Journal articles on the topic 'Heian period (794-1185)'

This special section of Japanese Language and Literature, “Heian Literature in Manga,” attempts to offer tools for understanding the multiple functions that manga appropriations of literary texts written over a millennium ago perform in present-day Japan. Focusing on manga adaptations of six Heian-period (794-1185) works, the contributors examine how and why these classical writings have been rewritten for readers in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. They present six international perspectives on the influence manga has had in popularizing Heian classics by exploring modern interpretations as well as which aspects of the ancient texts have been promoted for readers in Japan today.

Is love sweet? In contemporary English, that may often be the case, but in classical Japanese poetry (waka), love had no flavor. In fact, foods, eating, and drinking hardly appear in waka of the tenth and eleventh centuries. This essay examines a number of poems featuring food by Ōe no Masahira and Akazome Emon, two esteemed writers of the Heian period (794–1185 CE). First scrutinizing the unusual poems from their courtship, the essay then examines all of Akazome’s verses featuring food. Taking these eighteen poems from her poetry collection, I assert that in Heian poetry, foods appear only sporadically, but when they do, their gustatory tastes are disregarded in favor of cultivating aesthetic taste tied to their appearances, anecdotal associations, and verbal play.

Premodern Japanese kashi were an important part of courtier food culture, and the broad kashi category encompassed fruits, nuts, and confections, which alongside mochi were offered up to monarchs, children, and deities alike. This article explores the types of Heian-period (794–1185) kashi and mochi through their inclusion in an elite banquet celebrating a baby reaching their fiftieth day of life. The monarch, queen consort, and the powerful nobility of the Heian court converged on the residential palace to celebrate and were feted with food and drink, including mochi purchased in the city marketplace and a particular array of sweets. This makes the fiftieth-day banquet a useful lens through which to understand not only one aspect of premodern Japanese celebration but also how the nobility used food to demonstrate power and new status through conspicuous consumption.

<p>Kyoto has been the capital of Japan from 794 until when the capital has moved in 1868 to Tokyo with the end of Tokugawa Shoguns and the beginning of the Meiji Restoration. The loss of the seat of government was a shock to citizens of Kyoto as the city had been the Imperial and Cultural center of the nation for over 1.000 years. The combination of the court and the great temples had enlivened and enriched the life of the city. At the beginning of the founding of the capital, in the Heian period (794-1185) to east of Kyoto, was built a noble and religious place. This area is Okazaki. Here the Emperor Kammu (736-805) had created the city of Heian-kyo (Kyoto) in 794. This area was full of Temples and Shrines. Only in the Edo period (1603-1867) Okazaki area assumed the role of suburban agricultural zone which provided the food production to the urban habitants. But after the Meiji Restoration (1868-1912), the role of Okazaki area changes completely. In 1885, Kyoto prefecture started the great public canalization project as the water supply between Kyoto and Otsu of Shiga prefecture. Kyoto prefecture also planed the industrial district construction in Okazaki area. From the late nineteenth century Okazaki area became a symbol of the modernization of Kyoto city. This contribution intends to analyze the urban landscape composed of the different styles of architecture especially constructed after the Meiji period (1868-1912). Tangible and intangible signs remained as modern gardens, significant museums and cultural institutions among the ancient temples provide opportunities to reflect on the important role of suburban area of the historic city. These studies are supported by archival documents and by current measures and policies for landscape conservation by Kyoto Municipality.</p>

The Gion Festival is a world-famous festival that takes place in Kyoto in July. It dates back to the Heian period (794–1185) and originated as a goryō-e ritual to placate departed spirits and disease-divinities. It is linked to the Yasaka Shrine, and it represents a great variety of religious and cultural influences. It is a complex and multidimensional event where issues of globalization can be seen at play at the local level. Against this background, this paper analyzes the Gion Festival as a religious and cultural phenomenon in relation to glocalization and the production of locality. In particular, it explores how the City of Kyoto represented the festival in connection with the 2030 United Nations Agenda for Sustainable Development, and the local–global interactions that relate to international tourism and global bureaucracy.

