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Nihon Ryōiki
The is an early Heian period setsuwa collection. Written by Kyōkai between 787 and 824, it is Japan's oldest collection of Buddhist setsuwa. It is three volumes in length. Title Commonly abbreviated as ''Nihon Ryōiki'', which means "Record of Miraculous Events in Japan," the full title is . It may also be read as ''Nihon Reiiki''. The book has been translated into English under the title ''Miraculous Stories from the Japanese Buddhist Tradition'', but this does not represent a literal translation of the Japanese title. Contents The work is composed of three parts contained within three volumes. Each volume begins with a preface, and the final volume contains an epilogue. There are a total of 116 tales all dealing with Buddhist elements. There are also a total of nine poems. Manuscripts There are five existing manuscripts, two of which are designated National Treasures: * Kōfuku-ji, 904 (National Treasure) * Raigō-in, late Heian period (National Treasure) * Shinpuku-ji, Ka ...
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Heian Period
The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. It followed the Nara period, beginning when the 50th emperor, Emperor Kanmu, moved the capital of Japan to Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto). means "peace" in Japanese. It is a period in Japanese history when the Chinese influences were in decline and the national culture matured. The Heian period is also considered the peak of the Japanese imperial court and noted for its art, especially poetry and literature. Two types of Japanese script emerged, including katakana, a phonetic script which was abbreviated into hiragana, a cursive alphabet with a unique writing method distinctive to Japan. This gave rise to Japan's famous vernacular literature, with many of its texts written by court women who were not as educated in Chinese compared to their male counterparts. Although the Imperial House of Japan had power on the surface, the real power was in the hands of the Fujiwara clan, a powerful aristocr ...
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Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai
is an archaic kana orthography system used to write Japanese during the Nara period. Its primary feature is to distinguish between two groups of syllables that later merged. The existence and meaning of this system is a critical point of scholarly debate in the study of the history of the Japanese language. Syllables The following are the syllabic distinctions made in Old Japanese. Those syllables marked in gray are known as ''jōdai tokushu kanazukai''. Transcription The two groups merged by the 9th century. It predates the development of kana, and the phonetic difference is unclear. Therefore, an ad hoc transcription system is employed. Syllables written with subscript 1 are known as type and those with subscript 2 as type (these are the first two celestial stems, and are used for such numbering in Japanese). There are several competing transcription systems. One popular system places a diaeresis above the vowel: ï, ë, ö. This typically represents i2, e ...
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9th-century Japanese Books
The 9th century was a period from 801 ( DCCCI) through 900 ( CM) in accordance with the Julian calendar. The Carolingian Renaissance and the Viking raids occurred within this period. In the Middle East, the House of Wisdom was founded in Abbasid Baghdad, attracting many scholars to the city. The field of algebra was founded by the Muslim polymath al-Khwarizmi. The most famous Islamic Scholar Ahmad ibn Hanbal was tortured and imprisoned by Abbasid official Ahmad ibn Abi Du'ad during the reign of Abbasid caliph al-Mu'tasim and caliph al-Wathiq. In Southeast Asia, the height of the Mataram Kingdom happened in this century, while Burma would see the establishment of the major kingdom of Pagan. Tang China started the century with the effective rule under Emperor Xianzong and ended the century with the Huang Chao rebellions. While the Maya experienced widespread political collapse in the central Maya region, resulting in internecine warfare, the abandonment of cities, and a northwa ...
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Heian Period In Literature
The Japanese word Heian (平安, lit. "peace") may refer to: * Heian period, an era of Japanese history * Heian-kyō, the Heian-period capital of Japan that has become the present-day city of Kyoto * Heian series, a group of karate kata (forms) * Heian Shrine The is a Shinto shrine located in Sakyō-ku, Kyoto, Japan. The Shrine is ranked as a ''Beppyō Jinja'' () (the top rank for shrines) by the Association of Shinto Shrines. It is listed as an important cultural property of Japan. History 22 ..., a large shrine in the city of Kyoto * "Heian", a song from the 2016 Momus album '' Scobberlotchers'' See also * Ping'an (other), the Chinese pinyin transliteration of 平安 * Pyongan, the Korean hanja transliteration of 平安 {{disambiguation ...
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Late Old Japanese Texts
Late may refer to: * LATE, an acronym which could stand for: ** Limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy, a proposed form of dementia ** Local-authority trading enterprise, a New Zealand business law ** Local average treatment effect, a concept in econometrics Music * ''Late'' (album), a 2000 album by The 77s * Late!, a pseudonym used by Dave Grohl on his '' Pocketwatch'' album * Late (rapper), an underground rapper from Wolverhampton * "Late" (song), a song by Blue Angel * "Late", a song by Kanye West from ''Late Registration'' Other * Late (Tonga), an uninhabited volcanic island southwest of Vavau in the kingdom of Tonga * "Late" (''The Handmaid's Tale''), a television episode * LaTe, Oy Laivateollisuus Ab, a defunct shipbuilding company * Late may refer to a person who is Dead See also * * * ''Lates ''Lates'' is a genus of freshwater and euryhaline lates perches belonging to the family Latidae. The generic name is also used as a common name, lates, for m ...
