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Nihonjinron
is a genre of texts that focus on issues of Japanese national and cultural identity. The concept became popular after World War II, with books and articles aiming to analyze, explain, or explore peculiarities of Japanese culture and mentality, usually by comparison with those of Europe and North America. The literature is vast, ranging over such varied fields as sociology, psychology, anthropology, history, linguistics, philosophy, biology, chemistry and physics so in addition to the common generic word ''nihonjinron'', a variety of topical subgenres exist, divided up by specific theme or subject-matter. For example: * : "new theories on climate" (implying the influence of climate on peoples) * : "theories on Japanese culture" * : "theories on Japanese society" * : "theories on Japan" * : "theories on the Japanese economy" Books written by non-Japanese authors may also be classed as ''nihonjinron'', if they share, contribute to, or reflect the vision, premises, and perspectives c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japanese Culture
The culture of Japan has changed greatly over the millennia, from the country's prehistoric Jōmon period, to its contemporary modern culture, which absorbs influences from Asia and other regions of the world. Historical overview The ancestry of Japanese people remains mysterious; however, there are two competing hypotheses that try to explain the lineage of the Japanese people. The first hypothesis proposes a dual-structure model, in which Japanese populations are descendants of the indigenous Jomon people and later arrivals of people from the East Eurasian continent, known as the Yayoi people. Japan's indigenous culture originates primarily from the Yayoi people who settled in Japan between 1000 BCE and 300 CE. Yayoi culture spread to the main island of Honshū, mixing with the native Jōmon culture. Modern Japanese have an estimated 80% Yayoi and 20% Jōmon ancestry. The second hypothesis posits a tripartite model of genomic origin. This hypothesis proposes that con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japanese People
The are an East Asian ethnic group native to the Japanese archipelago."人類学上は，旧石器時代あるいは縄文時代以来，現在の北海道〜沖縄諸島（南西諸島）に住んだ集団を祖先にもつ人々。" () Japanese people constitute 97.9% of the population of the country of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 129 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 122.5 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live outside Japan are referred to as , the Japanese diaspora. Depending on the context, the term may be limited or not to mainland Japanese people, specifically the Yamato (as opposed to Ryukyuan and Ainu people). Japanese people are one of the largest ethnic groups in the world. In recent decades, there has also been an increase in the number of multiracial people with both Japanese and non-Japanese roots, including half Japanese people. History Theories of origins Archaeological evidence ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kokugaku
''Kokugaku'' ( ja, 國學, label= Kyūjitai, ja, 国学, label=Shinjitai; literally "national study") was an academic movement, a school of Japanese philology and philosophy originating during the Tokugawa period. Kokugaku scholars worked to refocus Japanese scholarship away from the then-dominant study of Chinese, Confucian, and Buddhist texts in favor of research into the early Japanese classics. History What later became known as the ''kokugaku'' tradition began in the 17th and 18th centuries as ''kogaku'' ("ancient studies"), ''wagaku'' ("Japanese studies") or ''inishie manabi'', a term favored by Motoori Norinaga and his school. Drawing heavily from Shinto and Japan's ancient literature, the school looked back to a golden age of culture and society. They drew upon ancient Japanese poetry, predating the rise of medieval Japan's feudal orders in the mid-twelfth century, and other cultural achievements to show the emotion of Japan. One famous emotion appealed to by t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ogyū Sorai
(March 21, 1666 – February 28, 1728), pen name Butsu Sorai, was a Japanese Confucian philosopher. He has been described as the most influential such scholar during the Edo period Japan. His primary area of study was in applying the teachings of Confucianism to government and social order. He responded to contemporary economic and political failings of the Tokugawa shogunate, as well as the culture of mercantilism and the dominance of old institutions that had become weak with extravagance. Sorai rejected the moralism of Neo-Confucianism and instead looked to the ancient works. He argued that allowing emotions to be expressed was important and nurtured Chinese literature in Japan for this reason. Sorai attracted a large following with his teachings and created the Sorai school, which would become an influential force in further Confucian scholarship in Japan. Biography Grave of Ogyū Sorai Sorai was born in Edo the second son of a samurai who served as the personal physic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hirata Atsutane
was a Japanese scholar, conventionally ranked as one of the Four Great Men of Kokugaku (nativist) studies, and one of the most significant theologians of the Shintō religion. His literary name was , and his primary assumed name was . He also used the names , , and . His personal name was . Biography Early life Hirata was born as the fourth son of , an ''Obangashira'' (low-ranking) ''samurai'' of Kubota Domain, in what is now part of the city of Akita in northern Japan. Little is known of his early childhood, but it appears he was impoverished and faced hostility from his step-mother. He left home in 1795, renouncing his ties to his family and to the Domain and traveled to Edo and worked as a laborer and as a servant, while pushing opportunities to study '' rangaku'', geography, and astronomy. In 1800, at the age of 25, he caught the attention of Hirata Tōbē (平田藤兵衛), a scholar and instructor in the Yamaga school of military strategy, formerly of Bitchū-Matsuyama ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Motoori Norinaga
was a Japanese scholar of ''Kokugaku'' active during the Edo period. He is conventionally ranked as one of the Four Great Men of Kokugaku (nativist) studies. Life Norinaga was born in what is now Matsusaka in Ise Province (now part of Mie Prefecture). His ancestors were vassals of the Kitabatake clan in Ise Province for many generations. However, in the early Edo period they abandoned their samurai status, changing their surname to Ozu, and relocated to Matsusaka, where they became cotton wholesalers. The family initially prospered and had a store in Edo as well. (The film director Yasujirō Ozu was a descendant of the same line). After his elder brother's death, Norinaga succeeded to the Ozu line. At one stage he was adopted out to a paper-making family but the bookish boy was not suited to business. It was at his mother's suggestion that, at the age of 22, Norinaga went to Kyoto to study medicine. In Kyoto, he also studied Chinese and Japanese philology under the neo-C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kamo No Mabuchi