This paper is dedicated to the formation of verb compounds in Early Middle Japanese, a stage of the Japanese language used in the Heian Period (794–1185). The findings reveal that current verb compounds have come a long way from Old Japanese. Multiple verbs in Old Japanese are assigned to an associate type, rather than a compounding type of relation. Thus, the serial constituents receive equal syntactic weight, giving rise to the extensive use of the coordinate type and succession type of multi-verbs. In Early Middle Japanese, the combinations of the two constituents seem much tighter, giving rise the frequent use of the modifier-predicate V-V. The conclusion emerging from this study is that it was not until Early Middle Japanese that verb compounds in the strict sense appeared. Moreover, two types of verb weakening are observed in Early Middle Japanese: (a) transformation of the first verb into a prefix, (b) grammaticalization of the second verb into a directional/resultative complement.

The Pillow Book by Sei Shônagon, Empress Sadako's lady in waiting from about 993-1000, offers rich detail about the meaning and power of dress during the Heian period [794-1185]. Throughout Yone Noguchi's novel The American Diary of a Japanese Girl (1902), Morning Glory, a newly arrived Japanese immigrant to the U.S., experiments with a multitude of different identities through clothes. Both narratives appropriate (cross-) dressing as a means of overcoming gender, cultural, and class borders. Shônagon and Noguchi engage in “authorial crossdressing” to inhabit a social, cultural, and national space onto which they only have a precarious hold. It is especially the portrayal of what Marjorie Garber has delineated as a “category crisis” that links Japanese medieval writing and early fictional accounts by Japanese American authors. This article demonstrates that cross-dressing originates in moments of personal crisis and that its practice is sustained by the anxiety of cultural dislocation. The parallel identified between The Pillow Book and The American Diary—both texts largely ignored by academia—promises to clarify further early Japanese immigrants' experimentation with their bodies, citizenship, and other markers of identity to create a Japanese American subjectivity.

The handwritten manuscript entitled “Sound Glosses on Dabanruojing 大般若經音義 (Prajñāpāramitā-sūtra, Vol. II),” one of the collections of Ishiyama Temple 石山寺 in Otsu City, Shiga Prefecture, is generally regarded as having been made sometime from the last phase of the Nara 奈良 period (710-784) to the beginning of the Heian 平安 period (794-1185). On account of its copying and dissemination contemporary to that period, the manuscript has value equal to the Dunhuang 敦煌 manuscripts. The present paper cross-references the Ishiyama Temple manuscript to the one with the same title housed in Raigōin 來迎院 in Kyoto. After having selected the 35 characters in popular use that are mutually related, it presents a comparative study of them as found in the relevant portions of the Sound Glosses of Xuanying (玄應音義) and the Sound Gloss of Huilin (慧琳音義) in an attempt to clarify the origins of these popular Chinese characters. Such work no doubt has equal significance in the following scholarly area: the ex-ploration of how the characters were used in the period in question, particularly making inference on the actual use of the characters in these old handwritten manuscripts of the Prajñāpāramitā-sūtra, the study of the language of the Buddhist scriptures, and the development of a research field of the popular Chinese characters.

A survey of the history of medieval Kōyasan, an important mountain-based headquarters for esoteric Shingon Buddhism since the early ninth century, cannot omit significant developments in the worship of kami (tutelary and ancestral gods) from the end of the Heian period (794–1185) to the Muromachi period (1333–1573). A fundamental aspect of kami worship at Kōyasan was the regular offering to the kami (shinbōraku 神法楽) of mondō-kō 問答講 (catechism/dialogue form, or ‘question and answer’ ‘lectures’) and rongi (debate examinations in the form of mondō). The relationship between Buddhist scholarship and kami worship has not been fully elucidated and such will enrich understanding of both subjects. The identities and meanings of the two oldest kami enshrined at Kōyasan, Niu Myōjin 丹生明神 (also called Niutsuhime) and Kariba Myōjin 狩場明神 (also called Kōya Myōjin), were delineated in texts produced by scholar monks (gakuryo 学侶) during a period when the debates were re-systematized after a period of sporadicity and decline, so the precise functions of this cinnabar goddess and hunter god in the related ritual offerings deserve attention. In this paper I examine ideas about the Kōyasan kami that can be found, specifically, in the institution and development of these mondō and rongi 論義. Placing them in this context yields new information, and offers new methods of understanding of not only related textual materials, but also of the icons used in the debates, and the related major ceremonies (hōe 法会) and individual ritual practices (gyōbō 行法) that were involved. Given that the candidates of a major ritual debate examination—to be discussed—that has been practiced from the Muromachi period up to the present day are said to ‘represent’ kami, and are even referred to by the names of kami, the history of the precise relationship between the kami and the debates invites more detailed explanation that has so far been largely lacking in the scholarship.