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Setsuwa
Setsuwa (, ja, 説話, setsu wa) is an East Asian literary genre. It consists of myths, legends, folktales, and anecdotes. ''Setsuwa'' means "spoken story". As one of the vaguest forms of literature, setsuwa is believed to have been passed down or presented in the form of narrations. Setsuwa are based foremost on oral tradition and existed primarily as folktales or in other non-written forms before being recorded and committed to text. However, some writers question whether all setsuwa tales were originally oral tradition, or only mostly so. Although there are no formal rules regarding what constitutes setsuwa as a genre, stories in the setsuwa style "have in common brevity; an uncomplicated plot unfolded in plain, direct language; character delineation through dialogue and action rather than through description and psychological analysis; and a predilection for amusing, startling, dramatic, or marvelous subject matter." Setsuwa vary quite considerably in topic, but can be divi ...
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Tōkyō
Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 million residents ; the city proper has a population of 13.99 million people. Located at the head of Tokyo Bay, the prefecture forms part of the Kantō region on the central coast of Honshu, Japan's largest island. Tokyo serves as Japan's economic center and is the seat of both the Japanese government and the Emperor of Japan. Originally a fishing village named Edo, the city became politically prominent in 1603, when it became the seat of the Tokugawa shogunate. By the mid-18th century, Edo was one of the most populous cities in the world with a population of over one million people. Following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the imperial capital in Kyoto was moved to Edo, which was renamed "Tokyo" (). Tokyo was devastate ...
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Iwanami Shoten Publishing
is a Japanese publishing company based in Tokyo.Louis Frédéric, ''Japan Encyclopedia'', Harvard University Press, 2005, p. 409. Iwanami Shoten was founded in 1913 by Iwanami Shigeo. Its first major publication was Natsume Sōseki's novel '' Kokoro'', which appeared as a book in 1914 after being serialized in the ''Asahi Shimbun''. Iwanami has since become known for scholarly publications, editions of classical Japanese literature, dictionaries, and high-quality paperbacks. Since 1955, it has published the ''Kōjien'', a single-volume dictionary of Japanese that is widely considered to be authoritative. Iwanami's head office is at Hitotsubashi 2–5–5, Chiyoda, Tokyo. Company history Iwanami Shigeo founded the publishing firm Iwanami Shoten in the Kanda district of Tokyo in 1913. In its early years, the company published authors such as Natsume Sōseki, Kurata Hyakuzō and Abe Jiro. It also published academic and literary journals in the field of philosophy, inclu ...
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Early Middle Japanese
is a stage of the Japanese language between 794 and 1185, which is known as the Heian Period(). The successor to Old Japanese(), it is also known as Late Old Japanese. However, the term "Early Middle Japanese" is preferred, as it is closer to Late Middle Japanese (, after A.D. 1185) than to Old Japanese (before A.D. 794). Background Old Japanese had borrowed and adapted the Chinese script to write Japanese. In Early Middle Japanese, two new scripts emerged: the kana scripts hiragana and katakana. That development simplified writing and brought about a new age in literature with many classics such as '' The Tale of Genji'', ''The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter'', and '' The Tales of Ise''. Writing system Early Middle Japanese was written in three different ways. It was first recorded in Man'yōgana (), literally "ten thousand leaves borrowed labels", in reference to the ''Man'yōshū'' poetry anthology and the "borrowing" of the kanji characters as "labels" for the sounds of Japanes ...
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Man'yōgana
is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of this type of kana is not clear, but it was in use since at least the mid-7th century. The name "man'yōgana" derives from the ''Man'yōshū'', a Japanese poetry anthology from the Nara period written with ''man'yōgana.'' Texts using the system also often use Chinese characters for their meaning, but ''man'yōgana'' refers to such characters only when used to represent a phonetic value. The values were derived from the contemporary Chinese pronunciation, but native Japanese readings of the character were also sometimes used. For example, (whose character means 'tree') could represent either (based on Middle Chinese ) or or (meaning 'tree' in Old Japanese). Simplified versions of ''man'yōgana'' eventually gave rise to both the hiragana ...
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Setsuwa
Setsuwa (, ja, 説話, setsu wa) is an East Asian literary genre. It consists of myths, legends, folktales, and anecdotes. ''Setsuwa'' means "spoken story". As one of the vaguest forms of literature, setsuwa is believed to have been passed down or presented in the form of narrations. Setsuwa are based foremost on oral tradition and existed primarily as folktales or in other non-written forms before being recorded and committed to text. However, some writers question whether all setsuwa tales were originally oral tradition, or only mostly so. Although there are no formal rules regarding what constitutes setsuwa as a genre, stories in the setsuwa style "have in common brevity; an uncomplicated plot unfolded in plain, direct language; character delineation through dialogue and action rather than through description and psychological analysis; and a predilection for amusing, startling, dramatic, or marvelous subject matter." Setsuwa vary quite considerably in topic, but can be divi ...
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Kamakura Period
The is a period of Japanese history that marks the governance by the Kamakura shogunate, officially established in 1192 in Kamakura by the first '' shōgun'' Minamoto no Yoritomo after the conclusion of the Genpei War, which saw the struggle between the Taira and Minamoto clans. The period is known for the emergence of the samurai, the warrior caste, and for the establishment of feudalism in Japan. During the early Kamakura period, the shogunate continued warfare against the Northern Fujiwara which was only defeated in 1189. Then, the authority to the Kamakura rulers waned in the 1190s and power was transferred to the powerful Hōjō clan in the early 13th century with the head of the clan as regent ( Shikken) under the shogun which became a powerless figurehead. The later Kamakura period saw the invasions of the Mongols in 1274 and again in 1281. To reduce the amount of chaos, the Hōjō rulers decided to decentralize power by allowing two imperial lines – Northern and Sout ...
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