this story? Is there yūgen in this story? Is there sabi in this story?
• Level of difficulty: moderately easy — 8 pages of simple prose but lots of names to keep straight in order for the story to make sense.

✓ ❖ Saikaku Amorous Woman (excerpt)

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: Read in full. Ask the same questions as for Diamond Crest.
• Level of difficulty: Moderately easy — 25 pages of simple prose.

Assignments & materials

✓ ❖ Genroku Masters

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? By the beginning of this session.
• What to do and other comments: This is a review, to situate the author.
• Level of difficulty: Easy — 1 page of basic information.

✓ Chikamatsu skin and flesh

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Optional.
• What to do and other comments: I present this in class, but the concept is somewhat difficult, so I am also providing the text.

Assignments & materials

✓ Shinju psychology

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Optional.
• What to do and other comments: This is an interesting read about group suicide in Japan.

✓ "She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not. Shinjū and Shikidō Ōkagami"
Lawrence Rogers
Monumenta Nipponica, 49:1 (1994):31-60

• Location: JSTOR - http://www.jstor.org/stable/2385503
• Optional.
• What to do and other comments: I lecture from this but quite a few students ask where they can find the article, so I'm listing it here. It supports the ideas behind Genroku values and the notion of shinjū.

✓ ❖ Chikamatsu Amijima Miyamori trans

• Location: bSpace, PDF
• Required. By when? By the beginning of the session. (We begin to screen the film and this needs to be read before seeing the film or the comparisons go the wrong direction.)
• What to do and other comments: This is a core text for us. Read it in full and with care, thinking about the themes of shame / honor, giri / ninjō, and whether you agree with my interpretation of the text. This is a famous play and there are lots of other translations available.
• Level of difficulty: Moderately difficult — 39 pages of simple prose.

Other

• The film screened is Double Suicide (心中天網島, Shinjū: Ten no Amijima, Masahiro Shinoda, 1969, 105 min.). It is a part of the Japan New Wave movement (similar to French New Wave) and explores death and sexuality in its own terms, but shows considerable indebtedness to the original play.

Assignments & materials

• ✓ Nothing assigned for this day. However the is a short assignment, Final Day Form, due very soon. See Important Dates & Deadlines

Assignments & materials

• ✓ Submission by the due date of the form "Final Day Sheet". See Assignments & Tests: Final Day Sheet.