Having as a starting point one of the stereotypes of Japanese women considered a purveyor of kawaii this paper aims to explore a counterexample to Sanrio’s Hello Kitty mania offered by Shiseidō cosmetics through its overseas advertisements created during a long history on the European market. Even though the image of Japan is based mainly on the concept of kawaii Shiseidō tried at first on the local market to make a turn from that fragile, helpless and naïve perception of women to a more sophisticated one. Successful advertisements are made to answer a specific target audience’s needs, thus in order to go global there was a need to adapt typical Asian beauty standards to European ones. Shiseidō’s mission is to keep up with the times without forgetting the roots, the source of power, thus it has constantly worked in developing new strategies in order to thrive on the Western beauty market without setting aside Japanese tradition. Shiseidō corporate through its smaller brands like Majolica Majorca, Pure & Mild, Haku (meaning “white”) etc. still promote whitest white skin, a beauty ideal which prevails since the Heian period (794-1185). Considering that Shiseidō has a history of more than 50 years on the European market we propose an analysis on three beauty print advertisements elaborated during 1980-2000 in order to observe the constructed image of Japan through the imaginary of the French artist, Serge Lutens, responsible for the visual identity of the brand in Europe since 1980. The question is if it is a matter of “selling” the exotic to an unfamiliar receiver or a naive reflection of Japaneseness from a European’s perspective? Through this case study on beauty print advertisements created for the European market after 1990 we want to mirror the image of Japan in Europe as depicted through the specter of the biggest Japanese beauty conglomerate in the world, Shiseidō.

Рассматривается обусловленность знаково-символического пространства японского ландшафтного сада историческим и религиозно-философским факторами. Хронологические рамки исследования охватывают эпоху Хейан (794–1185), олицетворяющую новый этап в развитии японской культуры, связанный с формированием утонченной эстетики, нашедшей воплощение и в ландшафтной архитектуре, в частности в садовом искусстве. Укрепление аристократического стиля жизни дало импульс к новой организации архитектурного пространства: возникают дворцово-парковые и храмовые архитектурные комплексы, частью которых был японский сад. Под влиянием этого формируется особый вид японского сада – пейзажный прогулочный сад, а также канон ландшафтной архитектуры, отражающий пространственно-символические представления японцев и приемы их воспроизводства в пространстве сада. Японский сад представляет собой квинтэссенцию природоцентристского сознания. Уникальность мировозренческих оснований знаково-символического пространства японского сада эпохи Хейан выражается в синтезе нескольких религиозно-философских учений, сосуществующих в Японии: синтоизма, даосизма, буддизма, дзен-буддизма и ряда религиозных школ, возникших в результате интерпретации буддизма и его сочетания с синтоизмом. Их симбиоз сформировал особое мировоззрение, которое эксплицировалось в культуре Японии. Японский сад в любом стиле представляет собой воплощение модели видения Вселенной сквозь призму определенной философско-эстетической системы. Религиозно-философские основания японского общества определили содержание знаково-символического пространства сада и выбор соответствующих архитектурно-дизайнерских приемов его конструирования. Реализация архитектонического кода, лежащего в основе концептуального структурирования сада, технически достигается посредством использования ряда архитектурных и дизайнерских приемов. Наиболее значимые из них: прием намекающей метафоры, прием текстурной модуляции, прием асимметрии, а также приемы планирования, основанные на теории контрастов. Намекающая метафора применяется в кодировании отдельных объектов сада, например камней. Суть приема текстурной модуляции состоит в чередовании материала дорожек, которое ощущается как тактильно, так и визуально, что в целом символизирует прохождение человеком разных этапов постижения истины бытия в единстве пространства и времени. Прием асимметрии позволяет визуализировать изменчивость мира, его перманентное движение. Обоснование и раскрытие механизма применения пространственных кодов позволяет позиционировать японский сад как коммуникативное пространство, знаково-символическое наполнение которого обусловлено социокультурным фактором и зависит от эстетической парадигмы эпохи, лежащей в основе архитектурного и садового искусства. The article considers the conditionality of the Japanese landscape garden’s space of signs and symbols by historical and religious-philosophical factors. The chronological framework of the study covers the Heian epoch (794-1185). Its significance in the development of Japanese landscape architecture and, in particular, garden art is connected with the emergence of a new refined aesthetics, which became the theoretical basis for the formation of the “feminine” style in Japanese culture. The rise of the aristocracy in this period gave impetus to a new style of life: palace-park and temple architectural complexes were built, part of which was a Japanese garden. In this regard, a special type of Japanese garden – landscape pleasure garden – was formed, as well as the canon of landscape architecture, reflecting the spatial and symbolic representations of the Japanese and the methods of their reproduction in the garden space. The uniqueness of the worldview foundations of the sign-symbolic space of the Japanese garden of the Heian era is expressed in the synthesis of several religious and philosophical teachings coexisting in Japan: Shintoism, Taoism, Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, and a number of religious schools that emerged as a result of the interpretation of Buddhism and its combination with Shintoism. Their symbiosis formed a special worldview, which was explicated in the culture of Japan. Japanese garden in any style is an embodiment of the model of vision of the universe through the prism of a certain philosophical and aesthetic system. Religious and philosophical foundations of the Japanese society determined the content of the symbolic-symbolic space of the garden and the choice of appropriate architectural and design techniques of its construction. The methodological basis for the semiotic analysis of the Japanese garden is the typology of spatial codes, including object-functional, architectonic, and social-symbolic codes. The significance and specificity of the application of each code in the process of constructing a landscape Japanese garden with its inherent sign-symbolic space are considered. The basic architectural and design methods of realization of spatial codes, the purpose of which is to embody the concept of the universe in the format of a Japanese garden, are revealed. The architectonic code structures the garden space, as a result of which its compositional solution corresponding to the garden concept is designed. Technically, this goal is achieved through the use of a number of architectural and design techniques. The most significant of them are the technique of suggestive metaphor, the technique of textural modulation, the technique of asymmetry, as well as planning techniques based on the theory of contrasts. Hinting metaphor is used in the coding of separate objects of the garden, for example, stones. The essence of the texture modulation technique is the alternation of the material of the paths, which is felt both tactilely and visually, which in general symbolizes the passage of different stages of human comprehension of the truth of existence in the unity of space and time. The reception of asymmetry allows visualizing the changeability of the world, its permanent movement. Justification and disclosure of the mechanism of spatial codes application allows positioning the Japanese garden as a communicative space, the sign-symbolic content of which is conditioned by the socio-cultural factor and depends on the aesthetic paradigm of the era underlying the architectural and garden art.