was a ''kokugaku'' scholar, poet and philologist during mid-Edo period Japan. Along with Kada no Azumamaro, Motoori Norinaga, and Hirata Atsutane, he was regarded as one of the Four Great Men of Kokugaku, and through his research into the spirit of ancient Japan (through his studies of the ''Man'yōshū'' and other works of ancient literature) he expounded on the theory of ''magokoro'', which he held to be fundamental to the history of Japan. Independently of and alongside his contemporary Motoori Norinaga, Mabuchi is accredited with the initial discovery of Lyman's Law, governing ''rendaku'' in the Japanese language, though which would later be named after Benjamin Smith Lyman. Biography Mabuchi was born in 1697 in the village of Iba in Tōtōmi Province (currently part of the city of Hamamatsu, Shizuoka), as the third son of Okabe Masanobu. The Okabe were hereditary ''kannushi'' of Kamo Shrine in Kyoto, but his father was from a cadet branch of the clan and was a farmer. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kada No Azumamaro
was a poet and philologist of the early Edo period. His ideas had a germinal impact on the nativist school of National Learning in Japan. Life Azumamaro was born the second son of Hakura Nobuaki (1625-1696), father of a scholarly family that for generations had supplied Shinto priests to the Inari shrine in Fushimi. From an early age he studied traditional Japanese poetry, waka, and Shinto thought and belief, and his precocity was such that he was soon employed, in 1697, as poetry tutor to one of the sons of Emperor Reigen (regnabat 1663–1687). Fushimi at the time had been described by Ihara Saikaku as an economically depressed town that had fallen down in its fortunes. This marked it off from the flourishing cultural developments of the Genroku period. He set up an academy for studying and teaching his nativist ideas in the Inari shrine. In 1700 he settled in Edo, where his students mainly came from the Shinto clergy whom he instructed in norito prayers and the Shint ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Keichū
(1640 – April 3, 1701) was a Buddhist priest and a scholar of Kokugaku in the mid Edo period. Keichū's grandfather was a personal retainer of Katō Kiyomasa but his father was a ''rōnin'' from the Amagasaki fief. When he was 13, Keichū left home to become an acolyte of the Shingon sect, studying at Kaijō in Myōhōji, Imasato, Osaka. He subsequently attained the post of Ajari (or Azari) at Mount Kōya, and then became chief priest at Mandara-in in Ikutama, Osaka. It was at this time that he became friends with the poet-scholar Shimonokōbe Chōryū (下河辺長流, 1624–1686). However, he disliked the worldly duties of his work and, after wandering around the Kinki region for a while, made his way back to Mount Kōya. Deeply influenced by the thinking of Kūkai, he also read widely in the Japanese classics under the patronage of Fuseya Shigeta (伏屋重賢), a patron of the arts in Izumi Province. After serving as chief priest at Myōhōji, Keichū spent his last ye ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Man'yōshū
The is the oldest extant collection of Japanese (poetry in Classical Japanese), compiled sometime after AD 759 during the Nara period. The anthology is one of the most revered of Japan's poetic compilations. The compiler, or the last in a series of compilers, is today widely believed to be Ōtomo no Yakamochi, although numerous other theories have been proposed. The chronologically last datable poem in the collection is from AD 759 ( 4516). It contains many poems from a much earlier period, with the bulk of the collection representing the period between AD 600 and 759. The precise significance of the title is not known with certainty. The contains 20 volumes and more than 4,500 poems, and is divided into three genres: , songs at banquets and trips; , songs about love between men and women; and songs to mourn the death of people. These songs were written by people of various statuses, such as the Emperor, aristocrats, junior officials, soldiers ( songs), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kojiki
The , also sometimes read as or , is an early Japanese chronicle of myths, legends, hymns, genealogies, oral traditions, and semi-historical accounts down to 641 concerning the origin of the Japanese archipelago, the , and the Japanese imperial line. It is claimed in its preface to have been composed by Ō no Yasumaro at the request of Empress Genmei in the early 8th century (711–712), and thus is usually considered to be the oldest extant literary work in Japan. The myths contained in the as well as the are part of the inspiration behind many practices. Later, they were incorporated into Shinto practices such as the purification ritual. Composition It is believed that the compilation of various genealogical and anecdotal histories of the imperial (Yamato) court and prominent clans began during the reigns of Emperors Keitai and Kinmei in the 6th century, with the first concerted effort at historical compilation of which we have record being the one made in 620 unde ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jinnō Shōtōki
is a Japanese historical book written by Kitabatake Chikafusa. The work sought both to clarify the genesis and potential consequences of a contemporary crisis in Japanese politics, and to dispel or at least ameliorate the prevailing disorder. The text begins with these statements as prologue: History Chikafusa had been a careful student of the book '' Nihon Shoki'' (日本書紀, ''"The Chronicles of Japan"''), and this background is reflected in the narrative structure of his ''Jinnō Shōtōki''. He was also well acquainted with Watarai Ieyuki (度会家行), a prominent Shinto priest at the Ise Shrine. Watarai's life of study had added significantly to clarifying the theory of Ise Shinto, and this point-of-view is reflected in the tone of ''Jinnō Shōtōki.'' The work as a whole was written in the years 1338–1341 at Oda fortress in Hitachi Province, Japan (present-day Tsukuba City, Ibaraki Prefecture) then amended in 1343 at Seki fortress. It is believed that t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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