Japanese culture, through its art, language and religion, is a result of accumulated flows of knowledge from China and Korea. The traditions of garden design and garden construction, similarly, are ‘a space of flows’ from classical Chinese models though, after centuries of development and refinement, have become distinctly reflective of Japanese culture and aesthetics. The first recorded instance of this knowledge flow reaching Japan appears in the eleventh century. The first treatise on Japanese garden design, Sakuteiki (garden making), is attributed to Tachibana no Toshitsuna, a court official and designer of gardens. Though the treatise contains no illustrations, much of the text is precise, and its content reflective of the cultural and aesthetic predilections of the Confucianist Heien court. Other treatises may have been extant during the Heien period (794–1185), though they are now lost.

El pasado lleva siendo fuente de inspiración para las artes de Japón desde tiempos remotos. Empezando por el género literario de los gunki monogatari en el periodo Heian (794-1185/1192), pasando por las xilografías ukiyo-e del periodo Edo (1603-1868) y llegando hasta el cine jidaigeki del siglo XX, en la actualidad el anime histórico es el principal responsable de seguir enriqueciendo esta tradición artística. Es especialmente recurrente inspirarse en el periodo Sengoku (1467/1477-1603) o «era de los estados combatientes», caracterizado por la ausencia de un poder centralizado. Si bien las adaptaciones de esta época tienden a girar alrededor de personajes concretos, en el extremo opuesto tenemos el anime Dororo, desarrollado por el estudio MAPPA en 2019, adaptación actualizada de la serie homónima escrita e ilustrada por Tezuka Osamu, apodado el Dios del Manga. Consideramos que la relevancia de la obra original, unida a la calidad técnica y artística de esta versión animada, la convierten en el caso de estudio idóneo con el que acercar a las aulas no sólo el Medievo japonés, sino también el interés por otras culturas como la japonesa.

The article explores the chakuda no matsurigoto (literally “putting on shackles”) ritual in Heian Japan (794–1185), its evolution and specificity. Originally the ritual consisted only of putting shackles on a prisoner after the announcement of the verdict, and presented an integral part of the judicial system during the Asuka and Nara periods, but in the Heian era, the chakuda no matsurigoto ritual turned into a large-scale ceremonial action regularly performed in the 5th and 12th lunar months. It was a spectacle both for noble persons and for commoners, becoming a credential sign (proof) of the triumph of the law over iniquity; a symbol of dishonour for criminals (they were publicly put in shackles during the ritual on the market square of the capital) and a testimony of fair justice for those whose term of imprisonment came to an end (they were removed from the shackles right during the chakuda no matsurigoto and released). The chakuda no matsurigoto ritual in the Heian Japan underwent constructive changes at the end of the 10th century, turned into a kind of shameful punishment that pursued several main tasks. The ritual served as a message, informing people about the guilt of the criminals and the impartiality of the court verdict passed by them. By enhancing the visual and sound elements of the ceremony, the organizers of the chakuda no matsurigoto achieved the correct understanding of the essence of what was happening among those present, its maximum informative accuracy. The ceremony of liberation from the iron shackles in the presence of numerous observers served as an impressive symbol of the offender’s return to the world of law-abiding people, demonstrating the indisputability of the rule of law in the Heian state.

Schools as institutions of education were first established in Heian Period (794-1185). In the capital a college termed daigaku, and in the provinces provincial schools called kokugaku, were set up. The nobles studied poetry and music following the pattern of study of T’ang China. The system of schools based on T’ang system and the schools of the capital were very well organized for the children of the nobility. It appeared that the education of the nobility took an extremely classical form based on Chinese classics. This article deals with various aspects of Heian education system characterized by Chinese and Japanese classics. The main objective of this paper is how the education of nobilities played an important role in unique life of the court noble that had the power to govern and how the education of the nobility was unique in having the life of the court as its foundation.

Inference to religion and ritual does not require scripture. Since the early twentieth century, archaeologists have identified hundreds of deposits containing Buddhist scriptures, images and ritual objects throughout the Japanese archipelago, the majority dating to the late Heian period (794–1185 ce). Previous research suggests that scripture was the central feature of these deposits. This article argues that these deposits resulted from a range of highly variable contexts of religious and social practice, not limited to a focus on scripture. I survey early excavations and interpretations of sutra burial and then turn to two main case studies. These examples show that these deposits were complex assemblages that implicated diverse religious meanings, time frames and social actors. Scripture deposits can demonstrate how religious ritual illuminates, underwrites and interweaves variant scales of agency, time and social practice.

The present paper addresses esoteric Buddhist rituals in Japan, with special focus on the changes that happened in its practice in the first couple of centuries after its initial arrival to the country. Although esotericism originated in India, it was the brief spotlight it gained in China during the Tang Dynasty (especially in the 8th century) that determined its transmission to Japan in the beginning of the 9th century, where it spread rapidly and reached a particular culmination within the same time period, i.e., the Heian Period (794 to 1185/1192). On the one hand, the Shingon school, established by the monk Kūkai (774-835), was essentially the first time the esoteric Buddhist teachings were systematised, and although the founder’s person and teachings are still very much revered to this day, changes have begun right after his death in 835. On the other hand, the Tendai school, a rival for imperial recognition and support and also established (or rather introduced) in the beginning of the 9th century by the monk Saichō (767-822, a contemporary of Kūkai) included some esoteric teachings, and with the practices introduced by later Tendai monks, such as Ennin (794-864) or Enchin (814-891), this school cultivated esoteric practices that are still extant in Japan today. Firstly, the meaning and usage of the honzon (an icon of a deity) in esoteric Buddhist rituals is clarified in the paper, while later the evolution of two specific icons that were used during the Fugen Enmei rituals of both the Shingon and Tendai schools is introduced, with explanations as to why there are two different types of iconographies extant for the same kind of ritual. The paper contributes to the study of those esoteric practices that were created and developed in a locally recognized Buddhist milieu that served specific purposes in Japan and are found in no other Buddhist cultures in Asia.

Although often thought to be mostly relevant to Bronze Age China, oracle bone divination also has a rich history in Japan, primarily documented through literature and ethnographic records. In recent decades, the discovery of oracle bones spanning from the Early Yayoi (1000-400 B.C.) to Heian (A.D. 794-1185) periods has opened new avenues for research in pyro-osteomancy. These archaeological findings provide fresh perspectives on the social and cultural influences on oracle bone divination in Japan and East Asia more broadly. In this study, we review the historical, ethnographic, and archaeological studies of oracle bone divination in Japan, offering a comprehensive overview of divination practices and their broader significance.